PREVIOUS POST - ARIEL MONTGOMERY: THE MOTHER OF ARC
By December 2001, Ariel Juaréz-Montgomery, age 15, had moved to Minneapolis after dropping out of school to start a wrestling career. In the months following Gail Montgomery's death, Ariel had been living at home in Green Bay, alone, for as long as she could off the money her mother left to her. She knew she'd face eviction if she didn't start making money from wrestling soon.
Her teachers had offered a means of support while she continued her studies, but demanded Ariel drop her wrestling training, since the support wouldn't cover her travel to-and-from Minneapolis. Her teachers despised wrestling, though they knew nothing about it other than what a bad influence it was on school students in the years of the edgier WF1 and it's boom in popularity. When Ariel tried to explain how she had devoted her life to wrestling, her headteacher told her "wrestling is a lower career for women than prostitution." Ariel replied "Fuck you" and stormed out of school, never to return.
No longer tied to Green Bay via school and unhappy at home without her mother there, Ariel sold her mother's house and moved in with Edmund Pikey in Minneapolis, at least until she could get a place of her own. Under Minnesota law, Ariel was able to apply for a Teen Driver's License and buy a car. Via Edmund Pikey, Ariel managed to get booked on independent wrestling shows immediately.
Ariel debuted professionally on an indie wrestling show in Davenport, Iowa whose head promoter refused to bill her as "Ariel-Juaréz Montgomery." The promoter felt the foreign aspect of Ariel's name wouldn't sit right with crowds following 9/11. Thus, Ariel was billed, advertised and reviewed by journalists as "Ariel Montgomery." Ariel hated the denial of her Puerto-Rican name, but wasn't all too confident in challenging promoters at this young stage in her career. By the time she gained that confidence, she had claimed the rights to "Ariel Montgomery" and become well-known by that name, so she kept it to the end of her career.
For three years, Ariel drove to small, uncomfortable buildings to perform in ramshackle rings before crowds of at most 40 people per show. In spite of her skills in-ring, Ariel was only booked as a valet at first, escorting male competitors to the ring and watching them from ringside. Traditionally, the glamorously-dressed valet's role was to get comedically involved in matches, such as being mocked by her partner's opponent, interfering against those opponents behind the referee's back, distracting the referee long enough for her partner to cheat without being caught, etc.
Following the edgier era of WF1 however (termed officially as the Angry-Dude Era) and the major influx of male teens who paid to see WF1-style wrestling, the valet was now expected to striptease for onlookers, take physical beatings from men in the ring and get into exaggerated catfights with other women, which was considered a let-down if the women didn't strip each other practically naked. Due to Ariel's scarce salary from indie shows, she couldn't afford to complain about her work and accepted any job she could. There was time to build a fan-following and change promoter's minds about how to book her. Until then, she didn't want to sour her reputation with promoters.
Thus, aside from being slammed around by her partner's opponents on occasion (and some weeks even being casually strangled by her frustrated partner) Ariel didn't put her in-ring skills to use for the first six months of her career. She managed to flourish as a valet however. She understood well the exact timing, pacing and emotional flow of a wrestling match. She knew just when to use her valet performance to give the match more impact. Her facial expressions were powerful, her voice resonant throughout the building and her every movement commanding. She could sense what the audience needed to feel for every second of a wrestling match. She helped profoundly translate those feelings to the audience simply by standing at ringside and gesturing at the right moment. Ariel could tell she was striking a chord with crowds since they were making more noise for her than for any other performer on each show.
Most of the time though, these noises were chants of "Show your tits," "Suck my dick," "Slut" and so on. In the wake of wrestling's teen-crowd expansion, it wasn't considered unusual on WF1 TV for women to step into a ring and immediately receive sexist chants. Such was WF1's lack of regulation on crowd conduct, which indie promotions also employed, needing to attract those same fierce teen-crowds. Ariel accepted the early 2000's crowd-climate for what it was: a lawless province where her breasts would make her a target of juvenile aggression.
As long as she was building noise, Ariel could prove her value to promoters and eventually convince them to use her in a less-limiting role than valet. Thus, she committed herself fully to her bluntly-sexualised valet role. She wasn't performing for sexist teens, she was performing for the genuine fans of hers, those who yelled back at the sexist teens. As few in number as those fans were at first, she knew she would create more of them. All she needed was the role where she could bring about the most noise: a wrestling role.
