Kyle Summers, Booker

Kyle Summers, Booker

by Dustin M. Weber

Published by Dustin M. Weber at Smashwords

Cover Art: MyEcoverMaker

Copyright © 2010 Dustin M. Weber

All rights reserved.

NOTE: This book is licensed for personal enjoyment only and may not be resold or given away to anyone else by any means in any form (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, etc.). If you would like to share this book with others, please purchase an additional copy for each additional reader. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase a copy for yourself. Thank you for respecting this author’s hard work.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places, brands, incidents, media, and contact information mentioned are either products of the author’s own imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarities or resemblances to persons either living or deceased and/or brands either active or inactive are purely coincidental.

This book is dedicated to every performer—former, current, and future—in the professional wrestling industry. Thank you all for putting your bodies on the line for the sake of inspiring fans like me everywhere.

This book is also dedicated to my parents for giving me the best life they could with what they had and for putting up with me throughout this whole crazy literary venture of mine. Thank you both for believing in me when the going got tough. You guys are the best!

---Dustin

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – Kyle’s Had Enough

Chapter 2 – Match of the Night: Savage Julius Savage vs. Super Patriot Eric Union

Chapter 3 – Food for Thought

Chapter 4 – Calling Conklin

Chapter 5 – A Gut Instinct and Words from a Champion

Chapter 6 – Conklin Calls Back

Chapter 7 – The Panning Out of Sonia Levarski vs. Lara

Chapter 8 – Two Weeks Later…

Chapter 9 – Meeting of the Minds

Chapter 10 – Kyle Summers, Welcome to the Family

Chapter 11 – Contracts and Conferences

Chapter 12 – The Return of the One They Call Feelgood

Chapter 13 – Sheer Dynamite Fizzles Out

Chapter 14 – The Morning After

Chapter 15 – Turning Things Around

Chapter 16 – A Change for the Better

Chapter 17 – Something’s Amiss…

Chapter 18 – The Road to Slugfest

Chapter 19 – What’s Up with Eddie?

Chapter 20 – A Meeting with the Founder

Chapter 21 – Writer’s Block

Chapter 22 – Meeting in the Locker Room

Chapter 23 – On with the Show!

Epilogue – A Bright Future for High Intensity Wrestling

About the Author

Chapter 1 - Kyle’s Had Enough

"Frag it!"

I threw my remote control at the television, I was so angry. The crowd down in Florida may have been happy to see the woman known only as Lara become the new HIW Women’s Champion, but I sure wasn’t. How could I be? I knew at that moment that once again, those idiots on High Intensity Wrestling’s booking committee found the need to shoot themselves in the foot with one of their many, many senseless creative decisions. Why, I could only guess, but even though such stupidity didn’t surprise me all that much after all the months I spent watching similarly bad ideas manifest on previous episodes of HIW Battlefield, I still found myself in a pique of perplexed disgust. I mean, really, what was the sense in having Prima Donna Angela Marino, the charismatic and very talented top heel in the Women’s Division, lose her hard-earned HIW Women’s Championship after a mere two-month-long title reign to some sloppy, boring, middle-aged hag who originally came in from Global Championship Wrestling? After all, Lara had only been in the company for roughly six or seven weeks and was already basking in the spotlight as the division’s top baby face--a position originally meant for a fresher and far more gifted young gal from the independent scene who could have been a breakout homegrown star for HIW. Not only that, but the dirty old mink was truly showing her age in HIW, and not only in terms of looks, either; her ring work was so slow, clumsy, and outright botch-happy that even though the current audience of casual fans couldn’t tell, any long-time wrestling enthusiast such as myself could. Worse yet, she and all her clueless defender marks kept using her five-month absence from the ring as an excuse for her dilapidated in-ring skills when anyone with half a brain could speak with conviction about how she could have trained during her hiatus to keep herself in shape. It was all just a big, freaking mess…one that I could have and should have expected from HIW’s current booking regime…

…and yet, while I sat on the family room sofa clutching my throbbing temples in frustration, four to five thousand ecstatic attendees were screaming their heads off as one of the most overrated workers in the promotion was awarded a title that she didn’t deserve…

Kyle?

