First Meeting: Power Struggle

[Deleted]

The old Heritage Softail rumbles beneath me as I’m stopped at the light at Broadway and Barclay streets. It’s a long commute from our summer home in Newport, Rhode Island everyday, but I’ve never been happier. Even before I allowed my XWF contract to expire, the wheels were already in motion. For months, actually. While I left OCW just before the infamous purge last year, I’d always paid attention. I’d stayed in contact with Marcus Welsh even though he and I didn’t really see eye to eye on a lot of things.

The reason I left had nothing to do with the purge. It had nothing to do with backstage heat or any of the perceived reasons that some of today’s roster has expressed over the last two weeks. I left, because I had too many commitments and an extremely hectic personal life. Life is calmer now. My commitments are only what I choose them to be and now… now I’ve come home to OCW.

Not as a wrestler.

Not as a contracted talent.

But as its daddy.

Its majority owner.

Green light. Putting the Harley in gear, I roll forward and hang a right onto Barclay. Up the street is the parking garage across from One World Trade, the headquarters of Lions Guard Entertainment and the new home office of OCW.

A lot of people on the roster have a problem with me being the new majority owner and they manufacture things in their own heads as to who and what I am while barely any of them have even met me. I’ve always played my cards close to my chest and what some of them think they know, is because I’ve elected to let them believe it.

I’ve always been pretty good at setting traps and the thing about professional wrestlers, is that the vast majority of them are mindless meatheads and can’t help themselves from walking right into them. I’ve been a huge success in every avenue I’ve chosen to explore and that’s because I’m always planning, thinking, and staying a step ahead of everyone else.  That's why I was a sensational 17 year old rookie.  That's why I've won 11 championships.  That's why I'm a former world champion and was able to contemplate retirement at the ripe old age of 23.

Retirement was never really in the cards.  While I have taken a leave of absence from active competition, it has nothing to do with feeling fulfilled.  It has nothing to do with feeling as if I've reached the end of the line.  And everything to do with heart surgery.  Did you know they crack your chest wide open for that?

Oh OCW, my lovely little idiots, you needn't get too excited.  My heart is just fine so there's no risk of me leaving this mortal plane just yet.  They just removed an old bullet that was causing me some issues.

I've been an extremely competitive, ambitious man my entire life and that's why as soon as my temporary sabbatical from the ring commenced, I started working on my next big project: Lions Guard Entertainment.  In it's first week of operation, I completed deals with WGWF to produce their pay per view events beginning this fall.  We acquired the production rights to Chris Page's Cannabis Cup in July.  The Tara Fenix Charity Cruise has been in the works since the winter.  Even completed a deal with the Velvet Rabbit to produce some upcoming stage shows.  Started on a joint production with Splat TV on a major feature film that is being written, directed, produced by, and starring me.  Last but not least, we acquired controlling interest in OCW.

As you can see, I stay busy even if I'm not in the ring.

As soon as Marcus Welsh picked up the Golden Phone, I knew I had him. With him, I knew I had what I’ve always wanted: ownership of a successful wrestling promotion. I could have started my own, I could have built it from the ground up. That takes time and patience, of which I have neither.  There are those that claim I don't have OCW's best interest at heart and those people are not only clowning themselves, but they're entirely and utterly stupid.

OCW is my business.

Why would I not have its best interest in mind?

As incredibly gifted and talented as I am inside the ropes, I might be even more gifted outside of them.  Which, by itself, should be a very scary thought.

Killing the engine of the Harley, I step off the bike.  Heading to the express elevator, my legs are a little like jello from the two hour ride from Newport.  While I ascend into the building, I'm anxious to see the early reports on last nights Monday Night Massacre.  Removing my helmet, the elevator slows to a stop and the doors open with a ding on the 83rd floor.  Ahead of me attached to the wall are two logos:  Lions Guard and OCW.  Turning left toward the offices I nod to a woman before stopping after a couple of steps.

Turning around with a double take, I'm a little surprised at who the woman was I just nodded to.

"Tamika Strader."

[Tamika Strader]

LGE/OCW Offices
Manhattan, New York
June 14th, 2022

Tamika Strader looks at her watch as she parks her Indian Scout Motorcycle in front of the large highrise building owned by the one and only Thaddeus Duke, the newest majority owner of Online Championship Wrestling. She takes off her BSI matte black helmet, placing it on the throttle of the mini-ape hangers. She had her bike brought to her in Brooklyn so she could ride and view the city from her favourite Indian bike since Tamika knew she would have to meet with Thad sooner than later. Veronica had flown back home at the conclusion of Massacre with her stoner fraternal twin, Cara, not just to be with their mother but also so Cara didn’t board the wrong flight as ever since she was tossed off the top of the OCW Arena, her memory was less than standard, the medication was helping a bit, but the doctors said she needed time for the brain to heal.