Promoters were not eager to let Ariel wrestle on the same terms, or for the same money, as the men. They claimed that crowds wouldn't be comfortable unless wrestling shows met their expectations, and it was expected that the women perform to make the men look good. It was the way wrestling had been presented since the old days; the boys were the fighters, the girls were the trophies that boys got to enjoy.
Screw that shit, Ariel thought to herself. Promoters were going to book her on HER terms, not theirs. She began to use the volatile nature of live wrestling to her advantage, occasionally ignoring her pre-arranged booking to do something crowds would remember her for. She made her boldest move in SWF (Stearns Wrestling Federation) in St. Cloud, Minnesota. As she escorted male wrestler Frank Marvellous to the ring, she overheard a fan chanting "Show your tits!" at her, to which she snatched the microphone from the ring announcer and said to the fan's face:
"Listen dude, I know you wanna pull your eyeballs out and shove them up inside my pussy, but I'm fifteen-years old so you better get that shit on lock before I get you arrested."
The reaction was deafening. Within seconds, the building was chanting in unison "ARIEL! ARIEL! ARIEL!"
When the SWF promoter George Mostyn furiously confronted Ariel backstage, she coolly said "Wait until the next show before you fire me, and see how many more people show up just to see me." She signed autographs for fans waiting by her car after the show, promising fans that her next show would be crazier.
Around fifty people waited in the parking lot on the night of the next SWF show, wanting Ariel to sign their possessions when she arrived. Due to this buzz, Mostyn was suddenly turned around on Ariel, booking her to interfere against her partner's opponent not with a slap, which was usually what she was booked to do, but by smashing a glass bottle over his head.
Once again, Ariel, in higher spirits than usual, escorted Frank Marvellous to the ring to a sexist chant. A grown-man in the front row shouted "Chicks can't wrestle!" repeatedly at her. Ariel replied on the microphone:
"Chicks can't wrestle? Sweetheart, not only can chicks wrestle, they can locate the clitoris. You can't do either, so shut the fuck up."
As fans went wild and chanted Ariel's name, Marvellous snatched the mic from her and droned "Stop bringing up your woman parts, Ariel. This is my match, not yours." The crowd died down, their buzz foolishly killed by the crusty Marvellous. Ariel swiftly replied "Frank, if there's one thing you don't do, it's stop a girl being open about her pussy, especially when her fans are so willing to eat it up." She winked to the camera as her fans, indeed, ate it up. Marvellous refused to argue back. It seemed pointless. This crowd was Ariel's now.
Later, Ariel not only broke the bottle over her victim's head, she then used, as he was staggering around, his own finishing move against him, the dead-lift Jack Hammer. Ariel booked herself to do that in the moment. Her timing was flawless, her physicality bewildering. The resulting Ariel chants were thunderous.
Backstage after the show, Marvellous refused to work with Ariel again, claiming she was unprofessional. Ariel wished him well, wrestling without the noise she was bringing to all his matches. Marvellous stormed away, asserting "You're only as good as the next ring rat, bitch."
The moment Marvellous left, Ariel chased down the nearest cameraman and threatened to beat him senseless unless he started filming her. She unloaded a seething tirade on camera against the person who invented the term "ring rat" (an old wrestling phrase for a woman perceived to be sleeping her way into the wrestling business) and urged George Mostyn to upload the film to the SWF website. Still fuming, she breezed outside dragging Mostyn with her and gave a similar tirade in front of the fans waiting for her in the parking lot, showing Mostyn the passionate reactions her rants were getting. She ended the rant by advertising the SWF website, "the home of Ariel Montgomery." Tactically, she refused to mention Frank Marvellous in these rants, not letting the listener focus on him over her and not making Mostyn think she was discrediting one of SWF's principle performers. Ariel, without breaking professional etiquette, turned her frustration into something Mostyn could use to attract fans and boost website traffic. "Who's worth more to you now?" Ariel asked Mostyn before driving home, "Me or Frank Marvellous?"
SWF's next show to feature Ariel sold almost double the tickets of the average SWF show. The company's online message boards frothed with debates back-and-forth about Ariel's rant video, opinions split between the chicks-can't-wrestle crowd and those wishing Ariel would be booked to fight, not just valet. The more venom one side spat, the harder the other side spat the venom back. This venom drove a hostile but enthusiastic atmosphere at SWF shows. The men on the card had the chance to get more noise out of a building than ever, but no-one knew how to get a reaction better than the crafty Ariel, even if all Mostyn booked her to do was stand at ringside.
