Avalanche 2023: Friction World Title Match: Rebecca Tomko (C) vs Lucia Lynch

The crunching impact wasn't free of pain and discomfort for the champion, but between how she felt and the pained scream she heard behind her Rebecca knew which side of that collision she preferred to be on. Lucia wouldn't even be given the dignity of being allowed to suffer in peace this time as the Amazon kept her pinned up in the corner for as long as the official would allow while she slung her arm back to hook around the challenger. Rebecca had plans and the Lone Wolf wasn't going to enjoy them.

With a powerful step forward towards the centre of the ring, Rebecca let rip a powerful throw as she tried to launch the new film star over her hip and across the ring. She didn't have the angle or grip to give Lucia the same treatment as she'd given to the returning Angel but even if the Wolf wasn't going to hit the dizzying heights of the Mexican Space Program, it wasn't going to be a nice flight.

Lucia was a practiced faller and tumbler, one had to be to do their own stunts in Hollywood, even if most of her feature-length movies really pushed the definition of a Hollywood movie. She'd have managed the landing on this with relative grace or would have under the right conditions. As it stood now though, Rebecca rippled her from the corner like dead weight tossing her like a corpse off a bridge. She hit the mat some distance away with just as much finesse, a hard impact on her side and shoulder, and a few small bounces as her body skipped along the canvas with smaller thuds as she turned over with each one. Rebecca wouldn't win any distance records this time around but sloppy was sometimes just as effective evidenced by Lucia laying face down on the mat looking more like a broken action figure than a film star.

With a satisfying series of thuds, Rebecca took the time to saunter back into the corner, slinging her arms over the top as she once again took a breather while Lucia was writhing, this time on the canvas instead of the turnbuckle "Not a PB, I think you're gonna have to try again," Adrian cackled as she made her way around the ring to chat with the champ mid-match "Bounces don't count."

"Seriously? You're gonna be a bitch about that?" Rebecca asked, leaning over the top rope with a smile on her face.

"Hey, take it up with the Olympics people if you wanna argue about how those throwing events work." The devious manager joked, throwing up her hands defensively before the Amazon moved on. Break time over, back to work for the champion and that meant bad things for the Lone Wolf. Bracing herself against the ropes Rebecca tried to gain speed quickly by slingshotting herself off and running towards the crumpled challenger, leaping into the air legs-first as she got close and letting the momentum carry her over so she landed back-first on top of Lucia with a big girl senton. Once again trying to crush her with her sheer size.

Lucia took her time on the canvas to think. Pain was a fine teacher tonight, one who seemed more than willing to keep serving her lessons if she didn't start learning from them. The tumble had been a bad one without being able to manipulate the landing in any way but she had taken worse in her career of low-budget movie sets stunt work over the years. This breather was all things considered, better than being pummeled in the corner. She pressed her palms to the mat and pushed, not to rise but to lift herself enough to look around. While her body was aching, she still had her wits about her.

Once she saw Rebecca in the corner talking to Adrian she let herself ease back onto the mat, milking her time down by playing possum to not draw any attention to herself while being able to keep track of the champion’s movements. When the bigger woman hit the ropes and came thundering across the ring, Lucia was ready. Just as Rebecca reached her, the movie star pushed out an elbow and a knee, shoving herself into a tight roll to quickly move to the side, leaving The champ to senton into the canvas. There wasn’t a world in which she was going to try and counter that move from the ground, not with just how heavy this woman was. Gravity could do the damage for her. Once she had cleared the landing zone, Lucia finally started to get herself back up.

The bigger they came, the harder the fell. That was what Rebecca was hoping would do the work for her in squishing Lucia into the canvas but there was no Lone Wolf left in place to break her fall meaning that the only one going splat was her "Ugh!" She grunted as her shoulders hit the canvas, the champion essentially having slammed herself for nothing as Lucia escaped the peril before her leaving the Amazon to slowly pull herself up off the canvas while the challenger finally got some breathing room against the imposing champion. "Dammit..." she groaned as she rolled herself onto her front, pressing herself up off the canvas before trying to look for the challenger again.

The crash of Rebecca hitting the mat was cathartic after having just been manhandled by the bigger woman. Finally, she had gotten her to the mat, though only by the champion's own methods. Now that they were here, she couldn’t squander this opportunity. The issue was she was still in pretty bad shape herself and wasn’t in a great place to actually take advantage of it. With a wince she pushed herself up to her hands and knees, locking her gaze back to the larger woman. While staying back was tempting to get something of a reset, she had to take this chance as it might not happen again if they both got back to their feet.

She made her way over on hands and knees, pushing off the mat just as she neared to try and hop herself up onto Rebecca’s back. Her arms were thrown wide to snap around the woman’s neck to try and cinch in a tight sleeper hold. She kicked her legs out blindly, trying to hook them around the bigger woman’s body and capture one of her legs between them. She needed to keep Rebecca from getting up and robbing her of a leg to do it was an important part of that.

If she by some miracle managed to ride the woman like a monkey on her back, she’d cinch it all in and keep to a holding pattern. This was her time to rest and recover while doing as much damage as she could.