As I heard my name, I directed my attention upward to see Stacy standing over me, her cool blue eyes peering into mine with grave concern. Obviously, she had heard my little outburst and had come down from the kitchen to see just what the devil was wrong with me.

Honey? What’s going on?

I dropped my face back into my hand, embarrassed to continue looking her in the face. Nothing… I muttered, …nothing important…

Stacy found the remote lying on the ground in front of the wall unit where the television sat and picked it up. After hitting the off button and setting the control down next to the now-silent TV, she turned back to me and placed her hand on my shoulder in an effort to console me into cooling off after the trash I had only momentarily witnessed.

This is ridiculous, Kyle, she began. You put yourself through this same routine every week with that stupid wrestling show.

I know… I replied, …I know…

"You realize how absurd it is to get all upset over legitimate sports, don’t you? So how much sense does it make to lose your temper over a sport that isn’t supposed to be real?"

As much sense as this question made, I couldn’t bring myself to answer it. Not only was I still suffering through the headache I received from watching that joke of a women’s match, but I was also simply too embarrassed to state that which I knew was true. Heck, I was too embarrassed to so much as look my own wife in the face, especially considering how right she was about pro wrestling getting to me.

Seriously, she continued, what reason is there for you to keep watching if it only upsets you like this?

It was at that moment that I brought myself back to meeting her worried gaze and answer simply, "Hope, Stacy. That’s my reason. I don’t tune in merely to see the company’s product flounder and flop time and time again. I tune in for the sake of seeing it improve and succeed. I tune in for the sake of seeing it grow and evolve into the great and wonderful thing it’s meant to be. I tune in to see whether or not this company will finally put on the kind of solid, awe-inspiring programming that I know its wrestlers can put on, even if doing so is for no reason other than to shut their critics up."

Empowered by both my voice and my beliefs, I stood up from the couch and began pacing to and fro in front of Stacy. As I did, I had little to no trouble explaining my frustration with HIW’s programming and thus found myself able to jump from one point to the next almost seamlessly.

Ever since they first made a mark in this business, I began, "they gave us wrestling fans something to believe in. They had some of the best damn wrestling we could ever ask for: fast-paced matches with awe-inspiring acrobatics, hard-hitting action, solid in-ring storytelling—you name it. Not even a year after they land a syndicated television deal, though, they go so far out of their way to attract a mainstream audience that they forgot about what made them so good to begin with. Now it’s to the point where their product is falling apart at the seams. Not only that, but it’s been deteriorating for so long now that a lot of the diehard wrestling fans like me have given up on it. I dare you to go into any of the forums I visit and not come across somebody complaining about how their show has gone downhill."

Well, Stacy wondered, if their show is such garbage, then why was it that there were so many fans cheering after that match just now?

Because those fans aren’t the kind who follow the sport the way I do. They only pay attention to what goes on inside the ring and could care less about what else goes on in the business itself. They don’t concern themselves with whatever management does backstage or how certain wrestlers are in real life. Hell, some of them are even convinced that the sport is little else than a sport and don’t see pro wrestling as being an art form as well.

Maybe they know that if they bother to analyze every little thing about a wrestling show to death, they’ll only end up being as depressed and disgusted like you and the rest of the diehard fans.

Hey— I protested as I pointed at Stacy defensively, —anybody who cares enough about pro wrestling to make it part of their lives eventually comes to learn about the business end of it. We’re not living in the 1980s anymore, after all. Only a complete nimrod is oblivious to how scripted the average wrestling match really is—that pro wrestling in and of itself takes place in a fictional bubble and that the spectators are just witnesses to an event that’s just as much theatrical as it is athletic. There’s a lot of stuff that goes on backstage that determines the quality of a wrestling show, and unfortunately, the one thing that’s been holding HIW back from putting on the kind of show they were once capable of is their booking staff. Everything they do is flat out wrong!

Stacy folded her arms in disbelief. ‘Everything,’ Kyle?