“Alright, Thad. You wanted to see me; here I am,” she says, taking her helmet by the straps as this is New York City, and someone would definitely steal it. She pulls her iPhone 13 mini from her blue denim-clad asses back pocket, opening her messages to let her sister know she had arrived.

Placing the iPhone back into her pocket, she adjusts her green tank top as she heads toward the entrance.

Victoria Strader’s Childhood Home
London, Ontario Canada
June 12th, 2022

“Megz, we don’t need to do this now. I mean, we are still fighting the cancer,” she says, looking at her older sister, who sits beside her on the comfy couch Meghan has made home. Their lawyer sitting across from them, the coffee table filled with paperwork.

“Meeka, we need to be realistic. I love the optimism you and my girls share, but I’ll be lucky to see September. We need to do this now before it becomes an issue of contention,” Meghan replies, placing her hand on the shaking knee of her little sister. “Alright, Issac, lead us through everything and show us where we need to sign.”

“Well, everything is straightforward. Basically, Meghan is signing over her shares in Strader Oil and Gas, Strader Green Energy Initiative, the hip hop label that once belonged to Makaveli The Don before his passing Life After Slavery, and the OCW financing agreement to Tamika. Since it is a transfer of power and not a sale, there isn’t any need for financial documents as you have that information, Tamika,” he replies, sliding his pen over to Tamika.

Tamika hesitantly takes the pen. She looks over at her sister with a sad smile.

“I never thought this day would come, Megz.”

“Well, it has. I know you can handle this, and you’ll have John and my girls to help you through it.”

Tamika nods and signs the documents under her sister's name. She leans back into the couch and sighs.

“Well, that’s all she wrote.”

“Well, not exactly. Issac?”

Issac gathers the papers and places them in his briefcase but pulls out a document and slides it towards Tamika. She looks down at it, and her eyes go wide.

“Power of Attorney?! Shouldn’t this be Veronica or Cara? Or Dustin, ya know, your husband?”

Meghan sighs.

“Meeks, you know as well as I do that my girls and my husband won’t be able to make the hard decisions.”

“And you think I can? I adore you. We have been tag team partners forever, sisters and business partners. I don’t know if I can make the hard call if the need arises,” she says with a tone of uncertainty.

“Yes, you can, Meeks. You are the only one I trust to make the call.”

Tamika closes her eyes for a few seconds, deep in thought. After a few seconds, she signs the dotted line. She was officially the Strader Family Matriarch.

Present Day…

Tamika walks through the lobby doors and heads toward the elevators. She looks up at the directory sign next to them, seeing that LGE and OCW are located on the 83rd floor. After a few moments, the elevator door opens, and she is greeted by the LGE and OCW logo name plates, and she shakes her head.

“How did we let this happen?” Tamika mutters to herself, shaking her head.

She takes a seat on the leather cushioned bench outside the offices. She wasn’t sure how long Thad would be, but her answer would come as she heard the elevator ding and doors open. Thaddeus Duke walks by her as they share a nod, and smiles as he stops after a couple of steps.

“Tamika Strader.”

“Thaddeus Duke.”

[zybala]

: Zybala pokes his head in the door.:

[Deleted]

Folded like a cheap suit.  Eyeing a member of the family that has been unwilling to discuss business, I'm momentarily at a loss for words.  While I fully expected them to come eventually, I didn't expect them to come so quickly.  Maybe it had something to do with the freeze on their OCW assets, maybe it didn't.  Either way, Tamika Strader stands before me.

"Walk with me," I say to her.  She hesitates for a moment before quickly catching up to walk beside me on the way to my office.

"Good morning, Thad," says Heather, my receptionist, as we pass by her.

"Mornin' Heather, hold my calls," I reply to her as she customarily hands me a Venti Mocha.  Hot, not cold.  I'm not a psychopath.

Leading Tamika into my corner office overlooking the concrete jungle of New York City, I close the glass doors behind us.  My door is always open, that's a mantra uttered by men and women in power for decades.  Rarely is it ever actually the case.  I'm not that way.  I'm a very open-minded person and I welcome criticisms, ideas, creative pitches and the like.

