- Event: ICONIC 2022
Location: San Antonio, Texas: Stevens Wrestling Academy
Date: December 11, 2022
It’s the holiday season, but you would never know that in Texas because even in the winter it still gets into the mid to high eighties and today was no different. Even as the night turned into an early Sunday morning around 2am the heat was still in the air.
Holiday season.
Extreme heat.
Two things that coincide with the HOTv Tag Team title match at ICONIC.
I know you’re probably like what the fuck is he talking about but hear me out. Holidays are a time you spend around loved ones whether they are friends and family, and heat usually means regarding temperature or hatred of a person. However, it may be the holiday season, but Jace Parker Davidson is not my friend and he’s definitely not a loved one. In fact, if Jace was on fire I wouldn’t even piss on him to help put him out. I’d piss on his body after I watch him burn alive because that’s how much heat or distain, I have for the man.
You see, Jace and I may not be the best of friends and we damn sure won’t be exchanging gifts this holiday season either. The two of us do have something in common and that is being the absolute best. No one expected us to walk out of Chaos as the new HOTv Tag Team champions, but we did. As dysfunctional as we are, we aren’t just going to lay down for Steve Solex or Joe Bergman. We are too stubborn and prideful to just go down without a fight. Even after we beat the hell out of each other for the LSD championship prior to our tag title defense. Once that match is over, we will pick each other up and unless one of us is dead, we will have each other’s back to make sure we retain our HOTv tag team titles.
That is why even at 2am I am back home at my family’s training facility getting prepared for three title matches next weekend. The Saturday before ICONIC I will step into a MVW ring to reclaim the MVW Heartland title for the third time. I will show the Missouri Valley why the Stevens Dynasty dominates, and the House of Best is forever. Twenty-four hours later we throw all the rules out the window when I face three other men and Jace for the LSD championship. Immediately after a winner is announced we dust ourselves off and team with each other while Jatt becomes the referee. Three major title matches all this upcoming weekend.
Even coming back home has been stressful and that’s not helping my concentration for my upcoming matches. It’s been a long eight months, but my father and brothers as well as my annoying cousin seem to be on the same page again as far as wrestling goes. On a personal level it’s been awkward to say the least since I’m the one who refused their help and instead of choosing blood, I chose the way of 97 Red enlightenment for ultimate guidance. My wife hasn’t forgiven me yet either. Ever since I put up our son in a match stipulation against Mike Best, she hasn’t wanted anything to do with me. We have slowly been trying to work things out, but it’s going to take a miracle to unthaw that heart of ice.
As we go inside the Stevens Wrestling Academy, we hear the clanking of metal and lots of grunting.
“ONE!”
Clank.
“ONE!”
Clank.
“ONE!”
Clank.
“ONE!”
Stevens holds the bar up as high as his arms will extend and his face is turning red before repeating his quick bench press set before putting the bar back on the rack and slowly sitting up on the bench seat. Sweat pours down the face and body of the Demi-God of HOW as he turns and grabs the towel on the bench and begins to wipe himself down. Stevens gets up from the bench and begins to rack his weights before checking his watch. The Texan makes his way over to one of the practice rings and as he gets near, he grabs one of the weighted tackling/punching dummies and slides the dummy inside the ring before rolling in himself. Before getting started, Stevens walks around each corner and touches the top of each turnbuckle. Ever since being saved by HIM, he has a new appreciation for the Golden Circle, especially the one in Chicago. The mat and ring are sacred items and as long as Scott represents the House of Best, he will not disgrace these items.
Stevens sets up the dummy and begins to lock up with it. Scott mixes in locking up with the dummy and adding in quick forearm shivers to the face and quick chops to the throat. The Texan locks up and rakes the eyes quickly before hitting the ropes and jumping up and delivering a Superman Punch to the dummy. Stevens watches as the dummy sits up to life and rocks back and forth in place. Scott stops in and repeats the same series of moves and instead of the Superman punch he delivers a massive clothesline that literally sends the dummy flying out of the ring. Stevens rolls out of the ring and begins to pick up the dummy and bring it back towards the ring. He slides it back in and rolls back inside. As Stevens begins to set up the dummy, he hears footsteps approaching. The Texan doesn’t budge to acknowledge the person as he sets up the dummy again.
“Babe, I told you I wouldn’t be finished until around four.”
Stevens remarks towards the front door of the building, but there is no response as the continuous sounds of footsteps echoes throughout the building.
