Post by Cordelia Clark on Mar 17, 2024 1:28:39 GMT
Cordelia is in her Brooklyn home, in what appears to be a trophy case that features replicas of some of the championships that she’s won over her still young career. She is sitting down on a chair looking out a window that catches some of the Brooklyn skyline. Notably, she’s holding a championship belt on her lap. She looks conflicted as she doesn’t know whether it’s a championship that she should take pride in or not. She keeps it set on her lap, not even bothering to put it over her shoulder. The camera catches her struggling a bit internally before she begins to speak.
Cordelia Clark: Hybrid Wrestling…
Cordelia lets out a sigh.
Cordelia Clark: Dear Mr. Vance…
She pauses, having just mentioned the chairman of the now-dead company by name.
Cordelia Clark: This one goes out to you. Hell, there are things I want to say tonight about this and this is a subject I’ve kept close to the vest for months. But there is so much anger within me regarding your company that I don’t know where to start. All I know is, I am done holding it in. I first joined Hybrid in the summer of 2022, not long after Sin City Underground, my first wrestling company, closed shop. I want to give a quick thank you to SCU for taking care of me. You were my first wrestling company on the mainstream and you gave me my first opportunity. I found my feet as a wrestler with you and I will always have appreciation for that.
My late cousin wrestled in Hybrid and she was a Pinnacle Champion there. The Pinnacle title was their third tier title in that incarnation and things ended quite badly for her there. I went into that company with the belief that my cousin was the problem…
…only to find out by the time that it closed that it was THEM, not her.
Still, I went there because this second incarnation of Hybrid was promoting itself as a place for fresh faces to thrive in, where rookies can be comfortable in, where young up and comers such as myself had a place to grow their skills and take that step toward the next level. Here was I, 23 years of age when I signed with them, thinking that this was the company for me.
I was wrong…
I found out as 2022 was transitioning to 2023 that hard work and busting your ass didn’t matter. I found out that outworking most of the roster when it came to putting in the effort to produce promos for their television show or for improving your craft in the ring… that it didn’t matter. No, what mattered the most in Hybrid is whether Mr. Vance knew what your name was before you signed with the company because ultimately, Hybrid, the place that marketed itself as the place for new stars to be born… gave ALL of their main event opportunities to the names that Mr. Vance heard of, above wrestlers like me. In effect, in order to be a main event star in that company, he had to have heard of you or you had to be friends or family of someone that he heard of.
At first, I was treated like any other newcomer which I had no problem with because I was new to the company. I was patient and willing to let things play out and then, I came to find out the truth. Someone like Stephanie Kenyon, for instance, was getting opportunities more than me when I was outworking her in every facet of the game because her last name was ‘Kenyon’ and she was related to Ashley, a big star in the previous version of that company and being the first person she defeated was FUCKING EMBARRASSING…
It was so embarrassing that I wanted to quit…
But either way, the fact of the matter is that Hybrid Wrestling and Mr. Vance never fucking believed in me, they never fucking cared about me, and what they saw me was was mere fodder just for their BIG NAMES to step on to pad their resumes. That’s the damn truth. I was treading water in my early months in Hybrid. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was getting frustrated as I continued to work as hard as I could, only for these people that weren’t as talented as me getting chances over me because they were a BIG NAME! Hell, it goes without saying that the “BIG NAMES” didn’t give a shit about me themselves. I’ll give you an example.
I was in a sudden main event match against their then-champion Eddy Todd. I didn’t win that match, which most people would expect obviously. So I have my match, and I gave it a great effort and got a moral victory out of it and I felt like I proved myself… only for a sad, sack of lazy shit named Duke Andrews to come out and tell me to leave the ring “because the adults were talking”...
Cordelia takes a pause at this point and the anger in her eyes is prevalent. The look on her face shows that the “adults were talking” comment cut her and had a negative impact on her.
Cordelia Clark: I knew right then and there that Hybrid’s talk about building up the future of wrestling was a load of bullshit and as time went on, the more obvious it was that the bigger your name, the more opportunities you got. The fact that I left that company as a one time Vanguard Champion let alone a THREE time Vanguard Champion is a MIRACLE! Yeah, I FINALLY got a chance after months of scraping the bottom of the barrel and doing nothing despite the hard work I was putting into the place.
