Brooklyn Bruiser vs. Valley Doll - Coast to Coast

Match Type: Standard
Victory Conditions:Pinfall, Submission, or KO

***

Back in action. Finally.

Valley Doll waited in the backstage area, getting ready for her entrance cue while the Friction audience buzzed outside. All alone, door closed, just herI  and the quiet.This was the best time for her. The most intense part. The calm before the storm, while her blood was starting to boil and her mind was racing with all the moves she could possibly use. This had been a last minute sort of thing - she'd asked for a match, something to tide her over while Summer Splash was going down and everyone was spread out What they'd given her was a house show bout with a newcomer to the AFW. The Brooklyn Bruiser.

It was a last minute matchup, so Valley didn't have much time to do any real research or plan for Kimmy Colton, but thanks to the magic of YouTube, she could at least see what she was up against before she got in the ring. Her smartphone on the side table finally started making noise, coming to life with a clip she'd been downloading.

It wasn't a professional match, not something in a real ring with an audience. Just four girls wrestling in a tag match, none of them even old enough to smoke. Not the most professional affair. But they had talent, they were eager, and Valley saw the same love of the sport she'd had when she came into the Slamazons. Bright eyed, burning passion. Sportsmanship. A few things the AFW could've used more of. Kimmy reminded Valley of Silver Ace when they'd first met, just over a year ago. So much potential waiting to be unleashed, bursting at the seams.

She'd only managed to get about six minutes into the match before of the stage hands peeked his head out from behind the door. "One minute to start, Ms. Wells." He covered up the microphone on his headset to speak. "You're ready?"

"I'm ready." She clicked off the phone, then turned to the stagehand before he could get out of earshot. An idea was dawning. "Hey - can you send a message to the booth? I want to get a little extra time."

A few minutes later, Valley's music was starting to die down as she found herself in the middle of the ring, with a microphone in hand and the crowd cheering around her. It was hard to believe these same people were booing her off the stage just a year ago. Japanese fans were quicker with forgiveness than their American counterparts, she'd give them that.

"Japan! Tokyo!" She shot her hand in the air for a quick pop from the people, feeding off their energy as her smile came over the crowd. "I'm not going to bore you with a long promo this time. I just one simple thing to do, then we can get right to the match. See, as much as I like the AFW, I feel they don't do a very good job introducing new talent. Back in my old company, every time someone new came, the announcer would always make sure the crowd knew exactly who the new blood was. First impressions are important. So, I'd like to continue that tradition, right here and right now, and I want you all to help me!"

She pointed towards the entrance while the audience started to cheer and get on their feet, heralding the next wrestler's arrival with the most energetic voice she could muster."Now introducing, from the great state of New York and the even greater city of New York, AFW's newest star. Please welcome, Kimmy Colton!"

Kimmy's guts were tying themselves into knots as she waited backstage in her dressing room. Things had started changing so quickly for her these last couple of months. Two months ago she had won her final match as champion of New York Female Wrestling. Seven weeks ago, she and her best friend Al had made one last midnight run to Wong's Cafe, a tradition that had begun when the two of them were just eleven years old. Until a week after that, Kimmy was still living at home with her parents, in a historic brownstone just off Bay Parkway, surrounded by the neighborhood, the city, and the people she had known ever since she was born. Kimmy had never been a sentimental sort...or so she thought. But ever since she arrived in Tokyo a little over a month ago, she had realized just how comfortable the familiar sights and sounds of Brooklyn had made her.

And now, she was literally a world away. When she was awake, Al and Kat and the Oh twins and her parents were all asleep. The admirably antique sandstone facades of Brooklyn townhouses and public buildings were nowhere to be found, replaced everywhere Kimmy looked by cement, metal, and glowing neon lights—the whole city of Tokyo seemed to be made out of chrome and luminescent gas. It pulsated and glowed twenty-four hours a day, every day. It was Times Square multiplied a thousandfold. New York might have been the city that never sleeps, but Kimmy had never had so many sleepless nights as she had those first couple of weeks after she had moved into her apartment in Tokyo, six blocks away from the AFW campus and arena complex.