“I said I wasn’t……”
Stevens begins to shout as he whips his attention towards the front before suddenly stopping when he sees someone he hasn’t seen in a long time, his son, Scott Stevens Jr. The older Stevens doesn’t say a word as he continues to set up his dummy and proceeds to continue his training as if nothing has happened. The younger Stevens is taken aback by his father’s non-response, so he begins to approach the ring. Junior begins to circle the ring as Senior hits a suplex slam on the dummy. Scott continues to ignore his son as he picks the dummy back up to suplex it again and the younger Scott is fed up as he rolls into the ring and rushes his father and pushes him.
“You aren’t going to say anything?!?!?!?!?”
Junior shouts at his father who remains silent. These are the first words spoken between the two in over a year and a half. Junior goes over and shoves his father again.
“NOTHING TO SAY?!?!?!?!?”
He shouts as he slaps his father with tears in his eyes.
“HUH?!?!?!?”
The younger Stevens shouts at his father who is holding his jaw.
“What do you want me to say?”
Scott asks his son as he rubs his jaw as his son looks stunned by his response.
“I DON’T KNOW… MAYBE, HAPPY TO SEE YOU!?!? MAYBE, I WAS WRONG!?!?!? MAYBE, I LOVE YOU!?!?!?!?”
The younger Scott shouts as tears roll from his eyes.
“YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT’S BEEN LIKE FOR THE PAST TWO YEARS!”
Scott shouts at his father who doesn’t change his expression.
“Well, son. If it was so bad you could’ve left any time, but you didn’t.”
Those words are like a dagger shoved deep into the heart of the younger Stevens as he stands there lifeless before collapsing to his knees.
“Seriously? Is that what you have to say to me after you put me up as a stipulation? You could have come and saved me, but I was nothing more than a gimmick to you! You’re too busy being some ‘Demi-God’ to worry about your own flesh and blood!”
Scott Jr. begins as he wipes the tears from his eyes.
“Does wrestling mean more to you than your own family? You just threw me away in a match and did nothing to get me back. You’re not even that good of a wrestler! What did you expect to happen honestly?!”
Scott questions his father’s motivation behind the stipulation as his father stands there trying to decide how to answer that. The older Scott hangs his head in shame but begins speaking as a father to a son instead of a Demi-God of HOW.
“I was so confident that I could beat him once more that I wanted to prove that I could risk my own flesh and blood in a match. And when I did win, I would come out with more bragging rights than ever before…”
Stevens goes quiet.
“As we all know that didn’t happen.”
Stevens somberly finishes his statement.
“No shit, if it had then maybe for the last two fucking years I wouldn’t have been handed around like a foster child! That is until you decided to get greedy and put me, mom, or the house up as a stipulation for more of your fucking bragging rights…”
Junior informs his father with furious anger in his tone.
“Watch your language, young man!”
The older Stevens emphasizes, and Junior simply shakes his head.
“Now you want to be a dad, what a fucking joke.”
As soon as the young man finishes his sentence, he is smacked across the face by his father who suddenly realizes what he has done.
“I’m… I’m… sorry… I… I… didn’t…”
Scott tries to apologize to his son but can’t seem to get the words out.
“How dare you? How fucking dare, you put your hands on me like that?! That’s the same exact bullshit I’ve been putting up with for the last two years. Don’t start acting like you care about anything to do with me now just because your ego is getting bruised!”
Junior tells his dad as he gets to his feet and gets in his father’s face as much as he can as he is staring at his chest.
“I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I HATE YOU!”
Junior says over and over as he beats his fists into his father’s chest and Scott has no choice but to restrain his son.
“Let go of me!”
The son shouts as Stevens lifts him into the air and suddenly drops him to the mat.
“Why the hell did you do that?!?!?!?”
Scott shouts and his dad smirks.
“Because you told me to.”
Both Scotts suddenly crack up laughing as they remember a scene from Junior’s favorite movie, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Stevens Jr. pulls himself back up to his feet, but the momentary laughter is gone, and anger has once again taken over.
“Yeah, nice joke but there is nothing funny about the situation. I didn’t come here to share cheap humor with you like nothing ever happened. Especially not after all the crap that I’ve been through.”
Stevens arches an eyebrow at his son’s response.
“It was that bad?”
Stevens asks and his son nods.
“Have you looked at the HOW roster? I don’t see how any of those guys are fit to be parents. From Mike, to Clay, and certainly Solex, it was just bad to worse to hell on Earth.”
“How so?”
Stevens asks his son who shouts in anger.
“How so? Simple, Steve Solex is a drunken abusive asshole who thinks just because he served our country that he can get away with doing politically incorrect behavior. He went on about how he suffers from PTSD, and he had all of these different personalities but that was all just lies. Steve Solex is just a man stuck in the 1940’s when beating your wife and abusing your children were commonplace and he refuses to change.”
