Call me Izzy. I have signed a non-disclosure agreement as part of my employment contract, so I have to hold back some information. I work professionally as part of the talent scout team for a big, well-known international wrestling federation.
Or at least I did. Not long ago I was part of an audition match with a newcomer named Sheena. Since then I have been thinking about resigning and finding a new career.
Sheena came to our training facility in the southern USA. She introduced herself as “Sheena, the dominator.” I have heard worse stage names. Not recently though.
I was assigned to do a half hour match with her on video inside a standard wrestling ring so our executives could judge her endurance, skills and camera presence. Standard stuff for a beginner.
I told Sheena that this was going to be a tough try-out, and that I promised to break any hold that she found too painful.
Sheena rubbed her hands together in excitement and laughed that she would do the same. I could see the muscles thicken in her triceps and biceps. The look in Sheena’s eyes as we started with a typical collar-and-elbow told me that she was ready to work.
She promptly broke her promise and beat the shit out of me. Sheena had heard that she was being auditioned to be a bad girl, so she used sadistic tactics.
She was strong as a man and better than I expected, meaner and more vindictive. I did my best to keep up with her, but she was solidly built and difficult to move once she gets her feet planted.
I do not have the same skill level as Sheena, and it soon revealed itself when we begin to grapple. She took control fast, smacked me against the ring posts, off the canvas, and carried me on her shoulders like a ragdoll. It was as one-sided a wrestling match as you would ever see. But if I asked the referee to stop the match early, the federation would suspend me for two weeks without pay. Poor me.
Early in our match, Sheena whipped me off the ropes and floored me with a terrific shoulder block. I was looking up at ceiling lights when she picked me up with a handful of hair and whipped me to the ropes again. I ran back and she plastered me with a flying dropkick.
With those thick, beautiful legs of hers, she had the best dropkick I had felt in 15 years in the business. All I saw were her heels coming at my chest. She almost knocked me through the ring ropes.
I hit the mat hard again and I was looking at the lights once more. She grabbed my right leg and wrenched it, trapping me in a very painful step over toehold. I’m a pro, with a pretty high tolerance for pain, but I pounded my fists in discomfort. I was shocked to hear a loud hoot go up in the studio as the video recording crew cheered for Sheena! I worked with the same crew for years and they were whooping for her as she made me wail in distress!
Sheena was in control and the self-satisfaction on her face was enormous. She seemed to be enjoying my howls. She weakened my leg by stretching and twisting it. Then, for good measure, she rammed her knee into my contorted lower thigh. I felt a stiff charley horse cramp blaze across my leg and I reached up to hold my thigh, but she snapped my leg back further, making me groan in pain. She showed no mercy and poured on the pressure. Sheena twisted, wrenched, bent, stomped, punched and otherwise tortured my right leg in every way imaginable. My muscles throbbed, my tendons were stretched, my throat was dry and I was just miserable.
If she was playing a part, she was playing it damned well.
“Down tiger,“ she said to me.
Then Sheena twisted my leg at such an unnatural angle that I was afraid the next sound would be the snap of my bone. I was less angry than humiliated now, as I realized she had me at her mercy.
A trace of a smile snuck across Sheena’s face. For a moment, she looked almost happy. If I had let her, she could have broken that leg across her big bare thigh.
If I struggled or moved too suddenly, she might actually fracture my right leg. It wasn’t worth testing her. Sheena was an animal, a very strong one.
In desperation, I slithered on my back and reached for the ring rope. Sheena tried to hold me stationary and she increased the force on my knee, but I was able to reach the bottom length of rope and force a break.
Sheena was keen to continue wrestling, but I rolled out of the ring and hobbled around the outside, sweat running down my face, trying to buy some time. My leg was killing me, but I attempted to walk it off. The camera crew chuckled at my limping around the floor.
When I finally got back in the ring, Sheena was like a buzz saw.
“It’s only going to get worse,” she said. She was right. She manhandled me, or should I say, womanhandled me, for the duration of the match.
All I knew was that Sheena was in charge of the ring now. Before I could plan an attack, she lifted me up into a body press and I braced myself for a slam. Instead, she dropped me down onto her knee for a shoulderbreaker.
