Crazy Is My Superpower: How I Triumphed by Breaking Bones, Breaking Hearts, and Breaking the Rules

by A. J. Mendez Brooks

  When I got backstage, the show’s producer, Fit Finlay, immediately pulled me aside. “I hope you have your gear on you, because you’re wrestling tomorrow night.”

  “What? Yes. Okay. Why?” I was a cornucopia of emotions.

  “You can thank CM Punk for that one. He’s got a hell of an arm.” Fit laughed while walking off.

  The next night I had my first official WWE match. And it was everything I had ever dreamed. Not only was I wrestling with the main roster for the first time, it was in a match for the women’s title against the champion Layla. Layla was always helpful and welcoming and was generous enough to let me shine in the match. She played the “bad guy” heel role to perfection and knew letting the babyface have exciting moments only made her character seem even more dastardly when she shut them down with dirty-handed methods. I appreciated her generosity and willingness to let me have my moment, since it could potentially lead to a full-time spot on the roster.

  The match went off without a hitch. It was fast paced, exciting, and far exceeded any match I had up until then. Even more overwhelming was the fact that the crowd was uncharacteristically loud for a women’s match.

  Every guy on the roster congratulated the two of us, even the douchenozzle who made fun of my dress a few weeks earlier shook my hand out of respect, and Fit pulled us into an office to let us know he would put the match on a DVD for us to remember this significant moment. He let me know he would put in a good word for me on the road and hoped he’d see me again soon.

  It felt like a dream. Like a cheesy sports movie where a player gets called off the dugout and scores the game-winning hoop. I don’t know sports. All I knew was that I had been waiting two years to get a shot at proving my mettle in the ring, I stumbled into an opportunity, and I made the most of it. I could feel the good juju vibrating in the air, and I hoped my call-up would be imminent.

  And it was. A week later I was brought to the television tapings and my debut was written into the SmackDown’s first draft! First drafts change, you say? Nonsense! I was scheduled to debut alongside Vickie Guerrero and Dolph Ziggler, whose characters were phenomenal villains and something of an item. The plan was my character would lead Dolph astray and cause a rift between them. Upon hearing the news, I found a custodian’s closet backstage and cried tears of joy inside of it for fifteen minutes. I also applied my makeup and got changed in the closet because I was too nervous to enter the female locker room.

  An hour before showtime, I was still waiting to see a script or talk to a producer who could let me know what to expect. Ed Koskey, the show’s head writer, was nice enough to break the news gently.

  “So some stuff got shuffled around in the script and your debut is not going to happen tonight, but definitely next week, okay?” He tried to soften the blow, and keep my hopes up, but I was devastated. “Next week…I’ll just wait till next week.” I locked myself in my unofficial dressing room and opened a roll of toilet paper resting next to a dirty mop, proceeding to cry off my sloppily applied mascara.

  Next week never came.

  But a few months later FCW’s female roster got a pleasant surprise. The SyFy network had aired two seasons of a competition-based show featuring the men of FCW. Each season a winner had been picked and given a spot on the roster. It was a new way to debut on the main shows. Season three had not been picked up by the network, but their contract with WWE required them to air a few more episodes of the show. So it was decided these four weeks of airtime would be given to the women of FCW. The rest of the competition would be aired on the company’s website. It was a step down from the previous seasons, but we were all still pretty stoked to find out we would be filming alongside the main roster and traveling around the country.

  I was happy to have a change of scenery from FCW, but frankly a little disappointed. I had spent two years competing to earn a spot on the main roster, and a debut was tantalizingly dangled just out of reach. Now I would have to compete all over again for the opportunity that had just been written out of a SmackDown script. It was a frustrating step back, but at least I would have more opportunities to show my worth. At least we would get the chance to show what we could do in the ring, that we were capable and strong women, that we were here to take our rightful spot and be respected.

  So inevitably the first contest on the show was a dance-off. There was also a chocolate-eating contest, a limbo contest, a present-unwrapping contest, and a sumo wrestling contest complete with blow-up fat suit. It’s possible we weren’t being taken entirely seriously. But when there was a sliver of a chance at proving myself, I took it. On WWE history contests, I smoked my competitors, displaying my knowledge and respect of the business. I had learned to handle the mic a lot better than I had as a host, as I finally felt like I had something worthwhile to say. My promos and attitude began to garner a following. The fans were ready for a change, and the five-foot-nothing nerd in Chuck Taylors instead of wrestling boots was giving them an option.

  During the first season-three episode of NXT, a writer and producer actually went through all the other contestants’ luggage to help find me something suitable to wear, after deeming what I had on not fancy enough for television. Layla, with the best of intentions, even helped me find heels and unsuccessfully tried to stuff my bra. And so for episode two, I hid from sight until a minute before showtime and emerged in what I had wanted to wear the first week: knee-high Chuck Taylor sneakers and a loose-fitting dress. I was scolded after the show, but it was too late. Fans had taken notice of what at the time was blasphemous style for a woman in the company.