An AFW staff member ducked in and give Kimmy the signal that it was time to make her entrance. Kimmy nodded and stood straight up from the chair she had been sitting in, pushing it back up against the wall with her booted foot. She made her way out of the dressing room and down the corridor, pausing in the immediate backstage area as she waited for her opponent for the night to finish with her own entrance. Kimmy was familiar with Valley Doll from both her AFW and Slamazons work, and the fact that she was fighting a woman ten years her senior—and with that much more experience—stressed Kimmy out even more. She couldn't believe that she had traveled to the other side of the world to join a wrestling federation like this. Why had she taken the recruiter up on her offer? She was the champion of New York Female Wrestling—an independent smaller promotion, but a competitive one nonetheless, and she was happy with her career and her life. She could hardly explain, even to herself, why she had decided to come to Tokyo and join AFW. It was...an itch that she had to scratch, maybe.

Kimmy stirred a little from her thoughts when she heard Valley Doll going on for quite a while. Kimmy had never been one to talk to the crowd during her matches, and she was always felt a little bit awkward when her opponent was of a different sort. Valley Doll, right now, seemed to be dictating a novel to the cheering crowd. It would make Kimmy's silence all the more pronounced. She just didn't feel comfortable in front of all these strangers, this far from her native land. More than that, Kimmy couldn't quite understand what the veteran wrestler was getting at as she spoke. Kimmy took a step closer to the top of the ramp and leaned in to try to listen a little more closely.

"Now introducing, from the great state of New York..."

Kimmy would jerk back upright as she realized that Valley Doll was introducing her. She had not expected that at all, and was totally unprepared when the veteran said her name and the arena's spotlights converged on the top of the ramp, on the spot where Kimmy was to make her entrance. She hesitated for a second, before one of the stagehands would put her hands on Kimmy's back and encourage her forward. Kimmy's legs would start moving on their own, and she would turn her head around, giving the AFW staffer a harsh look before stepping out into the arena.

The crowd was tens of thousands strong, and the lights were so much brighter than those that had shone on her in New York. The applause was loud, louder than Kimmy would have ever imagined for her debut match. It was almost deafening. Valley Doll's introduction had put the crowd in the mood to give Kimmy a very warm welcome, one that she was totally unprepared for. Her entrance music could only be heard as an accompaniment to the clapping as Kimmy made her way briskly down the ramp and climbed up into the ring. Once she was in the ring, she would step towards the center of the ring, towards where Valley Doll was standing. She glanced from the blonde woman to the crowd, then down to her hands, which felt like they were just...hanging there. She awkwardly put them in her shorts pockets.

"Umm, thanks," she said to Valley Doll, as she looked back up into the veteran's eyes and met her gaze. She leaned in to the microphone that Valley was holding. "Thank you, everyone. Thank you," she would say, her voice wavering just a little. She leaned back again and stood up straight. Realizing how awkward her arms and hands were right now, she would take her hands out of her pockets and put them on her hips. She looked up into Valley's face again, waiting to see if the blonde had more to say, whether it was to the audience or to her.

Deja vu.

Valley was 19, again. Coming down that ramp for the first time. Throwing hesitant waves at the audience, trying hard to smile but not smile too much. She'd wondered how the crowd would like her outfit - just a simple, white leotard, nothing to flashy. It felt so hard to look at them in the eyes. She felt like every little detail would be scrutinized and they'd judge her for all time. Maybe they'd just assume she was another wrestler getting off on a legacy, with no real talent behind her.

She saw every bit of that in Kimmy Colton, and far more. The stage was bigger. Kimmy was more experienced than Valley had been back then, but the scale was much larger. She wasn't debuting in front of a small crowd of just  under a hundred people. Millions of eyes were on her as she came into the ring. They saw her shake. They were catching it all.