It was like being hit by a torpedo. I was so dazed that I reached over to try to tap surrender on the canvas. Instead, Sheena grabbed my outstretched arm and scissored it between her huge legs. She had me in an excruciating submission hold called a juji gatame, a straight arm bar with her big hips under my hyperextended elbow.
“Enough?” Sheena shouted.
I bit my lips hard and stayed quiet.
She let me stand again but I couldn’t hold her off of me. She slipped underneath my arms and went behind my back. She grabbed me in a tight waist and threw me to the mat. I could feel her maneuvering behind me but didn’t know what she was trying to do. I had no idea what abuse was coming, but I knew it was going to hurt like hell.
It did. She spun, she grabbed my wrist, bent my elbow, and pinned my ankle up against her pelvis. She pressed her forearm against the back of my head, shoved my face into the canvas and held me there. My lips were so pressed against the mat I couldn’t breathe.
Then she wrapped those killer legs of hers around my ribs and compressed them. My arm was trapped behind my back. I noticed that I was drooling a pool of spit on the mat. She had excellent leverage and had me tied up in a knot. I couldn’t push off and I couldn’t roll.
It occurred to me that I was truly powerless.
She caught my chin in her hands and pulled back. Tears welled up in my eyes from the aching in my back.
“How does that feel? Hurt?” It wasn’t a question. It was ridicule.
Then I heard the referee’s big voice. “How about it, bro? Had enough? Want me to ring the bell, break the hold?”
“No,” I said with absolutely no conviction. We were barely 20 minutes into the half hour match. I had a mortgage payment coming due.
Sheena simply continued to invert my spine as if time wasn’t a factor to her. Drops of salty sweat rolled into my eyes, causing them to burn. My right arm was bent numb behind me, while my left arm uselessly explored the mat for escape. By now, I was tired of being beat up, but this is what I’m paid to do, so I took it.
It felt like Sheena was curving my spine to the breaking point and my back started to knot up. She was taunting me for being a crummy wrestler. I had enough. For the first time in my adult life, I got raving mad about the way I was being treated. So, with all the strength I could summon, I was able to roll over onto my side, bulled my way up to one knee and powered my chin free of her grasp.
A lot of good it did me. She put her left leg behind my right leg and took me down hard with a Russian leg sweep. I landed solidly on my back and before I could get my wits, she swung her oak thighs around and clamped on a powerful head scissors.
I tried to fight my way free, but she made her legs rigid around my skull and forced me to be still. Panic is a very strong motivator.
She turned on the pressure and my ears began to ring. I tried to pry her thick legs apart, but her ankles were locked tight and I couldn’t budge them. I grasped her thighs with my hands. Her quadriceps were solid muscle, and I couldn’t wedge them apart.
My head felt like it was being compressed in an iron vice. I could feel pins and needles inside my head as the blood circulation to my brain went sluggish. All sounds began falling to a dull continuous ringing and I was slowly losing my mental capacities. I knew nothing except that I lay there suffering in her skull-crushing scissors. The clarity of events started to fade as I began to collapse physically and mentally. What had happened before and what might happen after went blank. I was losing sensation in my fingers and toes. My neck was extended as well, and I knew that if I didn’t escape soon, she’d squeeze me until I was unconscious.
Luckily - and unluckily - she didn’t want to end the match before the time limit.
She was locked in and squeezing wicked hard, exhausting my remaining strength. I pried at her legs again, but to no avail. I had one last scheme to escape. My hair and face were soaked so slick with perspiration that I hoped I could use my own sweat as a lubricant. Since it was hopeless to try to separate her legs, my only strategy was to wriggle my drenched head from between her thighs.
I gripped both of her knees firmly while l struggled to slide my head free from her mighty legs. But she was aware of what I was doing and wouldn’t permit it. As she held firm, I tried with all my might to free my head, but in vain.
I only worsened my position. All I actually succeeded in doing with all that effort was to slide her pressure from my skull to the side of my face.