This meeting though, it's rather personal.  Either one Strader or another has hit me with falsehoods since my reveal as the new majority owner.  I'm no stranger to it.  I'm an obnoxious, arrogant man with an unshakeable confidence and that sometimes really pisses people off.

And I like it.

"Have a seat," I say to her, motioning toward the chair on the other side of my desk.  We both take our seats before I begin.  "I have to admit Tamika, I'm a little disappointed Vee didn't make the trip.  Since the first time you opened your collective mouth in my direction, I've really been wanting to... fuck... the both of you.

"Metaphorically speaking, of course."

[Tamika Strader]

Tamika looks across at Thad, not a fan of his derogatory joke, but now isn’t the time to be annoyed; it’s time for business. She looks across his desk at him and can’t help but think what a cute guy he is, but his arrogance seems to overshadow that after a moment. She sighs.

“Well, I bet you are surprised to see me sitting here, but I can promise you, you aren’t as surprised as I am, and as far as Veronica goes, she’s not a part of this. If you bothered to go through Strader Inc's agreement with Welsh, you would know that. Her talent contract was signed back in November when she was “unpurged”. She’s with her mother; my sister, my tag partner, and my business partner. And before you ask, as of this morning, I’m the head of the family industry now so it will only ever be me in these meetings. Which you should be thankful for, if you think I'm a bitch, my big sister is the devil incarnate,” she replies.

She watches him to see if she can catch any hint of his thoughts, but she can see plays his cards close to the chest.

[Deleted]

"Well," he begins his reply.  "Things change."

Opening my bottom desk drawer, I pull out a folder and set it on the desk.  Inside, rests the agreement between Strader, Inc., and Marcus Welsh.

"Unless we can come to some kind of agreement Tamika," I begin while opening the folder.  "I told you, well one of you, that I was prepared to break this agreement.  Money isn't an object to me as I'm sure it isn't to you and yours.  That said, it is something to the solvency of OCW.

"Now you and everyone else can sit and cry and whine and bitch because I'm here and I own this joint or that I don't have OCW's best interest at heart.  You all can rest assured that I do.  Now, I understand the position you're in.  I understand how betrayal works and no one knows better than we do just what kind of an incompetent fool Marcus Welsh is.

"I mean, he's fine so long as he has an overlord.

"What you need to start looking at Tamika, is the position I'm in.  I can't have a member of the OCW roster lording themselves over the company.  It's a gigantic conflict of interest.  I'm not saying you have or you would, but you could... that's a problem.

"While I'm not yet going to breach this contract, you're OCW assets have been frozen and they'll stay that way until either we've reached an agreement on a new arrangement, or we've decided to part ways."

[Tamika Strader]

Tamika leans forward with her down, looking upon his desk and slowly looks up at him with a smirk before leaning back in the chair. She crosses her arms across her chest, keeping his eye.

“Here’s where my problem lies, Thaddeus. In this narrative, I don’t have OCW’s best interest. That is so wrong. If it wasn’t for what I did, that incompetent human wouldn’t have been able to keep the doors open. Never once has any single one of us, whether it was my sister, my niece Cara or my highly successful niece Veronica have never used the position we have held. I have never booked a card, I have never controlled when I defended the Craze Championship, I never have not paid anyone I don’t like and if you think we don’t like you? Times that by ten for that racist schmuck, Bob Grenier. Enjoy that stupid contract Marcus signed in. That goes for Meghan and Veronica too.”

“You have to understand my position here. This isn’t about money because, yes, you are right, what you have frozen is pocket change in the grand scheme of it all. This is about being Proud and Strong. We have taken care of this company at a cost to us; it wasn’t until after Luck of the Violent in Ireland did this place start turning a real profit. We care. You know what Marcus was paying the ring workers, catering, the officials, commentators, everyone outside a few of the talent? Even they are getting screwed,” she says as she unfolds her arms and her hands find her knees. She looks down for a brief second before lifting her head to meet his gaze. “You are going to have to pay for it. My lawyers get bored sometimes and would LOVE something to do."

[Deleted]

Leaning back in my chair, I look across at my adversary.

"Fact is, it's not your problem anymore," I begin my retort.  "I respect what it is you did in order to keep the Titanic from sinking, but all it did was enable Marcus Welsh and his incompetence while delaying this inevitability.

"The Purge, that OCW couldn't afford.  Accepting bribes from a member of the roster..."

Tamika goes to protest my verbiage I'm sure, but I hold up my hand and continue my speech.