Valley did have more to say, but she didn't want to say it over the microphone. She gave it back to the referee, then extended her hand towards the Brooklyn Bruiser, offering a shake. "Hey," She tossed her hair back, letting them look eye to eye while she smile. "Just keep calm, don't let the nerves get to you. Let's have a good match, okay?"

Kimmy felt a little awkward as her gaze met Valley's, the thirty year-old blonde smiling down at her, the four-inch height advantage she had on Kimmy obvious as they stood face to face. On a deeper level, Kimmy really did appreciate the fact that Valley Doll had gone through the trouble to introduce her in the way that she had. What might have been only a polite, scattered round of applause for the new wrestler from a small female wrestling promotion on the other side of the planet had been turned into a deafening roar thanks to Valley's words and her encouragement. Kimmy knew that she should be flattered and very grateful, though at the moment she mostly felt nervous, a little self-conscious, and a little on edge.

Her thanks, therefore, had been given hastily and succinctly, perhaps a bit perfunctorially. Valley hardly seemed to mind, though, as she would add to her warm welcome with a little bit of advice—advice meant for Kimmy's ears only, and not for the audience, as Valley had handed back the microphone before giving it. Kimmy grumbled a little and glanced to the canvas quickly before looking back up and locking her gaze with Valley's again.

"I...I know. It's not my first match ever, okay?" she would say, objecting to what she saw as rather obvious advice, keeping her arms close at her sides. She immediately regretted her grumbling, though. She wasn't here to make enemies. She didn't want to gain a reputation for a bad temper among AFW's huge fanbase—she most certainly didn't want to be another River Styx or Kelly Conway. She wasn't a heel, not by any means. "Sorry, I mean...I have wrestled a lot before, but it was just a couple hundred people, maybe a thousand at most...so, umm, thanks. Again." She took a deep breath, exhaled, and reached her right hand up, grabbing onto Valley's hand and giving it a good hard squeeze as she shook it, taking that moment to inspect the blonde bombshell up close for the first time.

Despite being in her thirties, an age which the youthful Kimmy still thought of as a boundary between young and old, Valley was quite beautiful, and looked as fit as she had been when she was wrestling with Slamazons years earlier, when Kimmy was just getting into wrestling. The Brooklyn girl had been surprised when she had heard who she would be wrestling. Valley Doll was a veteran, both of AFW and of the sport in general, and had come up in one of the most high-profile wrestling federations in the United States—one which Kimmy had been watching for years. No matter how much experience Kimmy had, it was nothing compared to the long career of the woman whose hand she was shaking. Whatever advice Valley had for Kimmy, Kimmy knew that she should listen to it and take it to heart.

Kimmy would try to give a smile of her own as she would finish the handshake with one last pump, before releasing Valley's hand and letting her own fall back to hang on the edge of her shorts pocket. "Yeah, a good match. I'm ready."

Valley started to get a little bit worried when Kimmy wasn't as receptive to the handshake as much as she'd initially hoped, and she was beginning to wonder if she'd made a mistake. The good thing with Ace had been that, when they'd wrestled, they actually met and talked beforehand, so they could get a good idea of where they stood with each other. Aside from that YouTube video, Valley was going into this blind, just assuming that the New Yorker would be receptive to her welcome. There was always the chance that Kimmy didn't want fanfare like this. Really didn't want it.

But she took the handshake. Thankfully. So far, they were off to a good start, even if they'd hit a little bump at the start.. "Oh, i know you've wrestled before. Caught one of your matches a few minutes ago. Some of it, anyway. Enough to know I should be looking out for those fists of yours." Valley gave Kimmy a quick wink. "And it was my pleasure. Always wanted to try announcing."

She let go of the shake and moved away, starting to bounce on her toes. Her hair bobbed from side to side, and she still wore a smile on her face, but her eyes were gradually hardening. Getting realer, getting serious. "You'd better be, Ms. Bruiser. I'm coming for you."

And there went the bell.