For this Vanguard Championship right here… which… for all intents and purposes was their third tier title… just like the Pinnacle title my cousin won in the previous incarnation. I was going up against one of Vance’s guys in Javier Mateo Duran.
I remember there was a segment that aired on their show and Mr. Vance was talking about how it was ‘sink or swim’ for me.
I knew exactly what that meant: he was throwing me into the fire thinking that I wasn’t going to beat Duran and that he was going to use the outcome he THOUGHT would happen to justify why he wouldn’t give me the opportunities that I worked hard for or why he never saw a damn thing in me. Except… it BACKFIRED when I WON this championship… with stupid interference albeit, but still…
I hold it for a little bit, I get in a few defenses, and then I deal with Aleki Kokoa who then beats me for the championship. All’s well that ended up well, however. Because when I got my rematch? I beat him and started my second reign. When I was the Vanguard Champion, he was throwing names at me that he didn’t think I would beat… yet, I did!
Jessi Ozbourne… who HASN’T heard of her, right? She was the final Hybrid Grand Champion because DUH… BIG NAME… but before that happened? I defended THIS championship against her and I made her tap out.
Nathaniel Dixon… look I know that name is not going to be well received, but he was the Iron Heart Champion when he left the company and I was in a champion versus champion match against him and I BEAT HIM!
I swear, this company was rooting for me to fail and yet, I kept SUCCEEDING… DESPITE them! So fast forward a little later. Their big show, Fall of Man, is coming up. There is a number one contender’s match between two “BIG NAMES” in this business that are everywhere under the sun in Griffin “5000 followers” Hawkins and Tiffany Page, she of the famous Page family… not related to Chris, I should point out. I was going to defend against the winner of that match at Fall of Man. So it’s me with my less than 200 Twitter followers against a big name either way. The match ends in a draw and I have to face BOTH of them.
That’s right, I was PUNISHED and FUCKED OVER because these two supposed “BIG NAMES” couldn’t even beat each other but Mr. Vance saw the opportunity to force BOTH of them on me knowing that a triple threat had worse odds for me than a one on one and he took advantage of the fact that asking me if I wanted to defend this title in front of so many people put ME at a disadvantage because if I had said “no” like I wanted to, I would’ve looked like a bitch and a coward so instead of that, I reluctantly agreed even though in my heart, I knew neither of them deserved it.
Griffin pins me for the belt and I’m DEVASTATED! Griffin runs up the score on Twitter and brags about it to kingdom come even though he never deserved the shot to begin with and Mr. Vance tries to make it all better by giving me a contender’s match for the Iron Heart Championship literally the next show against a lazy, pathetic, god awful piece of shit in Charles Morgan when my heart was still shattered into pieces from ‘going up against big names’ and once again being fodder to one of them and on their biggest show of the year at that. There was no way my head was going to be in the game coming off of the devastation I was feeling. Charles Morgan is a fucking LOSER who put in NO work into his craft, who NEVER bothered to produce a segment as far as I remembered and who made the occasional token tweet being the nice guy yet HE gets an opportunity to be Iron Heart Champion?
I can’t even name a damn thing Charles Morgan did in HYBRID prior to that yet, HE’S getting that number one contender’s match? What happened was that Mr. Vance KNEW I was devastated and that my head wouldn’t be in the game so he decides to use that as an opportunity to force feed someone he liked for whatever reason essentially a free win to get a title shot that he never deserved at all. After that, Charles Morgan never won a match in HYBRID again. If that match took place two weeks later, when my head was completely clear, I would’ve beaten Charles Morgan and expelled him to that useless battle royal on Hybrid’s last show that he should’ve been in to begin with.
Officially, I’m at a dead end. Mr. Vance announces Hybrid is closing in January. I have no path to the Iron Heart title that I actually wanted. The Vanguard title… he basically moved on to giving Aleki Kokoa a shot only for that to blow up in his face when Aleki and others decided to bail like cowards rather than let the company close and despite that, guess what Mr. Vance had planned for me for the final show?
