There’s a great divination system I love to use called the Tessera Oracle. It’s an extremely well thought out and tactile system created by Tory Woollcott made up of these gorgeous and weighty enamel pieces. Inspired by a mix of tarot and runes, the art is simple and evocative and it’s really fun to tessellate the pieces to find the messages within.
One piece is called “The Mountain.” On its diamond shaped surface, there are three snowcapped grey mountains against a starry sky. Though each mountain, a jagged golden path is cut, shining a way to the peak.
The accompanying guide describes The Mountain as such:
“There is a mountain ahead of you. You can climb it, but that will take preparation, planning, supplies and effort. Remember, just because there is a mountain, you don’t have to climb it. There is more than one way to get around an obstacle. Just because there is an obstacle doesn’t mean you have to ‘overcome’ it to be a good or better person. Take time to decide whether you want to go over, around, or find a new path.”
This post isn’t about the Tessera itself, but I find Woollcott’s description of The Mountain a great jumping off point for talking about life, mental health, and the metaphorical mountains we come across.
So naturally, this post is about a wrestling match.
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Black Label Pro’s Turbo Graps 16 took place on October 3rd of this cursed year of 2020. I wasn’t planning on watching at first. I was on semi-hiatus with wrestling as a whole since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March. It didn’t help that the Speaking Out movement in June brought back some of my own trauma involving another wrestler who took advantage of my trust. I was taking it one day at a time and in some ways I still am, but I was very close to fully walking away from it all for a bit there.
And then… Alex Shelley happened.
I’ve been a fan of Shelley’s since about 2016-2017 when I started to explore more wrestling outside of the WWE confines that defined my first full year in the fandom. Hell, even the last Ring of Honor show I went to in 2018 had Shelley retiring at the top of the show, which just brought my mood down immensely for the rest of the time me and my bestie were there before leaving at intermission because the crowd and the literal heat inside the building was unbearable.
And I was excited when he came back at the end of 2019 to the point I regret not staying in Georgia a couple of days longer to see him and Suge D live after Christmas. Him and Kushida teaming again at the beginning of 2020 in NXT was a weird impossibility that I still can’t believe happened, but the pandemic pressed a lot of those things down. Wrestling was kind of the least of my concerns.
Then the Motor City Machine Guns came back at Slammiversary in July and I suddenly remembered something very important: I fuckin’ love Alex Shelley.
It’s hard to say why I suddenly gravitated towards Shelley again in the weeks that followed, but it was like that Wizard of Oz moment where Dorothy opens the door and realizes she’s not in Kansas anymore. My world that had gone grey in the wake of my new reality of being unemployed and making masks between long sessions of Animal Crossing and binging Star Wars cartoons and Ask A Mortician videos just to survive was in color again. I remembered what I loved about pro-wrestling to begin with.
But… Alex wasn’t even the full reason I restarted my Independent Wrestling TV account for Turbo Graps 16. He was half of it.
The other half was Kylie Rae.
In a very short amount of time, Kylie Rae quickly became one of the best professional wrestlers in the world.
I only got to see her live once, but it was immediately obvious that she was a star. When she got signed to AEW, it felt like she was the new ace. A loveable babyface who was the total package inside and outside the ring literally wrapped in a bow.
That did not work out how I expected, but she still ended up being a powerhouse in the indies and on Impact Wrestling. She was a total star and a delight in all the ways a wrestler seemingly can be.
Kylie Rae was supposed to face Alex Zayne at Turbo Graps 16 with Alex Shelley going against Ben Carter in an exhibition match, but COVID-19 caused Zayne and Carter to bow out in different ways.
So… Rae and Shelley ended up facing each other.
And that’s what made me reopen my IWTV account.
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I know there’s still two months left of 2020 and there were a ton of great matches at the Collective that would go on my year end list, but I think I can safely say that Alex Shelley vs. Kylie Rae from the first round of Turbo Graps 16 is gonna be one of my top favorite matches of the year. Not just for the intergender factor, but the fact it hit all of the story buttons I love in a match. It was brutal, it was suspenseful, and it was honestly kind of heartbreaking.