Valley kept on her toes and started to circle around the ring, keeping her focus centered on Kimmy while she sized her up. Fit girl, nice and strong for her age. For any age. Valley had a height advantage, but that didn't always translate to a strength advantage. Most of her power was in the legs, and there was only one way to tell what her opponent was working with.

Valley broke off from the circle and moved in with her arms up, trying to get Kimmy to go for a collar-and-elbow lockup. It could very well end up with her on the defensive, but that was a worthwhile risk if it meant getting some good intel on Kimmy's abilities.

Kimmy was a little bit upset with herself for entering the arena and interacting with Valley in such an awkward fashion. It would have been a spectacularly bad first impression on the AFW audience if Valley hadn't encouraged them to give her such a warm welcome. In spite of her anxiety, Kimmy knew she wanted to live up to that enthusiastic welcome, and leave a much better impression, on Valley and on the crowd, by the end of the match.

"Yeah?" Kimmy intoned, a little surprised to hear that Valley had been watching one of her matches just before entering the arena. Kimmy did not exactly have a large online presence—New York Female Wrestling's website was notoriously difficult to navigate, seeing as how it was maintained by the company founder's sixteen year-old nephew, and only had a half-dozen promotional videos and a few pages' worth of pictures and wrestler biographies. There were more matches available on YouTube, but even Kimmy herself had had trouble finding them, especially if all she did was type in her own name. The only video of her that was easy to find was the match that she, Al, and the Oh twins had recorded back when they were sixteen...

Kimmy's cheeks turned slightly red and she glanced down at her feet when she realized that, in all likelihood, that amateur video made by a group of teenage girls after hours at their local wrestling gym was likely the one that Valley had watched. It was at sixty-five thousand views now, and had plenty of positive comments attached to it...but Kimmy lately had been sort of embarrassed by it. It was almost four years old, and she was such a better wrestler now than she had been back then. She knew that tens of thousands of people still associated her with that high school girl who needed two tries just to lock in a full nelson properly.

But tonight, Kimmy realized, she had an audience that dwarfed the measly sixty-five thousand that had seen that video. Counting those watching at home, her audience tonight was possibly in the millions. And all of them were going to see just how skilled she actually was. Kimmy brought her hands up and cracked her knuckles. Valley had seen the video and didn't seem to think any less of her...but maybe Kimmy could surprise the blonde veteran with some of the techniques that she hadn't known back when that video had been recorded.

Valley seemed ready, the referee seemed ready, the crowd seemed ready, and Kimmy was certainly ready. She spread her feet out a little more and started bouncing a little, too, feeling her fighting spirit surge back into her after a too-long two-month absence from the ring. "I am. I am ready. I hope you are, 'cause I'm not holding back at all."

When the bell rang, Kimmy started circling around the ring, moving in the same direction that Valley was, so that the two would spin around each other slowly, like two hands on a clock. Kimmy knew that she was the little hand on that imaginary clock...but that didn't mean she was without hope. She was going to make her entrance to the AFW stage with a bang by taking down one of the league's most experienced fighters.

Kimmy would stop and stand in place as Valley broke off from the circling and moved in, holding her arms up for a lockup. Kimmy's eyes darted over her opponent and weighed her options. Valley was obviously strong, but Kimmy couldn't tell whether or not the blonde woman was stronger than her. Valley was taller, but in terms of raw pushing power and brute strength, that didn't necessarily mean anything. Kimmy was tempted to reject the lockup and to try to attack Valley in a different fashion...but, after all these years in the ring, Valley was probably ready for that sort of ploy. On top of that, Kimmy kind of wanted to see whether she could out-muscle this woman who she had been watching on television and online for years.

Kimmy would step forward, putting her arms out, and would move to put one hand on Valley's shoulder while grabbing at the opposite elbow with the other hand. Kimmy had to reach up a little to get ahold of her opponent, but the height difference was not so great, Kimmy hoped, that it would be easy for Valley to use gravity to her advantage and push Kimmy down.

