23rd June, 2019
Black Dahlia bar
West Hollywood, CA
The wrestling business had always been filled with difficult times, even from the earliest point of his career David Helms had figured that one out. But it was one thing to understand the notion and an entirely different one to prepare for it.
Ricky Octavius’ death had shocked the world. And on the day the news broke, a tidal wave of sadness and emotion had rapidly spread its way through the wrestling community and all who had ever come into contact with Ricky in any way shape or form. He had clearly touched many hearts and there was something bittersweet about that.
David had felt every painful moment of the whole ordeal: he had helped train Ricky, had helped his career in UWA and life advice in general. His first instinct had been to retreat inside his own head to process everything when the story broke… but that that hadn’t been possible, because it was his job to be the strong one that helped everybody else. He was the head of his family, was the head of AnteUp - along with Tommy - and despite having retired some years ago, was still seen as an elder statesman for the business too.
But the day after, with the media circus in full swing, and those around him seeking sollace in one another instead of relying on him, David found he had time to decompress and in the process, found himself in unusual circumstances. Sat in the Black Dahlia, the bar owned by his brother Jason and sister-in-law Aniya, he shared a table in the VIP room with a former rival in and out of the ring, none other than Lucas Knight.
“Goes to show how short life is, don’t it mate?” Lucas said as David poured them another drink before re-corking the bottle of rum. “One minute you’ve got a bright future ahead of you, next minute, you’ve snuffed it…”
“Eloquent way of putting it bro, but yeah, it does…” David said, picking up his glass and swirling the rum around it thoughtfully before taking a sip. “We take shit for granted then poof, it’s over. Done with… snuffed out by some prick for fuck knows what reason…”
“Makes me realise how little what had me pissed off earlier actually meant,” Lucas said, sighing before draining his rum in one go and placing the bottle back down.
“What was biting your ass, anyway?” Dave asked as he topped Lucas’ glass up again. “Saw some stuff with Trinity, assume it was to do with that?”
“You could say that bruv,” Lucas explained, shaking his head. “Had a bit of a laugh and a joke with Cook and Trin basically decided I was talking shit about her entire family, ‘cause of your daughter, you know?”
“Yeah well, Tommy Cook is an arrogant ass-hat if you ask me, but that’s a professional opinion, not personal,” Helms said, frowning at the mention of the Birmingham born EMERGE star. “Has a huge chip on his shoulder after I kicked him out of AnteUp for being a douche canoe, but I’m sure you heard all of it from him…”
“I did, as it happens,” Lucas confirmed with a curt nod. “Had a few choice words and interesting names for you too, I should add. Won’t say it didn’t bring a smile to my face, but you know how it is?”
Helms smirked. “All too well bro, all too well,” he confirmed and held his glass up for Lucas to clink his own against before they both took a drink. “I saw the trash talk about Jenni, but chose not to get involved if I’m honest. I love my kids, but if they want to be in the business they need to develop tough skin… took Aaron a good year to figure that one out, but Jenni’s a smart kid. Timing could have been better, true, but from what I saw she gave as good as she got.”
“Part of me thought it was just part for the course to be honest mate,” Lucas said with a shrug as he sat back in his seat. “I mean, me and you, we weren’t exactly bosom buddies, was we?” the Brit asked and Helms scoffed. “Exactly… so when your daughter and a guy I helped give a helping hand to clashed, I figure it were history reaping itself, more or less. Like you said, let them get on with it. As you said, they need tough skin.”
“We must have hurled more abuse at each other over the years than the fans at Fenway hurl at the Yankees,” Helms joked. “Won’t speak for you bro, but I’m pretty sure that I never lost any sleep over what you’d said about me.”