A couple of days after the show, Shelley tweeted that he had never won a singles tournament before and it honestly kind of explains how he acted in this match. Commentator Sarah Joy Shockey compared him to a slasher movie monster on commentary and she was definitely not wrong, but Shelley felt like a T-1000 or a Rev-9 to me personally. He was laser focused not just on winning Turbo Graps, but Rae’s Midwest Territory championship. The usually charismatic Shelley who seems to relish in being a massive dick when he’s working heel was instead this cold, vicious, determined, and unstoppable wrestling machine. Shockey again on commentary talked about how Shelley has metaphorically climbed mountains to get to where he is and how he’s the type to have never been satisfied with just one. He’s always looking for the next one. In this case, that next mountain to climb was Turbo Graps.
Conversely, in some ways, it felt like watching the scenes in Kill Bill where Beatrix first meets Pai Mei. Every time Shelley slammed her down into the mat or got her in a brutal submission hold, he would goad Rae on. He would gesture to his face, inviting her to take a hit. It was a taunt, but also a beg. Show him who the champ was. Bring your A-game or don’t even bother to show up. A worm compared to an eagle. The climber facing the mountain alone.
Kylie Rae looked and felt like a fighter though from the moment she practically pounced into the lockup. She explodes in every part of this match, refusing to go down without a fight even if it’s to her detriment. Her enthusiasm and happiness from before the match as she took flowers from a fan and gave Shelley his own hairbow to wear was quickly replaced with anger as she tried to bring down the more experienced Shelley. Despite the odds, she trips him up. She ties him up in an STF. She pummels him. At one point, he loudly curses as she hits him with a cannonball that followed a brutal knee strike and European uppercut. In those moments, she broke his adopted cold facade and revealed the true Shelley beneath.
Shockey and Percy Davis are amazing on commentary during this match. They are enthusiastically into the entire affair, even as it appears to take a turn for the worse for the Midwest Champion. They know what’s at stake for Rae. They know the kind of experience Shelley is bringing and how out of character this is for him. They are an essential part of bringing you in and making you care.
But still, even with the crowd behind Rae, Shockey and Davis encouraging her from commentary, and even Rae’s own fight, it was not enough.
Shelley gets her in a Motor City Stretch and the exhausted Rae taps out. Alex Shelley goes onto the next round and Kylie Rae leaves without a championship.
Alex Shelley would eventually win Turbo Graps 16 following a very entertaining match with Ethan Page, Tom Lawlor, and Effy and a rubber match with Kylie Rae’s fiance Isaias Velazquez.
In the promo after his win, Shelley said something that has stuck with me for weeks. “How many of us in this room, right now, can say that we grew up to be exactly what we wanted? Not many.”
I’ve felt like so much of my life was put on pause because of this fucking pandemic as I compromised just to survive. I’ve had to sit at the base of those mountains, waiting for the weather to clear up.
Some day though, and maybe just writing this is the start.
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I had hoped that Shelley and Rae would run this match back. That Rae would take what she learned and sharpen herself to prove herself against Shelley. To show that she belongs and that she could beat him. That he wasn’t an unstoppable inevitability. Terminators and movie monsters get defeated after all.
Sadly, sometimes things don’t go the way we hope.
Rae announced earlier this week that she was retiring from pro-wrestling following her not showing up for a scheduled title match at Impact’s Bound for Glory. In her post, she said she is “currently unwell,” driving speculation of her mental health issues that caused her to walk away from AEW.
I’m not gonna speculate on the current state of Kylie Rae’s mental health. I’m also not gonna sit here and declare the match I just described as a metaphor for her own mental health, but I can definitely relate to the feeling and the struggle of doing everything you can to fight against a force constantly mocking you and still losing.
And I can definitely relate to walking away to try and save myself.
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I go back to what the Tessera Oracle said about mountains. You don’t always have to go over them. You can go around or find a new path.
I think about how Shelley walked away from wrestling two years ago. How the sadness carried in his shoulders and his speech as he told his tag partner Chris Sabin to keep going for him. How he seems so different now that he’s defined his own terms of success after finishing school and coming back. How that energy helped me bring color back to my world and reminded me why I love wrestling.
Kylie Rae has walked away now too. Maybe she’ll come back some day like so many others have. And like many others before her as well, maybe she’s gone for good. No matter what though, I respect her for putting herself first and knowing what was best for her was walking away. No matter what path she finds herself on next, I hope it brings her all the joy and happiness she has brought to others and that she can approach all the mountains in her path with the same clarity.
Keep smiling and keep fighting, Kylie.
Ashley Leckwold and the Whiz Bang 