Oh, there it was. Valley had been waiting for that look in Kimmy's eyes and that tone in her voice, and she was finally getting it. She'd only been wrestling with women her own age this year so far, and while she got plenty of fire from them, there was something about youthful exuberance that just couldn't be matched. Natasha Han had been a grueling challenge, but this was going to be a different sort of trial. A little test to make sure that twelve years of wrestling hadn't worn her bones down too much.

"Wouldn't have it any other way." Valley bit her lip and dared to let her eyes dart towards Kim's feet as the circled. Good pace. Good placement. Nice, lively feet, which ensured this match would have a fast pace. The referee moved back to the corner and wisely gave them space to move, but Valley hoped she wouldn't get too far. She had the distinct feeling there'd be quite a few pinfalls in this match.

The two met dead center of the ring, and Valley burst out with a loud grunt as Kimmy's full power came to bear. She hadn't been kidding about not holding back - the youngster was surprisingly strong, so much so that even a veteran like her was taken off guard. She lost one step, then two, then three before she planted her feet down and stopped the march dead in its tracks.

"Phew!" Valley whistled and managed to get a rough chuckle out through her struggles. " Okay! Not bad! Not...bad." She started to slide under the pressure, but managed to widen her stance and stop it before there was a problem. She brought their heads together as they pushed, letting their blonde hairs mix and mingle to the point where it was hard to tell where Valley's stopped and Kimmy's began.

The smaller brawler had good upper body strength, an area that the Slamazon had never excelled at. But she could always rely on her legs to make up the difference, and that's what she banked on, here. Valley tried to pulled lock up down, straighten up her back, and focus on using the power in her thighs to shoulder the bulk of the load, pushing them to their limits as she came back at Kimmy with a sudden surge.

Kimmy glanced over to the side of the ring before heading in to meet Valley Doll in the center, watching the referee in her black and white-striped outfit retreating to a safe distance from the point where the two wrestlers were set to collide. Kimmy smirked before walking in to meet Valley at the center of the ring, grabbing onto one of Valley's shoulders and the opposite arm's elbow as Valley would do the same to her. Kimmy stared hard into Valley's eyes, her head tilted slightly upwards in order to do so as she would suddenly throw herself forward, pouring on the pressure and trying to surprise Valley with a burst of strength. Kimmy was not going to distract herself with any more ruminations on her life and career or any questions about whether coming to AFW had been the right decision.

She knew that this was something she wanted to do. She wanted to be here in Japan, and she wanted to show everyone what she could do. And right now, she was going to put her mind, body, and soul into overcoming Valley Doll and winning this match! "Hruuuh!"

Kimmy had been in a few lockups in her time, and she knew that a lot of girls didn't put everything they had into them right from the start. Kimmy didn't subscribe to that strategy. She put everything she had into everything, and overwhelmed her opponents with raw power and energy. Valley was pushing hard, too, but Kimmy was able to surprise her. Kimmy's smile grew wider as she managed to back Valley up one, then two, then three steps. She tried to keep pushing forward and throw her opponent back into the ropes. But Valley planted her feet and prevented that from happening.

"Not bad, huh?" Kimmy would repeat, putting some more emphasis on the words as she would keep pushing even after Valley had managed to stop her advance. Valley adopted a wider stance and leaned forward more, using her height to make the pushing less lateral and a little more vertical, making it more difficult for Kimmy to push her back. Kimmy grunted as Valley's forehead pushed against hers, the thirty year-old's golden blonde hair tangling with Kimmy's platinum blonde locks.

Kimmy knew that she was not the strongest girl in the world, but she had worked out enough that her arms and legs were nice and toned, and she was using them to great effect right now. Valley, it seemed, didn't have quite as much confidence in her upper body strength. But a glance down showed Kimmy that her opponent was readjusting the positioning of her legs. Before Kimmy could readjust to compensate, Valley surged into her suddenly, and Kimmy was forced to back up, back to where they had started, and then a step or two beyond that before she would plant her back leg hard on the canvas and start flexing and pushing with her thighs, as well, trying to reestablish the equilibrium that Valley's surge had broken.