“You know Trinity mate, she’s the matriarch of the family, she sees it at her duty to look after everyone,” Lucas said with a shrug, justifying her actions unnecessarily. “Not saying she were out of order to give Tom a bollocking, but her telling me piss off to the pub and talk about how great Monarchy were, that she was out? Fucking hell, we were only having a bit of banter…”
Helms just nodded along. Who would have thought that he would ever have sympathy for Lucas Knight? And yet, as much as he loved his wife Regan, David was more than aware of how fiery the Street women could be at the best of times and Regan was only a gifted amateur in comparison to Trinity. She was the matriarch after all, the others learned at her feet. “`Yeah well, I’ve been known to be friends with people my wife wasn’t all that keen on too, and we’ve survived so far bro, so I’d just not worry about it if it was me,” David told Lucas with a hint of a shrug. “She’ll blow off some steam and forget all about it… that’s usually how it goes anyway.”
“Yeah, probably…” Lucas agreed as he grabbed the bottle to top up their drinks again. They were meant to be sharing a couple of beers, but the rum they were drinking was going down far to easily. “This stuf ain’t bad, is it? You’ll have to get your brother to let me know where he gets it.”
“I’ll ask him when I speak to him,” David offered, as he nodded his head in agreement. “He’s got a bunch of contacts in the industry, small boutique distilleries and stuff. Has one guy who makes a version just for this place. Black Dahlia rum, very dark, kind of an acquired taste…”
“Never been much of a rum drinker to be honest,” Lucas said, looking at the label on the bottle before placing it back down. “This ain’t bad though… probably a decent little money spinner as well, if you get enough places selling it.”
“Oh you have no idea bro,” David told him, placing his glass back down. “Couple of years back, we had a whiskey distillery contact me and Tommy about doing a limited run of Next Level or AnteUp bourbon… fuckers wanted to charge three hundred bucks a bottle. For collectors they said… to line their own pockets more like it!”
“Christ, that much?” Lucas asked, looking shocked.
Helms nodded his head. “Yep, crazy right?” he asked, thinking back on it himself. “After taxes and everything, the production cost of a single bottle would have been around fifteen to twenty bucks. They offered us a twenty percent cut of every sale if we agreed… would have made us a little north of fifty bucks per bottle, and a single barrel would have made anywhere between one fifty and two hundred bottles…”
“Chris, that ain’t a bad offer, I’d have jumped at it,” Lucas said, shocked that David and Tommy hadn’t. “Always thought you two were dumb, but that just proves it…”
Helms smirked but didn’t rise to the bait. “Ten grand a barrel was tempting bro, especially with the quantities they wanted to make on the ‘limited run’… but we didn’t want the AnteUp name associated with liquor and we figured that Next Level had been and gone by that point, so it didn’t seem like there was much point…”
“At ten grand a barrel, I’d have reformed the fucking team and come out of retirement!” Lucas said with a laughed before draining the last of his glass, watching as Helms chuckled to himself while topping their glasses up again. “And you said that your bruv has someone make a bottle just for this place?”
“Yeah, guy does small run half barrels for a few different bars,” David said as he re-corked the bottle, that now contained considerably less rum than when they had started. “Dunno how Jase met the guy, but it must make a decent profit because despite a single costing like thirty seven bucks, they keep having to re-stock. They only have it up here in the VIP room though, so I guess it’s a case of people buying it because it’s expensive and they just assume it means it’s better or whatever…”
Lucas looked at the bottle on the table between them thoughtfully, for a moment. You could almost hear the cogs turning. “So what do you think the figures would look like if you took a couple guys who beat the crap out of each other for years suddenly got together to make a bottle,” he asked, curiously. “Maybe, I dunno, hundred dollars a bottle? Little more?”
It didn’t take long for David to cotton on to what Lucas was thinking, and he cocked a half smile at the idea. “Lucas Knight and David Helms… interesting proposition,” he said, still smirking.
“Would be interesting to two different markets, mate?” Lucas said, arguing his case despite the look on David’s face giving away the fact that he’d already convinced him. “Limited edition rum from a private distillery is gonna get the liquor connoisseurs interested… and ours mugs being on the bottle, or even just our names, is gonna have the wrestling fans wanting to buy it too!”