The Amazon's rise was cut short as Lucia quickly latched on, taking every chance she could to keep the overwhelming strength of the champion under control and starting to choke her out "Damn-" she let out as the arm pulled tighter around her neck forcing the bigger woman to struggle for every bit of air she could. The slender but strong arm of the Lone Wolf acting as a garrotte wrapped around her throat. The best Rebecca could do was to claw at the offending limb and struggle to pull it away but with how Lucia had cinched the hold in it was a delaying tactic at most as they rolled on the canvas.

If it was escape tactics the champion needed though she wouldn't have to strategize alone. The ever devious Adrian was there to help and the Amazon's long tree trunk legs were what she needed. The brunette reached out into the ring to grab her friend by the boot and slid back, pulling the foot over to the edge of the ring and slapping the apron "BREAK!" She yelled out "We got a rope break here!" she continued, trying to get the referee's attention that Rebecca somehow made it to the ropes to force a break of the hold.

An arm hooked around Rebecca’s throat nestled in snugly, biting into her muscle and riding along her chin line. She cinched the hold with a flex of her other arm, clamping it down as hard as she could. She huddled on the champion's back, buried her forehead in the woman's shoulder as she squeezed and drew in her own ragged breaths as she worked to recover. She felt the bigger woman's leg give out as she captured it between her legs, not doing much to torture the limb in her grasp, just keeping her from making any real use of it. The choke was the winning move here, the leg was insurance.

She felt the prying fingertips, trying to gain purchase to pry the hold apart but she had sealed the hold tighter than a pressurized hull of a submarine. As strong as Rebecca was, if she had nothing to wrap her hands around there wasn't much she could do. That was what Lucia was counting on. “Come on, tap.” She muttered in a low desperate growl. She doubted the woman ever would with her belt on the line, with her credibility hanging by a thread if this part-timer could take her down.

She could hear Adrian shouting at ringside but ignored whatever she was saying. This was possibly the home stretch and she couldn’t afford to get distracted. Just a little while longer and she might actually have it… she might actually win the world title.

“Rope break! Lynch, break!” The referee had given Adrian a look of indignation as they circled the two women on the mat. Sure enough, the former champion wasn’t blowing hot air. So they made the call.

“Damnit…” Lucia hissed. This had been her big chance to not only secure the win but at the very least take things easy for a moment. A reset now would put her behind again, standing again, at risk again. She considered briefly milking the choke but the official calling her by name and the intonation in their voice told her it was best to not test their patience. The stunt she pulled before the match already had her in hot water. Reluctantly she unraveled herself from Rebecca and moved to rise, glancing back to see the rope break for herself and Adrian standing by. She scowled at the woman but had no reason to believe she had just cheated. Her annoyance was solely in calling out the break for the ref.

Lucia stepped back but was keen to circle the big woman when she started to rise, wanting to not be in her direct line of fire for a strike or lunge while putting her in a prime place to reengage from at an angle. The moment the big woman got up past a kneel, she became a sporting target again and the movie star would be sure to let her know that how she felt to a stiff kick aimed for the back of Rebecca's knee or calf.

Rebecca may not have seen what happened but as soon as she was free of the chokehold she gave her friend a quick nod in appreciation while the Amazon panted for breath. That had been way too close of a call for the champ just now: her grip and strength had failed to break the submission and while she could have potentially moved herself over to get the rope break even with the challenger wrapping up one of her legs, Adrian's interference had just saved her precious amounts of air and braincells. What it couldn't save though was her leg as she pulled herself back up to her feet with the assistance of the ring ropes.

"Fuck!" Rebecca yelled as Lucia's kick once again struck true, this time catching the back of the big woman's calf as the muscle quickly cramped up on reflex forcing her to limp along the side of the ring with only one arm to protect herself while the other held the top rope tightly for some stability. She might have been out of the fire but the Lone Wolf had definitely taken the upper hand in a big way.

There was an audible crack as her kick scored flesh, biting hard into Rebecca’s meaty calf. Not enough to knock her down, but it slowed her. She was leaning on the roles, using them to keep herself steady. It was an opening. The temptation was there to go for the body, hammer away at the big woman's guts, but the second she went in all the champion needed to do was grab her and they were back to where she had just struggled to escape.

Rather than letting herself get lost in planning, she continued her assault, hoping the sheer quantity of her blows could eventually even the gap in their physical strength. It was a flurry of quick kicks, staying low, bobbing from side to side, and switching which leg she sent out, trying to snipe locations she thought were too difficult for Rebecca to respond to. She didn't allow herself to get close, staying at the length of her legs where if Rebecca wanted to respond in kind, she’d have to make it away from the ropes. Lucia didn't want that, she needed to keep the big woman pinned and immobile.

Just before she had overstayed her welcome, she would hop back, bending at the knees, and spring forward. She jerked an arm back, twisting her body with it to snap into a spin, hitting a tight rotation as she let her leg fly out in a sweeping cleave, trying to land a devastating aerial spinning heel kick on her head while she wasn’t at her full height. Knocking the big woman back down wouldn't do much for her while they were at the ropes but she was going to claw and scrape for every advantage she could muster.