"Not a chance...!" Kimmy would growl, as she would try to bend down a little, trying to use her lesser height to her advantage by forcing Valley to bend her back awkwardly, hoping that positioning would force the Slamazon to back up as Kimmy shoved back against her once again.

Well, Valley had been wrestling the Brooklyn Bruiser for all of fifteen seconds, and she could say one thing with quite a bit of certainty - the girl was a tight little bundle of power. Whatever jitters she'd started out with, they'd fled away after the bell rang. Valley thought for sure a push with the legs would have gotten her more space, maybe even brought her all the way to the turnbuckle. Instead, she managed to get about two feet before ran into a wall.

She let out a grunt that was half-frustrated, half-exhilarated, as the audience began to clap and cheer them on. Sweat was already starting to break out on her brow, and Valley did not think of herself as a woman who perspired easily. That made her realize another factor in this match - stamina. It wasn't a big deal now, but the longer the match wore on, the more it would come down to conditioning. She had plenty of energy, but young and vibrant and far fresher. She'd have more...

Valley pushed the thought out of her mind, trying to keep her mind in the here and now. After all, even if she couldn't outlast Kimmy to the home stretch, it was a simple fix. All she had to do was win before it got to that point.

Simple. But not easy.

"Come on..." She took a deep breath and redoubled her efforts, gaining no ground for the trouble. "Come on!" Kimmy wasn't just athletic, she was smart, using her height - or lack thereof - to make the lockup much more difficult than it needed to be. All of the sudden they were at a standstill.  Valley wasn't losing any more ground, but she wasn't gaining, either. Her strength was draining quick, though, which meant it was time she really got the ball rolling, before Kimmy realized just how good her position was and capitalized.

"And..." Valley gave up the lockup and suddenly switched gears. She twisted her body her body, did a pivont on her toes, brought her arm around the younger wrestler's neck and tried to lock fingers, looking to secure a tight side headlock. Not the most devastating move, but it would be a good way to stop the Brooklyn Bruiser from doing any serious bruising. Keeping her nice and controlled, forcing her to work at Valley's pace.

Kimmy managed to stop Valley from pushing her back any further than those five or six steps, dug in her heels, and redoubled her own efforts to push Valley back. While her shorter stature would normally be considered a disadvantage in this sort of test of strength, Kimmy was using it to make Valley uncomfortable, bringing the veteran down to her level and keeping her there. Kimmy spread her feet slightly further apart and bent her knees a little more, utilizing her legs to their fullest to neutralize the advantage that Valley had when she used hers. Kimmy then pushed forward with everything she had, trying to budge Valley and throw her back in turn.

It soon became obvious that that wasn't going to happen. She pushed forward, and Valley pushed forward, and they completely canceled each other out. They weren't completely equal in strength, but they were close, close enough to battle each other to a standstill that was quickly draining Kimmy of her strength. "Rrrn...you come on, lady...just try to push me harder, if you can!" Kimmy would grunt in reply. She knew that nothing decisive was going to come of the lockup, however, and so she would prepare to break the lockup and establish an advantage.

She made her move at the same time Valley made hers. Kimmy's intention was to use her hold on the Californian's arms to swing her around and toss her down to the canvas. She began to turn her body, and found that she and Valley were still moving in concert, as Valley began to pivot, too. Well, that was good. Kimmy could just use her opponent's own momentum against her. "Hrrrg..."

Kimmy began to turn around, her opponent turning, too, but the twist happened so fast that Kimmy barely had any time to react when things stopped matching her expectations. She didn't get a chance to throw Valley down to the canvas. The older wrestler turned slightly faster than Kimmy did, getting behind the Brooklynite, and then threw an arm around Kimmy's head to capture her in a side headlock!

"Gaack!" Kimmy squawked, indignant as Valley began to control her. She stomped her foot, the ring vibrating and booming with each stomp, and she would reach up with both hands to grab onto Valley's arm. Kimmy would try to wrench herself free, dipping lower and jerking her head to the side and back, again and again.