  Women in the WWE were meant to wear expensive, tight-fitting dresses and high heels. They were glamorous sex kittens. Alongside a group of smoking hot Barbies, I looked like lil’ sis Skipper. But suddenly I noticed an influx of girls proudly sharing their pictures on Twitter of them honoring the style. Chucks with dresses, Chucks with I HEART NERDS shirts. I knew I had something there.

  While everyone was concerned about being appealing to our male fan base, it seemed they were neglecting their fellow females. I realized that was who we as women should be targeting. They made up almost half our fan base but didn’t have someone they could see themselves in. I would be their reflection on the TV screen (or computer monitor). I would get them to join an uprising. I would find a way to succeed by using the things I had been told would hold me back.

  A few weeks into the thirteen-week competition, I was called into the office of a member of Talent Relations. In essence, this man was one of my bosses underneath only the owners of the company. So I assumed this was not going to be a chat about the weather.

  I stared at my intertwined fingers fidgeting in my lap as I racked my brain trying to figure out who I pissed off. Was it one of the veteran guys whose hand I forgot to shake? Had the head office found out about that speeding ticket? Had somebody seen me eat five chocolate chip cookies in catering?

  “Don’t look so nervous, I promise you’re not in trouble,” he said, trying to quell my obvious unease. “I just wanted to talk to you about our Diva brand. How well do you think you’re fitting into that brand?” “Diva” was the name of the federation’s women, while “Superstar” was the term used for men. Battles have been waged over the discrepancy between the two.

  “Well, honestly, I’m not trying to fit in. And I think that’s working for me. You guys have told me I get the most fan votes every week, so I think that means they’re connecting to the message I’m trying to send.” The NXT competition held weekly eliminations in order to crown a winner. Who moved on in the competition was determined by fan votes and an “expert panel,” aka the higher-ups in the company. I knew just winning the fans over was only half of the work, but I figured if my bosses could see the reaction I was getting, it would help them to see me favorably.

  “And what message is that?” He was obviously not expecting that response, but he was willing to see where I was going with this.

  “That wrestling matters. That there ar
e a dozen gorgeous women here to choose from if you’re looking to put someone on a poster, so why not focus on ring skills and personality. Half our audience is women. I think they want someone to represent them, someone they can get behind. Also they really like my shoes.”

  This was true. Not just the part about my Chucks being killer, but that I had begun to connect to the fans on a different level. Any chance I got the microphone in my hand I made sure to distinguish myself from the pack. I had a strategy. Not only did I think it was important to represent myself genuinely, but it just made smart business sense. I remembered that when I was a young girl watching the product, I wasn’t into designer dresses and high heels. I watched pro wrestling because I was a tomboy. It reminded me of my video games, and the rough-and-tumble nature spoke to me more than any fashion magazine or teenybopper show about high school relationship drama. It made sense to me that women watching years later would probably still skew more toward the down-to-earth variety.

  I assumed they were tired of their only options for heroines not being relatable. And while the male fans thoroughly enjoyed the voluptuous vixens in little clothing, I doubted they would emotionally invest in them and put the effort in to vote for them. Sort of like how not every woman gets taken home to Momma. To get the guys to actually care about a female contestant, they needed to be more than a one-dimensional plaything.

  I had had mostly guy friends my whole life because we shared the same interests. And so that was my approach with the male fans. Let them know we both played video games and read comics and enjoyed a sensible sneaker. I wasn’t trying to portray myself as some perfect unattainable specimen, which had been the formula laid out before us for years.

  Often the makeup artists, having plenty of girls to prepare who were on the actual TV programs Raw and SmackDown, would be so overwhelmed they would have to prioritize their time. They would rush our makeup, only do half, or skip it altogether. As television rookies, being a part of the show while not looking the part made a lot of the girls insecure. So they would arrive at the arena early and put their impressive makeup skills to work, taking the initiative to prepare themselves for TV. It wasn’t an easy task considering the level of perfection a professional makeup artist provided and how we were vying for a spot among a “brand.” But I think part of the refusal to help us out was a test.

  The NXT competitions before the all-female season had endured similar second-class-citizen treatments, in a sort of fraternity-hazing/stripe-earning kind of way. I’d like to assume that’s why the dressing room provided for six women week after week was the bottom of a staircase covered in tarps, a handicap bathroom stall, or a room as small as a closet with no tables or chairs. Once, upon noticing a door inside of our “locker room,” we opened it—only to realize the door led to an actual locker room and we were literally being housed inside a closet.

  I didn’t have the innate womanly abilities to paint my own face, and so I learned to embrace looking like hot garbage on TV. It was kind of freeing. If I looked crappy on TV, I didn’t have to be worried about getting caught in an airport with no makeup on. I would look exactly the same—tired, puffy, and sort of like a hungry squirrel. If I set the bar real low, no one would be disappointed. (Which is also how I approach most relationships.) Without realizing it, I was training the audience, and myself, to be comfortable not measuring up physically with everyone else.