"Let me finish," I stop her from interrupting.  "I realize there's issues between your family and Cypher, but no one can deny his talent and his popularity.  You've seen the numbers.  Cypher is a draw and he was left out of Big Game Hunting for no other reason than Welsh decided he wasn't worthy...

"It's either that Tamika, or what I insinuated on June 6th is actually the case and the Strader's used their influence over Welsh to keep him off the card.  Which came right after Cypher defeated one of the Strader clan on Massacre.  I'm not saying that's what happened, what I am saying, is that it looks mighty suspicious from my point of view.

"But let me bring up a few other things that have happened just in the last couple of months that your family have been supporting Marcus Welsh's name at the top of the OCW power structure.  Refusing to ask either you or me for help to get off that island which directly resulted in the death of a long time OCW staffer.  Which, by the way, I've been feeling the legal ramifications for ever since.  Welsh ignored their calls and you had no staff listing to do it.  Who was next?

"That was me.  No one else knew it yet, but my alias was in the books with a legitimate phone number and it's been me dealing with that fallout this entire time.  So spare me the bullshit about caring for OCW when all you truly cared about was that your names stayed lit up on a marquee in order to satisfy your insatiable ego's.

"So this will go one of two ways Tamika," I pause a moment, realizing I'd been ranting for quite awhile.  "I'm willing to negotiate a fair and reasonable deal, but I will not be honoring the original agreement.  The other way, is that you can leave your Craze title on my desk while you and everyone else with the name Strader, can get the fuck out of my company."

[Tamika Strader]

“There’s the Thaddeus Duke I was expecting.”

Standing up, she brushes the front of her denim-clad thighs, walking over to the windows overlooking New York City, watching his reflection in the window as she was sure he was doing the same thing to her.

“Quite the view. You are right about one thing in all of that: I made a mistake trusting in Marcus Welsh to do the right thing. My sister was the one that wanted this, did you know that? I was sitting at home with my almost pre-teen son, sometimes entertaining Samantha Tolson, successful neck surgery, and I wanted to enjoy retirement. Yet Meghan got me to agree to return to the ring to a company she believed in so much because Veronica did too.”

She turns around at the waist, looking at Thad right in his typically dreamy eyes, but at this moment, she sensed his disdain for her and her last name.

“Cypher? We don’t care for him, but we never pressured Marcus into keeping him off the card. That wasn’t my call. I can make the right call, but as I have already damn well told you, the Strader's hands were kept out of the business of booking in this company. I won my Craze title fair and square. We only entered the pyramid because Marcus needed bodies, but I am not sorry for beating out Dangerous Dan and going on to win my belt. But that’s what we did. We put our bodies on the line. You want that kind of dedication out of your roster and champions?”

“It’s going to cost you. Take Grenier’s Contract numbers and double them. That’s what it’ll cost OCW to get out of this agreement. We have been looking after it; it’s time it looks after us well. That’s also including a new contract for my niece, Veronica.”

[Deleted]

When Tamika finishes, I stand up.  It's not an intimidation tactic.  I'm far from intimidating and that, has been a huge weapon for me over the course of my career.  I don't look "tough".  I don't have the typical muscled up, tatted up, bearded up physique that a lot of men have in this industry.  What I have is a disarming smile, engaging eyes and a chiseled jaw that in most circumstances creates a scenario in which adversaries underestimate me.

You play with the cards you're dealt, as they say.

"There it is," I begin, looking down at her with a smile.  "That famous Strader ego.  You're not demanding just a penny more than the next guy.  You're demanding I double it.

"You'd think ever last Strader descended from Knox.

Gently I grab her hand.  Pulling it toward my face, our eyes lock.  Kissing her hand gently before releasing it, I smile.  "Not a fuckin' chance.  Meeting's over Strader.

"Come back with a fair and reasonable offer and we'll talk.  Until then, get the fuck out of my office."

[Tamika Strader]

Her family sneer creeps across her face slowly as she takes her hand back, giving it a tilted look.

“Thought you would never ask.”

She pivots on the heel of her boot and walks out of his office with a very intentional strut. She was pleased how it went, both of them had to know neither was going to budge, and a fuck or two was gonna get thrown at one another.

Tamika straddles her Indian Scout, and as she looks up getting ready to put her helmet on, she sees a heritage Softail parked not far in front of her.

“Oh, Megz would love that bike… this will be a fun talk when I get home… a mind-clearing nine-hour ride should help.”

She turns the ignition and fires up, she checks over her shoulder for oncoming traffic as she rides off towards the George Washington Bridge.