Scott tells his dad.
“Steve Solex acts like a good American and a tough guy on TV but at home he’s just a bully that throws around the fact that he’s crazy and has a lot of guns to get what he wants. All of those Leave It To Stever letters he would open out of that giant sack? He made me handwrite all of them and then he only used a handful of them each week. If I got a bad grade on a test in school due to spending so much time writing his stupid fake letters, he’d get angry and punch me in the chest. If dinner wasn’t served on time or wasn’t cooked to his exact liking, he’d throw plates and break furniture before hitting anyone in the house at the time. Anytime someone would ask me about bruises I’d have, Solex would just say that he was putting me through Military training to toughen me up. He said that would be the only way I’d ever become a real man. The truth is that I was just a punching bag for Solex. Something for him to hold over your head and make himself look good.”
Scott tells his dad who looks horrified.
“Jesus Christ.”
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
Scott cuts his dad off and continues.
“He’d get so black out drunk at times, especially on holidays like the 4th of July. He’d take some of his guns and start firing them off in the house without a care. House damages, people in the house in danger. It didn’t matter to him because he was a war hero. When he was drunk, which was most of the time, he’d get mad if he didn’t get sex or more alcohol at the snap of his fingers. So, he’d come up to my room and try to pick a fight with me. He’d accuse me of being the problem with him not getting what he wanted or the fact that he lost some match or title. I’ve spent more nights than I can remember with a drunk Steve Solex pointing a loaded gun in my face.”
Scott tells his father who is seething at this point.
“Every single time I’d hear a beer being opened in that house I’d wonder if that was the night he’d finally shoot and kill me. I was so scared all the time. Even at this very moment I worry that he’ll find me and shoot me in cold blood just out of spite or to prove that he can. Steve Solex isn’t a human being. He’s a monster that has come to life out of my very nightmares. I can’t eat sometimes, I can’t sleep at night because of Steve Solex. I’m worried for my life, but I’m worried about you also. One day Steve Solex isn’t going to go down to the ring to try and win a wrestling match. He’s going to come down to the ring with one of his assault rifles and open fire on the audience, his opponent, even you.”
Scott tells his dad as he is trembling just thinking about it.
“One day he just got up and left without warning. He decided to bully some guy and his wife for no logical reason. I thought the nightmare was over but he’s still out there. He still has his guns; he’s still getting drunk. He’s still a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off over the smallest inconvenience. Clay, Harrison, even Bergman. None of them bother to do anything about him. They just use it to their own advantage as long as it’s not them that finds the end of his gun pointed at them. Sometimes… sometimes I wish he would have just pulled the trigger so that I wouldn’t have to live with this fear anymore.”
The older Scott falls to the canvas then pounds the mat with his fist.
“MOTHERFUCKER!”
Scott gets to his feet and wraps his arms around his son.
“I can’t go back in the past and change the things that happened. What I can do is swear to you that Steve Solex will never lay another finger on you or point one of his guns at you ever again. I don’t care what Steve Solex tries to do. At ICONIC there will be three of us and just one of him and Bergman. I don’t care if I have to rely on Jatt and Jace for help. I will make sure Steve Solex will regret everything he’s ever done.”
Stevens says quietly into his son’s ear.
“I’m not perfect and I never will be. However, I am a grown ass man and a damn proud Texan. There isn’t a gun big enough that Steve Solex could point at me that’s going to stop me from turning his face into tomato paste. You won’t have to fear Steve Solex anymore because Steve Solex is going to learn to fear me.”
Stevens says in a sinister euphoric tone.
“I got two shots at this. Once in the five-way falls count anywhere match for the LSD championship. Then right after that I will team up with Jace to defend the HOTv tag team championship belts. If I kick Steve Solex’s ass and work on being a better father, do you think that you could forgive me?”
Scott asks his son who shrugs.
“Depends.”
The older Scott looks at his son confused.
“Depends on what?”
Scott asks his son who cracks a small, weak smirk.
“Depends on if I can finally come back home or not.”
Scott tells his dad who chuckles and places his hand on top of his son’s head.
“I’m sorry I did what I did.”
Scott replies and his son looks up and shakes his head.
“I know dad, it’s just good to be home.”
Scott says to his father as he lays his head along his broad chest.
“I’m so happy to hear that, my son.”
Stevens says aloud as he pat’s his son’s back and kisses him on the top of his head. This feel-good moment is soon interrupted by…
“You said to come get your ass at four and it’s four…”
The voice of Lisa Barbosa-Stevens, Scott’s wife and mother of Scott Junior, is heard. She stops suddenly in her tracks when she sees her husband and son together.