As her SWF stardom bloomed, Ariel made sure to bring discount bulk-packs of plain white t-shirts with her to shows, along with cheap felt markers. She drew out her own T-shirt designs on the fly and sold them from her car before the show. At least half of the full crowd would buy a T-shirt from her each night she appeared. Aside from a few gruff catcallers who Ariel silenced with fierce intimidation, she was not harassed by fans and the atmosphere was friendly as she sold her doodled-out shirts and chatted wrestling fandom with customers. Finally, she thought, more income from her efforts.
A few shows later, Ariel, now sixteen, would also start selling photocopied Polaroids of herself posing in bikinis. She figured that she should make the most money from showcasing her basically-naked body, not wrestling promoters. With these pictures, she began to make money from people who usually derided her. She felt their derision quickly subdue after jokingly indulging in their fumbling attempts to sweet-talk her. She enjoyed pointing out how the patterns on each bikini she wore specifically referenced the patterned tights Shane Mackles wore in each of his WF1 world-title fights. She wanted to make fans more comfortable by showing how much of a reclusive wrestling nerd she was at heart.
Eventually, she even began selling her merchandise in-character, referencing the show-to-show progression of SWF and weaving her own side-narrative into the events being performed in-ring. That way, whenever fans saw how little Ariel appeared on a SWF show, only performing valet duties if she did appear, they would know that there was more going on behind-the-scenes that she would clue them into in the parking lot. If George Mostyn wasn't going to give Ariel more stage-time in his ring, she would create her own on his turf, and make her bustling side-show the most interesting activity on that turf.
Though Ariel had boosted her wrestling income significantly, it was still far from enough to make a basic living off of. Mostyn continued to use and pay her in scarce amounts, despite her driving his company's ticket sales. She needed to thrive across more indie companies. She couldn't just depend on her SWF fanbase.
As Ariel travelled between towns and states to work at different companies, she showed her SWF videos to various promoters, pointing out the passionate divided fan-response and what kind of atmosphere that response could bring to the promoters' shows. She provided proof of her driving ticket-sale increase and showed camcorder footage of the crowds she attracted selling merchandise from her car. Ariel wanted as many promoters as possible to see how she could create fans, boost ticket sales and make a promotion the cool place to be. She did it with SWF, so she could do it with other companies too.
By June 2002 though, Ariel would arrive backstage at SWF only for Mostyn to tell her she was fired. Every man in the company had complained that she was invalidating their contributions to the show. The big reactions had become hers, not theirs, even though "they were the wrestlers and she was just the eye candy. Never in wrestling should the eye candy be more successful than the actual talent." The men had agreed to stop working for SWF unless Ariel was cut loose. They could take their talents elsewhere, but Mostyn couldn't afford to lose his stars all at once, so he decided simply to lose Ariel as a burden.
Ariel told Mostyn not to panic. She was onto something big for both of them and this was only the beginning. The boys were more than welcome to make money wrestling against her and work with her not as the eye-candy they constantly insisted she was, but as a competitor, a legitimate opponent. Until then, they just needed to let their whining die down and get over themselves.
Mostyn impatiently retorted that whatever Ariel thought wrestling could be for the girls, it will never be that way. Promoters could rely on presenting wrestling as a man's pursuit, they have done for decades. They would never feel confident enough to present women as part of that pursuit, unless it's in the one, reliable way they know how, as eye candy.
"Let me promote women for you, then!" Ariel responded. Mostyn refused to discuss the matter any further. Men from the locker room arrived to show Ariel out of the building. As Ariel resisted and urged Mostyn not to cut off her main means of support, one of the men got a laugh from the others by saying "There's a lot of pissed-off boys in that locker room. That's a LOT of dicks to suck to get your job back." Ariel left promptly, not giving anyone else the satisfaction of mocking her, or giving them a beating that would only get her sued.
As Ariel drove home that night, forced to leave her devoted SWF fans behind, she vowed to her mother that history would remember wrestling's biggest global mega-stars as women. As long as Ariel was alive, it was going to happen.
TO BE CONTINUED...
STILL TO COME: Ariel's bloody cage fight with MC Pink, FNA's Mexican cleaning-lady gimmick, Ariel's intergender crusade, WF1's "Vixen" division, Ariel's challenge to Eminem, Ariel's war on Lazarus Hill, the "You crippled Ariel" chant and Ariel's ARC legacy.
AND AFTER ARIEL: Paradox vs. Rousey, Synne beats the Now-Japan champion, Amber Stone and the Gore Girls, the Chakra Cult cometh, ARC goes intergender, the first female world-champion, THAT match in the ScarScraper and the WrestlePOP card game release!