“And unlike the AnteUp deal, it’s got no knock on effect on the academy,” David said, thinking out loud. “Which means no concerns about underage students and teenagers drinking the stuff… and at the price it’d probably go for, like students would be it anyway, not when they can get a quart of bottom shelf for under twenty bucks anyway…”
“Wrestling might have passed us by at this point… but I’m pretty sure we both know what good booze tastes like,” Lucas said, further compounding that this could very well be a fantastic idea.
“You feel like wrestling’s passed you by?” David asked, somewhat surprised by the admission.
“You don’t?” Lucas shot back at him. “Mate, it’s been years since we were in there regularly, whole business is full of whippersnappers now, or it feels like it at any rate, whenever I put Breakdown on…”
“Try owning a place that trains those whippersnappers,” David said with a scoff. “Never felt so old as I do when I walk in to talk to a new class for the first time… all those fresh faces staring at me, wide eyes and shook…”
“We ain’t getting any younger mate, not that either of us would admit that in public,” and David raised his drink to that. “If I can use the old name to make a few dollars then fuck it, I’m up for it. What you say, mate?”
David looked at Lucas thoughtfully, then down at the rum bottle on the table between then. Their whole history flashed past him, the rivalry, the times they had beaten the snot out of each other, the true hatred and vitriol… and then he thought about how they’d put all of that aside, how they left it in the past now they were retired. “You know what bro,” he started before turning back to Lucas, grinning. “Fuck it, let’s do it. I’m in!” the New Jerseyite said, holding his glass up once again, and again Lucas clinked his against it and they drank. To an unusual friendship, and now an unusual business partnership too!
30th August, 2019
Helms household
Hollywood Hills, CA
David sat in his office at home, reading the press release; the God of Wreatling tournament was returning, the very same tournament he had wrestled his way to the final in, some seven years earlier when he was employed by Majestic Wrestling on top of his duties in SCW. Aries Allocco had jumped at the chance to hire him after first securing the signing of Zoe Sperling a few weeks earlier.
Of course, nobody knew the real reason that David had followed suit, given that their relationship at the time had been a secret, but David joining Majestic on its return had been something of a coup given the height of his popularity at the time. And now the tournament he had almost won was returning, under an SCW banner this time, hosted by the father of Aries, Adam Allocco. And with its return, the neurons were firing...
He was on his third reading of that same press release, when his daughter Jenni dragged him back to earth. “Huh?” He asked, vaguely away that somebody had said something, but he wasn’t even sure of who it was until his eyes actually focused on Jenni standing in the doorway of the office. “Sorry sweetheart, miles away for a minute there… what did you say?”
“I asked what you were reading,” Jenni asked again as she walked into the room now, heading for the couch on the wall that faced David’s desk. “Whatever it is, it’s got you locked in a trance, so it’s either something terrible or something amazing and I was curious about which,” she told him, smiling. That was something that truly amazed him with the kid; despite everything she’d been through in her short life, she hadn’t lost her smile. A true fighter. A true Helms.
Giving a little snort of laughter, Dave put his iPad down and sat back in his chair. “Just reading a press release, doll. Adam Allocco bringing a tournament back,” he told his daughter, trying to play it off as no big deal.
“Oh, that God of Wrestling thing?” Jennifer asked, evidently just as clued up as he was. “Yeah, I just saw that announced on twitter, sounds pretty interesting… but that doesn’t explain why you’re so distracted by it, dad?” she pushed, curious.
David didn’t see any point in hiding his thoughts, it wasn’t as if it was any big secret that he’d entered the last one after all. “Just reminiscing I guess,” he admitted, sitting up to lean on the edge of the desk. “I was in the last one, back in twenty twelve. Made it to the final before Shilo beat me. Just brought back memories, that’s all…”
“And re-lit a few fires maybe?” Jenni asked, completely seeing through his b.s. She wasn’t just a strong kid, she was a smart one too.
“That obvious, huh?” David asked, his shoulders sagging in defea.