“Hi mom.”
Scott Junior says to his mom who rushes over to her son and gives him the biggest hug the world has ever seen as tears come down her face. Scott kneels down and hugs both his wife and son to show that the Stevens Family is finally reunited.
—————————————
Honor.
Loyalty.
Respect.
Those are things everyone at some point in their lives have struggled with, me included.
That being said, there is one person out there that claims to define all of those things at all times, but the reality is that this person is a fraud. This person only pretends to have honor, loyalty, and respect when it can benefit him in the long run. Week after week this person brainwashes people all over our great country using his self-righteous bullshit to appear like he’s some great man.
I am talking about you, Joe Bergman.
You’re a man that I once considered a colleague working in both MVW and HOW. You’re a man that I had a great deal of respect for until I heard you threaten Lee Best. Joe, in one breath you pride yourself on bleeding 97red and staying aboard the ship until the very end, much like I did back in 2016. Yet, in the next breath you tell Lee Best that you might not resign with HOW in the new year? That you just might take the LSD and/or the HOTv tag team championship belts over to Lindsay Troy and join PRIME.
What about that is loyalty, Joe?
Did you even stop to think about the repercussions of what that might do? Taking HOW belts off of the HOTv network putting them on PRIME which is on the ACE network. Need I remind you that MVW is also on the HOTv network? What is the plan here, Joe? Are you and Ray McAvay in collusion trying to screw over Lee Best and HOW? I bet you’ve and Ray have already been in talks with Lindsay Troy and PRIME. You probably already have a contract waiting for you to join the PRIME roster and a spot on the ACE network for MVW. Is that what honor means to you? Is that what being a man of the people means to you?
You claim that you have nothing to do with what happened with Adam Ellis and that MVW is innocent in the claims that Lee Best has made. Joe Bergman wants people to believe that he has nothing to do with MVW. What about the fact that at this very moment MVW has wrestlers who are men and women’s Bergman’s barn champions and tag team champions? Wrestlers trying to advance up to Heartland and championship divisions. What about them, Joe? Are they all just going to follow you to PRIME? Do you and McAvay think that everyone on the MVW roster will just gladly go and live under Lindsay Troy’s iron fist?
Honor, loyalty, and respect are nowhere to be found with Joe Bergman.
Whether it be section 214, or The Highwaymen doesn’t matter. Joe Bergman only cares about what he can gain. He doesn’t care that Lee Best provided him the chance to be a two-time HOW world champion. He doesn’t care that Lee Best has provided MVW with a spot on the HOTv where they have been put in the spotlight. If Joe Bergman respected anyone other than himself then he would not have attacked me after my match with Christopher America.
Jace, I understand why you would attack him.
But I have been on the MVW roster for a long time. I have brought credibility and ratings to MVW that they have never seen before. And this is the thanks that I get? I didn’t beat you half to death with a tire iron. I had nothing to do with putting you on the shelf. I was fighting my own battles but because you’re selfish and greedy you decided to attack me from behind after I already wrestled the champion. All because you demand a rematch for the HOTv tag team titles. What makes you think you’ve earned it, Joe? You and Solex are the one that lost the belts to those traitors known as the eGG bandits. So, now you want to win them back and run off to PRIME just like they did?
I can’t allow that to happen, Joe.
I can’t allow you to do that because I am loyal to Lee Best. I can’t allow you to do that because though I don’t like him, I respect Jace Parker Davidson. I can’t allow you to do that because I have honor in these titles and in High Octane Wrestling. You think Lee Best hasn’t shown you respect or loyalty? I’ve been beaten down, kicked off the roster, and been treated worse than anyone in the history of this company. Regardless, he always reaches out. He always offers his hand and pulls me back up and makes me a part of this family. I can’t not allow you to take these belts and serve them to Lindsay Troy on a silver platter, Joe Bergman, because you befriend and condone the actions of Steve Solex.
You call a man that would abuse my own son, who would point a gun in his face, your friend. You turn a blind eye to the actions of your fellow Highwaymen as long as you can stand in front of your handful of fans and act like you’re the good guy.
That 97red that used to flow through your veins has turned a disgusting McKenna blue color. I will make sure that your entire body turns a shade of McKenna blue before I ever let you take my title belt to PRIME. I do it because I am loyal to HOW, because I respect HIM, and most importantly, Joe Bergman.
I do it because I am going to honor the promise I made to my son.
You dug your own grave, Bergman. Jace and I will make sure that you and Solex will lay inside of it in McKenna blue colored body bags.