He was going to throw me in a FUCKING FILLER BATTLE ROYAL that meant NOTHING and up until then, I was going to have just a bunch of random matches with no build or any interest for the fans to get invested in despite ALL of the hard work I put into that place, despite my fucking loyalty, despite putting up with the bullshit like losing to Stephanie Kenyon and being fucking humiliated by that, like Duke Andrews dismissing me like I was worth nothing with his ‘adults were talking’ comment, being thrown in a random title match against Javier Duran not because Mr. Vance wanted me to have that shot, but because he wanted to make an example out of me, demoralize me and force me to quit in the defeat that he was expecting to happen! I had to put up with the BULLSHIT that ended my 2nd reign as Vanguard Champion and then being thrown into ANOTHER opportunity against a piece of shit that didn’t even deserve his ROSTER SPOT let alone the Iron Heart Championship match… which he lost on Hybrid’s final show because DUH by the way… and then being told, essentially, that I wasn’t important enough to keep around or to invest any time with a HARD EARNED opportunity!
No, I had to accept being thrown into random matches and a FILLER! BATTLE! ROYAL!
Cordelia pauses as the expression on her face indicates such a huge anger that she almost wants to cry.
Cordelia Clark: I was one of the top five hardest workers in that company, but all Mr. Vance saw in me was a bottom five piece of shit… HEY, DOESN’T THAT SOUND FUCKING FAMILIAR, NPWA? He never saw me as someone that can be a star in this business. He didn’t give a fuck about me. The only reason why he ever gave me ANY opportunity was because it would’ve looked so bad on him and his affinity and favoritism for ‘established stars’ especially when I was busting my ass as hard as I was! I showed up on every single show I could show up on whether I was wrestling or not. And really, the opportunities he DID give me were a bunch of BULLSHIT…
Because he only gave me one in the first place rooting for me to fail against Duran…
I only had ONE opportunity above the third-tier championship that I have on my lap and that was the fucked up contender’s match against Charles “Lazy Ass” Morgan who wanted to be snippy at me and go “LOL no hard feelings right?”
FUCK YOU, Charles Morgan… you worthless, lazy pile of trash. If you wrestled me while my head was in the game instead of a time when I was fresh off of being devastated by a title loss, you would have been routed out of the building because the fact of the matter is, to me, you’re worth nothing more than being my own personal Jimmy Choo shiner, asshole!
Mr. Vance was giving me these smaller scale opportunities thinking that THIS championship here was my ceiling in Hybrid and that’s all I was ever going to get. This championship right here, in a fucked up way, represents the ceiling he wanted to have over me and what he thought I was worth. I never got a Grand title opportunity and the ONLY reason why I even had a shot to win this championship for the final time was because I challenged that son of a bitch Griffin Hawkins and he accepted it because FUCK ME, I was NOT going to go out being elimination fodder in a FUCKING BATTLE ROYAL for a BIG NAME to pad his resume for. FUCK THAT!
And FUCK YOU, Mr. Vance!
You are GARBAGE! You are the WORST wrestling promoter I ever worked for. I came into your company and you held PREJUDICE against me either because my cousin wrestled in your company before in its previous incarnation and she was very unpopular, or because I wasn’t a BIG STAR! You looked at my Twitter follower count being in the 140’s and decided that I was never going to be a star in this business. You saw NOTHING in me!
NOTHING!
Nothing but PUSHOVER FODDER for your BIG NAMES…
I bet you nearly had a fucking stroke when I beat Griffin thinking that I wasn’t going to beat him and that I wasn’t worthy of beating him. This belt here represents the CEILING that you had over me the entire time I was there because had Hybrid continued on, there was no way in hell you were ever going to genuinely give me a real opportunity better than this championship. I should throw this belt in the trash, or light it in fire, or take it out to my garage and back up my car over it to destroy this fucking thing…
But I’m not going to do that, Mr. Vance…
Because this belt here represents the ADVERSITY that I had to overcome, the PREJUDICE you had of me the entire time I was in your company… the fact that DESPITE your best efforts to stifle me and tell the world that I wasn’t a big enough name to succeed in your company, I STILL did it anyway! Watch me in 5BW, Mr. Vance… watch me in NPWA…
Watch me become the sensation and the star you never thought I would be… and to be brutally honest? Never WANTED me to be!
Cordelia stops talking, takes a few deep breaths to calm herself down, and then tries to hold back all the tears that are flooding her eyes.