Was he now so obvious that his eighteen year old daughter could read him like a book? “Well, to be honest dad, I’ve kinda known that you regret retiring since I started training myself with mom,” Jenni told her father, chuckling at the look on his face; to say he was shocked would be something of an understatement. “And so does mom, you know that right?” She asked him, but he simply frowned instead of replying. “Dad, all anyone has to do is watch you with one of your classes to know that you miss it. Maybe regret retiring isn’t the right way to put it, but you do wish you were still competing, I know that much. And like I said, so does mom… were not idiots dad, you know that right? Well, maybe Aaron is, but the rest of us not so much,” she said with a smirk and David stifled a laugh out of fairness to his eldest son.
“And you think your mom know, huh?” He asked and god a confident nod in return. “And what makes you say that then, if you’re so all knowing?” he teased, though Jennifer didn’t even bat an eyelid when she rattled off her confident explanation.
“She sees the signs that I do for a start,” Jennifer told her father, raising a finger for emphasis with her first point. “When its time for mom to leave for a show, your mood darkens from maybe the night before her flight? I can tell moms schedule without even having to look based on the mood you’re in,” she told him, pausing only to raise a second finger before continuing. “When you’re watching her compete, be it Breakdown or pay per view, you feel every blow she takes and throw every punch she throws, I’ve seen you flinch or tense up while watching. Same with Aaron’s matches and even Jason’s. You’re the same with me too from what mom says, there in spirit with every single match,” pausing again for a third finger. “And for someone who’s retired, you sure enjoy finding reason to attend shows and go backstage, be it SCW or Emerge. Plus the other stuff, like weighing in on twitter, competing in “one off” things, going as far as to wear a mask and wrestle under a fake name like you did last Christmas? Face it dad, you wish you were back in the ring again…” she finished confidently, folding her arms across her chest for emphasis as she smiled the smuggest smile David had ever seen on her face.
And how could he argue? Truth is, David did feel like he fought every match his wife and kids ever competed in, as if it was him standing in that ring instead. And he did feel grumpier when Regan headed out, though he had always put that down to the fact that he was simply going to miss his wife for however long the schedule would keep her away… but... what if the correlation did speak for itself? “So say i did,” David mused, Jenni sitting up a little straighter now that her suspicions had all but been confirmed. “What am I supposed to do about it after the promises I made? I’d be a liar if I went back on that now...” he asked, looking at his daughter as he tried to keep the pleading from showing on his face. He already knew what he wanted to hear from his daughter, but he couldn’t ever admit it. He wanted to hear that he should return.
Jenni got up from her seat and walked around to the other side of the desk where her father sat and pulled out her phone. She pulled up an app on her phone, though David couldn’t see which, from where he sat. Jenni began to type before scrolling and in less than ten seconds, she placed the phone down on the desk in front of her father. “Read those…” she told him and David looked down at the phone to see her twitter feed, showing a collection of tweets. At first David wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be seeing, but as he actually looked at the tweets, he realised they were about him! “That’s just a sample of the tweets sent containing your name since God of Wrestling was announced… they want to see you in it!” she added on the end, just for emphasis on top of what he was reading.
He couldn’t believe it. Fans were mentioning him, talking about how he almost won it in twenty twelve, speculating over whether he’d enter again. All of this came as something of a shock to David, he wasn’t prepared to see it there in black and white on the screen like that. “Fuck,” he mumbled, forgetting himsef for a second. He slid the phone back across the desk and Jenni picked it up, locking the screen before pocketing it and hopping up to sit on the edge of the desk. “So what do you think I should do, sweetheart?” David asked, the irony that he - a thirty eight year old man - was asking his eighteen year old daughter for advice not lost on him.
And Jennifer didn’t hesitate with her response. “You should do it!” she told him confidently, as if the answer would be obvious for anyone. “To hell with it dad, if you miss it that much then call SCW or this Allocco guy and tell them you want in. Given the buzz already, I’m sure they’ll jump at the chance to book it…”
“You think so?” David asked and Jennifer nodded.