Pretty much, yeah. Take that sorry excuse of a match you just turned off, for example. Every time someone from another major company comes over, that person automatically gets handed whatever title he or she is booked to go after—even if it means making a certain someone from the company’s homegrown roster look like an absolute chump in the process. Hell, it doesn’t even matter if the first wrestler has the worst work rate in all of pro wrestling, so long as he or she takes away the gold from the other guy or gal in the end. Of course, if you want to talk about being sloppy, some of the storylines these superstars are in don’t even make sense half the time. Feuds end before they’ve even had a chance to live up to their potential, characters turn from face to heel and back again with no explanation, and most matches end with the most insidious outcomes ever imaginable. Remember that one Tag Team Championship match at Slam Dance back in March between the Whiskey Brothers and the Space Cadets?

Yeah. What about it?

Just this: Toby Whiskey spat whiskey into Rex Starr’s eyes to disqualify himself and his brother and retain their belts. Then Commissioner Conklin comes out to restart the match under no disqualification rules, only have the Whiskey Brothers leave the arena and deliberately get themselves counted out.

Stacy shrugged. So?

"‘So?’ I sputtered in disbelief. They got themselves disqualified under no DQ rules! That goes to show you as to just how closely HIW creative pays attention to the rules of pro wrestling. After all, how can you get the crowd to buy into the outcome of a match when your bookers don’t stay consistent with the very basics of the sport? To me, that’s no way to promote a sport as being legit, and there are a lot of people who feel the same way I do."

Okay, okay! I get it! Stacy interjected as she tried to calm me down. But see what I mean? Don’t you hear how agitated you are? You’re getting bent out of shape over something that isn’t changing your life.

"Maybe it’s not changing my life, but what about the poor young sods who are trying to make a name for themselves in this business, like Julius Savage and Max Parker? Oh, and don’t even get me started on how Christian Macarthur was forced to drop his return match on the go-home show before Spring Fling to Eric Union after being out of the wrestling ring for heaven knows how long."

Don’t worry. I won’t, my wife stated firmly. Now, please, Kyle, before you give yourself a stroke, just…walk away from the TV for a while, okay? Try reading a book tonight--preferably one that doesn’t have anything to do with sports or ‘sports entertainment.’

I took a deep breath and nodded. Yeah, you’re right, I agreed. I think I’ll ride the bike for a while until I cool off.

Wait a minute. Are you sure about that? Didn’t you already finish working out tonight?

I’ll just be using the bike, and then I’ll be done for the night. Just long enough so that I can blow off some steam.

Well, as I had promised, I rode the stationary bike in the laundry room for an extra twenty to thirty minutes until all the stress melted out of me. Then I immediately headed for the bathroom, took my bath, changed into my pajamas, and was just about to take my damp towels and sweaty workout clothes back down to the washer when suddenly an idea popped into my head—a crazy idea, I’ll admit, but an idea nevertheless. In a split second, I dashed towards my den and made a beeline for my computer, dropping my armload of laundry at the foot of the door as I booted up. Once my computer was up and ready, I opened up my word processing program, went into my saved documents, and double-clicked on my résumé. Looking it over, I updated my employment history, references, and contact information as well as made a few adjustments to my work qualifications so as to appeal to the party whom I wanted to review my work experience. I examined my edits to check for mistakes, then smiled with satisfaction and saved the final work before moving on to a fresh document. Here I began writing out a cover letter to fit my new résumé, which turned out like this:

Dear High Intensity Wrestling:

I am writing to you as a prospective employee of your promotion with a specific interest in joining your booking staff. As a publisher at Huffman Publishing as well as a former English tutor and an aspiring author in my own right, I am confident that I have the background necessary for such a position. Likewise, I am also a longtime follower of the professional wrestling industry and a frequent viewer of your weekly television program HIW Battlefield and am thus confident that I have the insight necessary to help script an exciting show that will not only garner the respect of your current audience, but also attract the attention of additional viewers.

I would like the opportunity to tell you more about my work experience and how my skills could contribute to your company’s future development. As such, I have included an updated copy of my résumé with this letter for you to review. Please do not hesitate to get back to me, as I look forward to hearing back from you and to helping your federation seek further growth and success.