Cordelia Clark: I will NEVER allow ANY wrestling company to treat me the way you treated me… and I hope you NEVER resurface in this business again you piece of shit…
Cordelia shuts off the camera, ending her “goodbye” to Hybrid.
Cordelia Clark: Hybrid Wrestling…
Cordelia lets out a sigh.
Cordelia Clark: Dear Mr. Vance…
She pauses, having just mentioned the chairman of the now-dead company by name.
Cordelia Clark: This one goes out to you. Hell, there are things I want to say tonight about this and this is a subject I’ve kept close to the vest for months. But there is so much anger within me regarding your company that I don’t know where to start. All I know is, I am done holding it in. I first joined Hybrid in the summer of 2022, not long after Sin City Underground, my first wrestling company, closed shop. I want to give a quick thank you to SCU for taking care of me. You were my first wrestling company on the mainstream and you gave me my first opportunity. I found my feet as a wrestler with you and I will always have appreciation for that.
My late cousin wrestled in Hybrid and she was a Pinnacle Champion there. The Pinnacle title was their third tier title in that incarnation and things ended quite badly for her there. I went into that company with the belief that my cousin was the problem…
…only to find out by the time that it closed that it was THEM, not her.
Still, I went there because this second incarnation of Hybrid was promoting itself as a place for fresh faces to thrive in, where rookies can be comfortable in, where young up and comers such as myself had a place to grow their skills and take that step toward the next level. Here was I, 23 years of age when I signed with them, thinking that this was the company for me.
I was wrong…
I found out as 2022 was transitioning to 2023 that hard work and busting your ass didn’t matter. I found out that outworking most of the roster when it came to putting in the effort to produce promos for their television show or for improving your craft in the ring… that it didn’t matter. No, what mattered the most in Hybrid is whether Mr. Vance knew what your name was before you signed with the company because ultimately, Hybrid, the place that marketed itself as the place for new stars to be born… gave ALL of their main event opportunities to the names that Mr. Vance heard of, above wrestlers like me. In effect, in order to be a main event star in that company, he had to have heard of you or you had to be friends or family of someone that he heard of.
At first, I was treated like any other newcomer which I had no problem with because I was new to the company. I was patient and willing to let things play out and then, I came to find out the truth. Someone like Stephanie Kenyon, for instance, was getting opportunities more than me when I was outworking her in every facet of the game because her last name was ‘Kenyon’ and she was related to Ashley, a big star in the previous version of that company and being the first person she defeated was FUCKING EMBARRASSING…
It was so embarrassing that I wanted to quit…
But either way, the fact of the matter is that Hybrid Wrestling and Mr. Vance never fucking believed in me, they never fucking cared about me, and what they saw me was was mere fodder just for their BIG NAMES to step on to pad their resumes. That’s the damn truth. I was treading water in my early months in Hybrid. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was getting frustrated as I continued to work as hard as I could, only for these people that weren’t as talented as me getting chances over me because they were a BIG NAME! Hell, it goes without saying that the “BIG NAMES” didn’t give a shit about me themselves. I’ll give you an example.
I was in a sudden main event match against their then-champion Eddy Todd. I didn’t win that match, which most people would expect obviously. So I have my match, and I gave it a great effort and got a moral victory out of it and I felt like I proved myself… only for a sad, sack of lazy shit named Duke Andrews to come out and tell me to leave the ring “because the adults were talking”...
Cordelia takes a pause at this point and the anger in her eyes is prevalent. The look on her face shows that the “adults were talking” comment cut her and had a negative impact on her.
Cordelia Clark: I knew right then and there that Hybrid’s talk about building up the future of wrestling was a load of bullshit and as time went on, the more obvious it was that the bigger your name, the more opportunities you got. The fact that I left that company as a one time Vanguard Champion let alone a THREE time Vanguard Champion is a MIRACLE! Yeah, I FINALLY got a chance after months of scraping the bottom of the barrel and doing nothing despite the hard work I was putting into the place.
For this Vanguard Championship right here… which… for all intents and purposes was their third tier title… just like the Pinnacle title my cousin won in the previous incarnation. I was going up against one of Vance’s guys in Javier Mateo Duran.