“I do,” she told him, with no uncertainty or hesitation. “Given everything that’s happened this year, I’ve started to see things a little clearer… if something makes you happy then you should absolutely go for it. I mean, isn’t that what you and mom did in the first place? If you hadn’t gone for what makes you happy, you wouldn’t be married and wouldn’t have adopted me so from personal experience I’d say I’m giving pretty damn good advice right now!” she added with a cheesy grin that melted David’s heart.
And in that moment, he knew she was right; she was part of the family because both he and Regan had done exactly that, chased after what made them happy. Each other! “You’re old beyond your years, you know that kiddo?” David said, standing up and stepping over to his daughter. He kissed her on the forehead before grabbing his phone from his pocket and unlocking it.
“Hey dad?” Jennifer said, causing David to pause in the act of skimming through his contacts to look at her. “Thanks for asking for opinion, it means a lot… and for what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re doing it. I never got to see you wrestle, didn’t even get to see ‘Kiken’na’ stuff because of how secretive you were about that… so getting to experience this first hand? It’s cool…” she admitted, smiling. It was true that Regan had taken the lead with Jenni’s training, and of the two of them it was Regan that she had made the strongest bond with, he knew that... so to find out that she wished she could have seen David in the ring before he retired was touching for him to hear. “Just… you know… keep it between us that I’m the one who convinced you to do this, because I seem to end up making mom mad enough as it is, without adding to it,” she finished with a grin and David knew she was joking but he gave her a wink and ‘zipped’ his mouth with his finger and thumb nonetheless. The secret was safe with him, joke or not.
“Guess I’ve got a call to make then,” David said, motioning to the phone in his hand, and Jennifer shot him a smile before getting up and heading for the door. As the door closed behind Jenni, David stood looking at his phone for several seconds, contemplating whether he really should do this… what if he didn’t have what it takes anymore, or his sharpness was gone? An open invitation tournament in SCW was bound to drag in a lot of the hottest talent on the road today, did he really want to open himself up for that embarrassment? But then he made up his mind and walked to the couch while pulling up the contact list in his phone. Finding the right number, he thumbed the call button and held it to his ear, waiting for an answer on the other end. It didn’t take long. “Hi, this is David Helms. I’m wanting to talk to whoever is dealing with the God of Wrestling tournament…”
[REC]
“Define irony… teaching classes at a wrestling school on how to cut a promo, only to end up sitting in front of a camera for a good five minutes trying to remember how the fuck you actually do this...” Helms says with a chuckle from behind the desk of his home in the Hollywood hills. “Which is kind of fitting I guess, because it goes along with every single thought that ran through my mind, both before and after I contacted SCW to find out who I had to talk to in order to enter this thing…”
“You can probably guess at the kind of thing,” he says, holding up a hand to count things as he mentions them. “Doubts about whether I’m too old,” first finger. “Whether I’m too rusty,” second finger. “Whether I’d be breaking a promise I gave to my family, the fans and myself,” third fourth and fifth fingers, before he lowers the hand again. “The thing is, I remember Simon Lyman telling me at the time that I was too young to hang up my boots back when I did and perhaps he was right…”
Helms considers this for a moment before alborating. “I hung up my sneakers on the twenty second of November, two thousand fifteen, three days after my thirty fifth birthday… and I did know back then that I was probably too young to call it a day, but that’s why I went out when I did. I was young enough, healthy enough, to enjoy the rest of my life with my family… only my family are all part of this business, aren’t they? Save Jay anyway, but I don’t think anyone would be looking to hire a nine year old any time soon, do you?” he asks with a chuckle.
“I had an easy schedule; no house shows unless I wanted to attend, SCW bent over backwards to help me out with my schedule so I could be home as much as possible, even if it was pandering to one of their top stars rather than them truly wanting to help,” he admits, with a sigh. “And I missed it. Every day bro, I missed being in that ring… but I resisted a return, save for one or two ‘one off’ instances like the Orlando tournament and the End Of Year Special last year. I could have come back the week after retirement if I’d allowed myself to, but I told myself I wouldn’t, that it’d get easier… it doesn’t,” he admits, shaking his head. “The pull to the ring doesn’t weaken with time; it’s been four years give or take a month or so since I walked away, and it’s still as strong as the day I hung up my sneaks… but I’m still resisting.”