  Instead of trying and failing to compete in that department, I embraced being the best version of myself. That started on a visual level but then went much deeper. When given a microphone, I let my freak flag fly. I talked about robot handshakes, playing Xbox, and eating pizza and displayed a vast knowledge of pro-wrestling history. I made jokes, snort laughed, handed out fist bumps, and acted like my true dorky self.

  To understand how obscene that kind of behavior was for a woman at the time, one needs to only look at the vignettes used on the main programs to welcome audiences back from commercial break. A stunning blonde was naked in a bathtub, surrounded by candles and strategically placed bubbles, purring, “Welcome back to SmackDown.” And often that was the only time a woman was seen on the show. Unless you count being used as a spare backup dancer for a famous musical guest. But one could argue that was progress in comparison to only a few years earlier when women competed in “Evening Gown” and “Bra and Panties” matches—bouts won by stripping a humiliated opponent to her underwear.

  It wasn’t only a risk to go against the grain so hard, it was a bit disrespectful to so outwardly combat the conventional system. I understood I was probably pissing off my bosses, but I felt for the women who were so amazingly talented but were relegated to roles that focused on their looks and utilized them as glorified props.

  I wanted to start chipping away at that glass ceiling. I wanted to throw rocks at it little by little until I made a crack. If taking a risk and pissing people off meant having even the smallest of shots at changing the landscape for myself and every woman who came after me, then it was a risk worth taking.

  And it worked. The fan response was overwhelming. Most important, the fans were tired of watching women’s wrestling that didn’t take itself seriously. They were itching for talented matches with exciting performances. They wanted to rally behind a female performer, not just catcall her. I felt embraced and accepted, like I was the audience’s voice in the competition.

  But not everyone was as hopeful as I was.

  Back in Talent Relations: “Look, we know you can wrestle, and not many women can. We appreciate that, we just want you to understand that it’s important to be the full package. Right now, you’re the best wrestler in the competition. Our female fans want to dress like you. Our male fans want to hang out and play video games with you. But no one wants to have sex with you. Do you see how that’s a problem for us? I don’t know how they do things in FCW, but here we have a standard our women are proud to stand up to.”

  Well, fuck. How exactly does one respond to that? Should I wait until I get back to the privacy of the locker room/closet or should I just break down in tears right now? After all my hard work and actual, tangible success taking a different route, everything still came down to how fuckable I was. And apparently I wasn’t very. In all fairness, I understood where he was coming from. At the end of the day, this business had a long-standing, proven formula for moderate success. Executives had accepted that their women could sell posters and calendars but would not spike the ratings.

  Women’s matches were often put in between two very important male matches, as a way to give the audience a break from action. While the women wrestled, the fans could relax, build up their energy for the next match that actually mattered, and take a bathroom break if needed. This was a real, accepted strategy when putting a show together. A fluffy women’s match was meant to help the fans catch their breath.

  When a show was running overtime and minutes needed to be cut, the sacrificial lamb was always the women’s match. They did not receive high ratings, and thus it made sense to throw ten women into one thirty-second match. Literally, thirty fucking seconds. The mentality was Hey, look at all these hot chicks; but don’t worry, they won’t bore you for too long.

  That was the landscape I was entering. That was the landscape I was determined to change. And as I listened to the rest of his well-meaning advice on considering going blond, I wondered, Has any man ever been asked to step up his sex appeal in the name of job performance?

  I was kicked off the show that evening. I decided to flip off the system one last time before I went back to training at FCW for the foreseeable future. When a contestant was kicked off, he or she was allowed to say good-bye to the audience, and most took this moment to say a quick “thank you” or “you got it wrong.” This was the send-off speech I came up with on the spot while choking on tears.

  “I know I’m not a supermodel. I know I’m the girl that didn’t go to prom and stayed home to play video games, but I think that’s the girl you guys are ready to have as
a ‘Diva.’ I think that it’s time that a ‘Diva’ represents every single girl in the audience watching. A girl that every single guy would want to hang out with. I have wanted this my entire life and I have fought to get here. Every step I have taken has been for this moment, to be in this ring. There is not one thing that is going to stop me. I will be back and I’m going to accomplish all of my dreams. Thank you so much for every single second. You will see me again.”

  Back down at FCW, a new title had been created for the women’s division, and this time it wasn’t a sparkly crown. The women of developmental finally had an actual title belt to compete for. Sure, it was bright pink and had two mud flap ladies adorning it, but as long as it wasn’t a piece of jewelry I considered it progress. When I became the first woman to have held both “The Queen of FCW” and “FCW Divas Champion” titles, I was proud to make history. But ultimately, I knew what holding a title in FCW meant. It meant I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

  Super psyched to hang out in our bathroom stall/locker room for another year.

  …BUT EVERYONE EXPECTS SEX FROM YOU

  Growing up, surrounded by guy friends and idolizing my brother, it took me a while to realize I had a vagina. And it took me even longer to realize how much of a problem that was going to be. As kids, we don’t necessarily see our limitations through gender. For the most part, we are just an asexual pair of jam-hands on an indestructible Gumby body. Sure, I once had a boy tell me I wasn’t invited to play tag because “girls are slow,” but I just showed him how fast I could sock him in the thigh and he relented.