I remember there was a segment that aired on their show and Mr. Vance was talking about how it was ‘sink or swim’ for me.
I knew exactly what that meant: he was throwing me into the fire thinking that I wasn’t going to beat Duran and that he was going to use the outcome he THOUGHT would happen to justify why he wouldn’t give me the opportunities that I worked hard for or why he never saw a damn thing in me. Except… it BACKFIRED when I WON this championship… with stupid interference albeit, but still…
I hold it for a little bit, I get in a few defenses, and then I deal with Aleki Kokoa who then beats me for the championship. All’s well that ended up well, however. Because when I got my rematch? I beat him and started my second reign. When I was the Vanguard Champion, he was throwing names at me that he didn’t think I would beat… yet, I did!
Jessi Ozbourne… who HASN’T heard of her, right? She was the final Hybrid Grand Champion because DUH… BIG NAME… but before that happened? I defended THIS championship against her and I made her tap out.
Nathaniel Dixon… look I know that name is not going to be well received, but he was the Iron Heart Champion when he left the company and I was in a champion versus champion match against him and I BEAT HIM!
I swear, this company was rooting for me to fail and yet, I kept SUCCEEDING… DESPITE them! So fast forward a little later. Their big show, Fall of Man, is coming up. There is a number one contender’s match between two “BIG NAMES” in this business that are everywhere under the sun in Griffin “5000 followers” Hawkins and Tiffany Page, she of the famous Page family… not related to Chris, I should point out. I was going to defend against the winner of that match at Fall of Man. So it’s me with my less than 200 Twitter followers against a big name either way. The match ends in a draw and I have to face BOTH of them.
That’s right, I was PUNISHED and FUCKED OVER because these two supposed “BIG NAMES” couldn’t even beat each other but Mr. Vance saw the opportunity to force BOTH of them on me knowing that a triple threat had worse odds for me than a one on one and he took advantage of the fact that asking me if I wanted to defend this title in front of so many people put ME at a disadvantage because if I had said “no” like I wanted to, I would’ve looked like a bitch and a coward so instead of that, I reluctantly agreed even though in my heart, I knew neither of them deserved it.
Griffin pins me for the belt and I’m DEVASTATED! Griffin runs up the score on Twitter and brags about it to kingdom come even though he never deserved the shot to begin with and Mr. Vance tries to make it all better by giving me a contender’s match for the Iron Heart Championship literally the next show against a lazy, pathetic, god awful piece of shit in Charles Morgan when my heart was still shattered into pieces from ‘going up against big names’ and once again being fodder to one of them and on their biggest show of the year at that. There was no way my head was going to be in the game coming off of the devastation I was feeling. Charles Morgan is a fucking LOSER who put in NO work into his craft, who NEVER bothered to produce a segment as far as I remembered and who made the occasional token tweet being the nice guy yet HE gets an opportunity to be Iron Heart Champion?
I can’t even name a damn thing Charles Morgan did in HYBRID prior to that yet, HE’S getting that number one contender’s match? What happened was that Mr. Vance KNEW I was devastated and that my head wouldn’t be in the game so he decides to use that as an opportunity to force feed someone he liked for whatever reason essentially a free win to get a title shot that he never deserved at all. After that, Charles Morgan never won a match in HYBRID again. If that match took place two weeks later, when my head was completely clear, I would’ve beaten Charles Morgan and expelled him to that useless battle royal on Hybrid’s last show that he should’ve been in to begin with.
Officially, I’m at a dead end. Mr. Vance announces Hybrid is closing in January. I have no path to the Iron Heart title that I actually wanted. The Vanguard title… he basically moved on to giving Aleki Kokoa a shot only for that to blow up in his face when Aleki and others decided to bail like cowards rather than let the company close and despite that, guess what Mr. Vance had planned for me for the final show?