“Tournaments like this… they provide the opportunity to work out that hunger, you know?” He says, explaining himself. “They give me a chance to climb back in the ring and work out that fire in my belly, give me the opportunity to face people I’ve never faced like Victor Mason and then when all’s done, whether I win or lose, I’ve had my fun,” he says, and while his eyes show sadness his conviction doesn’t waiver.
“Doesn’t mean I don’t have my doubts, that’s true enough,” he says, holding five fingers up to the camera as a nod to the beginning of the shoot. “There’s no telling whether I’ll have what it takes anymore, whether I’ll upset fans by coming back again for another tournament or whether I’ll get my ass kicked by Victor on the opening night of the tournament… but that’s just means I can temper my expectations. And I can want to win this thing as much as I like - and after coming so close to winning it back in twenty twelve before falling at the final hurdle - but it may never happen. There’s as much chance I get dumped out on night one as me winning, in fact that’s wrong, it’s way more likely I get knocked out by Victor than it is that I win the whole tournament and finally overcome the loss from seven years ago, that’s what I keep reminding myself anyway…”
He pauses for a moment, collecting his thoughts before turning his attention back to the camera. “Victor Mason has proven himself in various places as being just as capable as his siblings, and while my history with Blake has been well documented, I’m not going into this thing judging him on his brothers previous actions. Or his sisters for that matter. If people judged me by my brothers actions, I’d be fucking screwed… they’d have booed me out of the building at one point!” he asks with a chuckle. “Vic, I said it when the brackets were first announced, and I’ll say it again now bro… good luck. I don’t say that negatively, I’m not mocking you by insisting you’ll need it, I’m just wishing you well. We know how this business works, there’s a winner and a loser, that’s just how it is. This weekend, we go one on one for the first time and if it’s you that goes on and I go home then I wish you well for the rest of the tournament… but I’ll also say this, Victor.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t have my doubts,” he says, holding five fingers up to the camera as a nod to the beginning of the shoot. “There’s no telling whether I’ll have what it takes anymore, whether I’ll upset fans by coming back again for another tournament or whether I’ll get my ass kicked by Victor on the opening night of the tournament… but that’s just means I can temper my expectations. And I can want to win this thing as much as I like - and after coming so close to winning it back in twenty twelve before falling at the final hurdle - but it may never happen. There’s as much chance I get dumped out on night one as me winning, in fact that’s wrong, it’s way more likely I get knocked out by Victor than it is that I win the whole tournament and finally overcome the loss from seven years ago, that’s what I keep reminding myself anyway…”
He pauses, collecting his thoughts before turning his attention back to the camera. “Victor Mason has already proven himself as being just as capable as his siblings, and while my history with Blake has been well documented, I’m not going into this thing judging him on his brothers previous actions. Or his sisters for that matter. If people judged me by my brothers actions, I’d be screwed, wouldn’t I?” he asks with a chuckle. “Vic, I said it when the brackets were first announced, and I’ll say it again now… good luck. I don’t say that with derision, I’m not mocking you or suggesting you’ll need it, I’m just wishing you well. We know how this business works, there’s a winner and a loser… this weekend, we go one on one for the first time and if it’s you that goes on and I go home then I wish you well for the rest of the tournament… but I’ll also say this, Victor.”
Helms leans forward on the desk, getting closer to the camera. “I can wish you well until I’m blue in the face… but that doesn’t change the fact I’m going to throw everything at you this weekend, including the kitchen sink if I have to. I’ve been in the business for a long time; even if I’ve been out of the ring for four years now, AnteUp kept me every bit as involved as competing did… and after more than twenty years in this business in some way, I can guarantee that I’m bring every single day of that experience to this tournament! So put your game face on, bro. I know I will be. BANG!” he ends, holding up his hands in the Self High Five in front of him, holding the pose as the scene fades out.
[/REC]