That was a dumb, rookie move. The mandible and facial bones are thinner and more fragile than the skull. The pain multiplied and I knew I had no option but to give up. It was all over now.
I tapped the mat hard to surrender, but Sheena was having none of it, She continued to drive her strong legs into my jaw and face. I thought she was going to crack my head like a melon. I frantically swung my arms left and right in midair like a drowning swimmer. I really didn’t know what was happening. I had tapped out, but she hadn’t released her hold. I was out of strength and fading to black. I could only hope now that the referee would come to my rescue.
But she was clamping down harder and harder, and I was growing dizzy and nauseous. I felt a snap in my jaw and excruciating pain shot up through my face and temple. I tapped Sheena frantically on her broad hip, begging her to stop – but she kept on applying pressure. Then, like it was a dream, the pain numbed as I forgot where I was.
That was the last thing that I remembered.
I came to in the emergency room of the hospital where the video producer filled me in on the final minutes of the match. It felt like a waking up from a drinking blackout to me, my mind a puzzle with important pieces missing. My jaw was in pieces too, thanks to Sheena.
The producer told me that I fought hard for a minute or two, but was unable to escape. Sheena told the ref that when I was windmilling my arms I tried to hit her in the face with my elbow, so she “accidentally” broke my jaw with her head scissors. She squeezed me unconscious in the process. Then the referee called for the bell.
“We’re signing a contract with her, that’s for sure. Sheena ain’t no party girl. She’s a she-devil,” the producer said. As for me, I got the standard two months off for injury, at half pay.
“You’ll get over it, kid,” he said. “Just remember. Never ever let a girl with legs like that catch you in a body scissors. Live and learn.“ And shaking his head, he walked away.
Thanks, dude.
After that my face ached however I moved my head. I couldn’t smile either, though I had nothing particular to smile about. I saw in a mirror that my face was badly swollen and I had dark circles under both my eyes. I looked like a Halloween monster mask.
They wheeled me down the hall to an examining room where a doctor was looking at an X-ray of my skull, shaking his head.
“What happened?“ he asked. “You in an automobile accident?“
I explained that while I was filming a professional wrestling video, a woman wrestler had locked a head scissors on me and popped my jaw out of place. More humiliated, I could not be. It hurt like hell to say anything, emotionally and physically. Especially that.
“Huhhhhhh!” the doctor blurted. “This woman wrestler… she must be a very strong girl! I would like to see that video!”
Then they rolled me into surgery to pop my jaw back into place and wire my mouth shut for eight weeks.
After the hospital, I took pain-killers and sedatives but I had a bad sleep. I couldn’t find a comfortable position to lie down in. I tossed and turned. My ribs were delicate and my muscles were throbbing. I would lay awake and replay the match in my mind over and over.
When I would drift into a shallow sleep, I would startle awake. It felt like Sheena was still gripping my ankle and working my leg. I woke up once and found myself tapping my hand on the mattress.
What longer dreams I began to have were hot and bothered, fantasies of pain and pleasure weirdly intertwined. A beautiful bodybuilder with muscles and raw power like Sheena was giving a beating to a guy in the ring, crushing him between her powerful legs until he was crying in pain, then hitting a double biceps pose. I could see the contorted faces of laughing, shouting fans. It was exciting somehow. The crowd watching the domination was intimidated by it, yet turned on at the same time.
Weird.
The next morning, when I went into the bathroom, I saw a tired looking wreck in the mirror. I was barely able to pull my own pecker out of my shorts so that I could take a leak. My arm was feeling awful and I started to worry. I forced myself to brush my teeth using my left hand. I could, but I was in considerable pain. I tried to lift a comb to my hair, but a stabbing sensation shot up and down my bruised arm. I dropped the comb into the sink. I didn’t even try to shave.
I felt nervous, for all I know even psychologically damaged. I couldn’t shake my wrestling daydreams. Was this post-traumatic syndrome?
After seven weeks on medical leave, I saw “Sheena the dominator” make her broadcast debut on the franchise, tearing a big thug of a guy to pieces in front of a cheering crowd.
I couldn’t take my eyes off it. In fact, I recorded it for watching later.
Maybe I need therapy.
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