He was going to throw me in a FUCKING FILLER BATTLE ROYAL that meant NOTHING and up until then, I was going to have just a bunch of random matches with no build or any interest for the fans to get invested in despite ALL of the hard work I put into that place, despite my fucking loyalty, despite putting up with the bullshit like losing to Stephanie Kenyon and being fucking humiliated by that, like Duke Andrews dismissing me like I was worth nothing with his ‘adults were talking’ comment, being thrown in a random title match against Javier Duran not because Mr. Vance wanted me to have that shot, but because he wanted to make an example out of me, demoralize me and force me to quit in the defeat that he was expecting to happen! I had to put up with the BULLSHIT that ended my 2nd reign as Vanguard Champion and then being thrown into ANOTHER opportunity against a piece of shit that didn’t even deserve his ROSTER SPOT let alone the Iron Heart Championship match… which he lost on Hybrid’s final show because DUH by the way… and then being told, essentially, that I wasn’t important enough to keep around or to invest any time with a HARD EARNED opportunity!
No, I had to accept being thrown into random matches and a FILLER! BATTLE! ROYAL!
Cordelia pauses as the expression on her face indicates such a huge anger that she almost wants to cry.
Cordelia Clark: I was one of the top five hardest workers in that company, but all Mr. Vance saw in me was a bottom five piece of shit… HEY, DOESN’T THAT SOUND FUCKING FAMILIAR, NPWA? He never saw me as someone that can be a star in this business. He didn’t give a fuck about me. The only reason why he ever gave me ANY opportunity was because it would’ve looked so bad on him and his affinity and favoritism for ‘established stars’ especially when I was busting my ass as hard as I was! I showed up on every single show I could show up on whether I was wrestling or not. And really, the opportunities he DID give me were a bunch of BULLSHIT…
Because he only gave me one in the first place rooting for me to fail against Duran…
I only had ONE opportunity above the third-tier championship that I have on my lap and that was the fucked up contender’s match against Charles “Lazy Ass” Morgan who wanted to be snippy at me and go “LOL no hard feelings right?”
FUCK YOU, Charles Morgan… you worthless, lazy pile of trash. If you wrestled me while my head was in the game instead of a time when I was fresh off of being devastated by a title loss, you would have been routed out of the building because the fact of the matter is, to me, you’re worth nothing more than being my own personal Jimmy Choo shiner, asshole!
Mr. Vance was giving me these smaller scale opportunities thinking that THIS championship here was my ceiling in Hybrid and that’s all I was ever going to get. This championship right here, in a fucked up way, represents the ceiling he wanted to have over me and what he thought I was worth. I never got a Grand title opportunity and the ONLY reason why I even had a shot to win this championship for the final time was because I challenged that son of a bitch Griffin Hawkins and he accepted it because FUCK ME, I was NOT going to go out being elimination fodder in a FUCKING BATTLE ROYAL for a BIG NAME to pad his resume for. FUCK THAT!
And FUCK YOU, Mr. Vance!
You are GARBAGE! You are the WORST wrestling promoter I ever worked for. I came into your company and you held PREJUDICE against me either because my cousin wrestled in your company before in its previous incarnation and she was very unpopular, or because I wasn’t a BIG STAR! You looked at my Twitter follower count being in the 140’s and decided that I was never going to be a star in this business. You saw NOTHING in me!
NOTHING!
Nothing but PUSHOVER FODDER for your BIG NAMES…
I bet you nearly had a fucking stroke when I beat Griffin thinking that I wasn’t going to beat him and that I wasn’t worthy of beating him. This belt here represents the CEILING that you had over me the entire time I was there because had Hybrid continued on, there was no way in hell you were ever going to genuinely give me a real opportunity better than this championship. I should throw this belt in the trash, or light it in fire, or take it out to my garage and back up my car over it to destroy this fucking thing…
But I’m not going to do that, Mr. Vance…
Because this belt here represents the ADVERSITY that I had to overcome, the PREJUDICE you had of me the entire time I was in your company… the fact that DESPITE your best efforts to stifle me and tell the world that I wasn’t a big enough name to succeed in your company, I STILL did it anyway! Watch me in 5BW, Mr. Vance… watch me in NPWA…
Watch me become the sensation and the star you never thought I would be… and to be brutally honest? Never WANTED me to be!
Cordelia stops talking, takes a few deep breaths to calm herself down, and then tries to hold back all the tears that are flooding her eyes.
Cordelia Clark: I will NEVER allow ANY wrestling company to treat me the way you treated me… and I hope you NEVER resurface in this business again you piece of shit…
Cordelia shuts off the camera, ending her “goodbye” to Hybrid.