Kyle Summers

I scanned this letter thoroughly to check for misspellings, grammatical errors, and the like before finally saving it as well. Once I did, I opened up my email account, composed a new email, and copied both my cover letter and my new résumé into the body of it. Then, I typed in the email address of the office where I wanted this message to go, and in the box labeled Subject, I inserted, From a fan of your company. Granted, it wasn’t the most definitive title I could have used, but at least the message’s recipient would have been open-minded enough to open it up and read it. I perused my email one last time before sending it, making sure I included everything I needed and that it looked promising as a whole. Only when I decided that it was to my liking did I finally click the send button and whisk it away on its merry way to its recipient’s inbox.

After that came the fun part.

As I logged out of my email account, I opened up a fresh word document and started typing away like a man possessed. Hey, why not? The way I saw it, part of me was a little possessed at the time—possessed with inspiration, that is to say. It was this very inspiration that guided me as I set the stage where good and evil settled their differences before the watchful eyes of thousands on a stage known only as the squared circle. Things came easily to me as I fleshed out the undercard and started things off right with an opening promo to help hype up the rest of the show. This led seamlessly into the first match of the night with the midcard matches coming immediately after, which included a solid tag tam match, a fierce bout between the two top grapplers in the women’s division, and two more matches for the sake of elevating a couple of promising young talents who would be the future of the industry. I even threw in the occasional backstage segment for the sake of advancing the storylines between feuding wrestlers. Unfortunately, as I worked my way further and further up the card, my own fatigue started to get the better of me, and I began to lose focus here and there. Still, I forced my way through my sleepiness and confusion and carried on with my task, even as Stacy crept up behind me and looked over my shoulder at what I was doing.

What’s this now? she asked.

I spun around in my chair and saw her peering curiously at my computer screen. Oh, hey! I replied, then motioned to the script and explained, Don’t worry about this. This is just a little something I decided to whip up for the heck of it.

Hmm…I don’t know… my wife said dubiously. "After tonight, I’m pretty sure that this is the last kind of thing you should be working on."

Hey, listen, I insisted. This is a lot better for me than you think. This is actually something fun, something I can control. This isn’t the type of thing that will get me all ticked off in the end like you saw with that lousy show and in fact will actually get me to calm down and come up with something that I’d rather be watching. The guys and gals of the IWC get involved with this kind of thing all the time, and we’d be crazy to expect that any of the federations we write about would actually take our stuff seriously.

Stacy shook her head and sighed. Alright, she said resignedly. If this is your way of coping with what you saw tonight, then who am I to stop you? Just…do me a favor, though, and don’t stay up too late, okay?

I nodded. Sure thing. This won’t take me much longer anyhow.

She smiled at me and kissed me goodnight on the lips. As she started to head out the door, she turned back to me one last time and pointed at the heap of laundry that yet sat on the floor.

Oh, and don’t forget to take this stuff down to the laundry room when you’re done.

Only after she got done saying that did she kiss me on the cheek and head for bed, leaving me to carry on with my project. Thankfully, I had at last made it to the main event of the card, but by that time, I felt my exhaustion getting the better of me. Even so, I did my best to fight it off. After all, this was the match of the night I was working on, the one bout that people would be looking forward to the most. I couldn’t afford to fall asleep at this point—not after working so hard and doing so well on this show as I had, even in what little time I had spent on it. All the same, my mind kept drifting away, and I found it even harder to pay attention than I did before Stacy came in. In the end, my tiredness won over my desire to finish what I had started, and I found myself forced to save my work for another day and turn my computer off, but even as my computer was shutting down and I turned myself in for the night, I vowed to return to my card the very next chance I got.

Chapter 2 - Match of the Night: Savage Julius Savage vs. Super Patriot Eric Union

Welcome back to HIW Battlefield, wrestling fans! Mark Donst and Leonard Lucas here to bring you tonight’s main event, and quite frankly, Leonard, if this one isn’t going to be a slugfest, I don’t know what will.

