Monkey Flip: Pink Mist iPPV 3/24/13

It was the seventh NOVA Internet Pay Per View event, and Alex Helton was nervous.  He’d already stolen the show at previous events, made the focus of the very first one, Unleashed, and yet now that the company was in trouble, there was more pressure than ever before to perform at the highest level.

The night was to be the definitive showcase for indy legend Phil Brodeur, who had been working on a verbal contract since last fall.  NOVA founder and president and current champion Colt Carson had finally realized that he would have no choice but to trust the immediate future to someone else, and scheduled the whole evening around Brodeur.

Alex spent most of it waiting anxiously.  He was defending the kendo championship he’d earned at Unleashed against the man he’d beaten for it, Scott Peavy, who also happened to be his good friend.  They sat together in the locker room while the rest of the boys who hadn’t made the card, hard workers like Tony Loewen and Elston Hamilton, still looking for the lucky break Alex had been handed on a silver platter, stood around with sour looks on their faces.

It was always tough living the dream in professional wrestling.

Carson as usual was nowhere to be found, probably goofing off rather than preparing for the main event, not so much because he wasn’t dedicated enough but because that was who and what he was, someone capable of selling the excitement of the new company but not at all prepared to represent it, even though he’d spent years as a moderately successful talent on the independent scene.

Alex and Scott could be like that, too, but they knew when to put their game face on, which was half the reason they’d been noticed to begin with, and why they continued to be among the most prominent faces of the company.

They walked to the curtain together, and watched as Clete Kubeck made his way back from the buzz of the arena.  Kubeck was a comedy act, something Carson appreciated more than some of the fans who’d immediately recognized NOVA as a brilliant alternative to the mainstream, and what bothered Alex most about him was that he was the current tornado champion, a role he’d assumed from Scott the month before.  At least he had been before the match he’d just lost, pinned by Nemo, one of the most exciting stars Alex had ever seen.

The tag team match had been drawn out to twenty minutes, and now Alex was expected to go at least half an hour with Scott, something he could easily do, before a promo from Brodeur and the main event that would be all but an iron man affair, going a full sixty minutes.

Despite the bad vibes he struggled to leave behind, Alex was feeling pretty good, and as soon as the crowd died down he and Scott worked to work them back into a frenzy.  The kendo stick itself was a reliable way to achieve that in itself, but Alex tried to keep the match as interesting as possible, so that it wasn’t simply violent for the sake of violence, which was half the reason he’d incorporated moves like the Side Russian Legsweep into his regular repertoire with the weapon.

Tonight, because the event was called Pink Mist, he felt compelled to bleed, which was another thing Alex tried to keep to a minimum.  He never liked doing it, but on this occasion went out of his way to make it memorable, at one point sucking some of the blood into his mouth and spitting it in Scott’s face, a literal mist that also happened to hit the referee, who usually stayed clean from the mess.

When the match was over, Alex quietly snuck back into the arena, still bloody and dressed in his tights, so he could watch Brodeur beat Carson, something even he was eager to see.  The match was well-paced and filled with memorable spots, which Brodeur was careful to share with his opponent, who for once played straight, and Alex was surprised that he missed Carson’s usual act, realizing for the first time that everything was going to change.