Me neither, Mark. What a treat it’ll be for the fans to see ‘Super Patriot’ Eric Union try to defend his HIW World Heavyweight Championship against the Savage One himself, Julius Savage!

"Ladies and gentlemen, tonight’s main event is scheduled for one fall and is for the High Intensity Wrestling World Heavyweight Championship! Introducing first, the challenger…from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada…weighing in at 282 pounds…‘Savage’ Julius Savage!"

Speaking of which, Leonard, get a look at the crowd right now, bolting up out of their seats as Julius makes his way to the ring.

I believe it! You know, ever since his debut here in High Intensity Wrestling, Julius has busted his back to give the fans the kind of heavy-hitting action they paid their hard-earned money to see. In fact, if I didn’t know any better, what with the kind of fanfare he’s getting right now, he’s just bound to drop Eric Union flat on his spine with the Savage Hammer and strip him of that World Heavyweight belt once and for all. Boy, I can’t wait to see that happen!

And neither can HIW founder Jerry Swanson, who’s had it up to his eyebrows with Union’s arrogance even more so than these fans have. Without a doubt, no one else in High Intensity Wrestling wants to teach Union a lesson in humility than our very own Jerry Swanson. We can only hope, then, that Julius Savage is the one to help him do just that.

"And his opponent…from Baltimore, Maryland…weighing in at 237 pounds…former Olympic gold medalist and current Nonstop Action Wrestling World Heavyweight Champion…the ‘Super Patriot,’ Eric Union!"

"Speak of the Devil, here he comes, spreading Old Glory across his back like a freaking cape. You know, Mark, I don’t care what kind of medal he won in the Olympics or how he won it. This pompous twit simply loves to think that he’s God’s gift to this business and especially to HIW."

Well, Leonard, it seems that you and the fans are of the same opinion yet again. Quite frankly, I don’t know how it is that the Super Patriot can continually shrug off the boos he keeps receiving every time he makes his presence known.

"Pbth! You think he gives a rip about the fans? You’ve got to be kidding me. That championship belt he’s wearing around his waist is the only ‘friend’ he needs, and he’s going to parade around with it like the arrogant little showoff he is."

Yes, I agree he’s quite full of himself, but with his skill and success in the squared circle, he can afford to be a little cocky. Hopefully for him, however, he’ll have the good sense to set his brashness aside and focus on the match at hand. After all, Julius is undoubtedly one of the best big men in the industry today, and if Eric isn’t careful, his superior technical ability will be for naught against Julius’s versatile, heavy-hitting tactics.

DING DING DING!

And there’s the bell, folks, and right away, Julius starts living up to his name by pouncing Eric right at the sound of the bell. Just look at him following through with that Thesz press and going to town on Union with those punches!

Well, Mark, it’s just like you said about Julius being a heavy hitter, and he’s proving exactly that to us all right now. It goes to show, too, just how much he wants that title, and he’s not afraid of mutilating Union to do it.

‘Mutilating’ is indeed the right word for it, judging from that shortarm scissor he’s clamping on Union right now. Looks like Union’s wriggling his way out of it, though, and turning it into a toe-hold half crab.

Aw, man! And here I was looking forward to seeing Julius tear Union’s arm out of its socket! Well, maybe later, I guess, but first he’s got to either break out of that hold or make his way to the ropes before Union strains his…wait…yeah! That’s more like it.

Smart move by Julius to reach for that bottom rope there, but Eric’s not going to let go until referee Fredrick Wright makes him break the hold in one…two…three…four! Union reluctantly backing away…Julius pulling himself back up to his feet…Union now closing in as he rolls Julius up with a schoolboy...and only scores a count of two.

Pretty dangerous predicament Julius put himself in with his back turned to Union like that. Thank goodness it’s way too early on in the match for the Super Patriot to pin him—Oh! What a kick to the gut by Julius! And now the Savage One is back to mounting the offense with a terrific gutwrench suplex, sending Union clear to the other side of the ring!

"Indeed, that suplex has left Union a little shaken, but that isn’t stopping him from lifting himself back up off the floor