The White Tiger
“Tonight, I’ve got something special for all of you.”
I am hurting; it feels like we’ve been at this for more than an hour, but I know that’s not true and I’m trying to ignore the pain. I feel my back hit the ropes, but I hook my arms under the top one to stop myself from coming off. Here she comes; she’s going to plant her feet late on the flying clothesline…
“I’m so happy you all could make it. To be honest, I didn’t expect this many people to come and see me. I’m humbled; I really am.”
I feel an awful pain in my throat and an annoying cut on my tongue from her shoulder hitting me and me biting my tongue. I got over the top rope and try to land on my feet, but I’m falling and rolling too fast. I feel my ankle roll and my head hits the back of the steel barricade.
“I’ve got a lot of songs to sing and a lot of stories to tell, and we’re gonna sing them all tonight. I want to start with a song made by the band Journey and it’s a favorite of mine because I feel like it’s where I am now. It’s called ‘Patiently.’”
I can hear the Japanese crowd ooh-ing and ah-ing as she runs up to the top turnbuckle, balancing herself on it, and doing a somersault dive right at me. I can see the large tumbling blur of her with her long straight red hair, her solid black eyes, very short black leather vest over a gray top hiding her extremely large breasts but showing her somewhat toned stomach with an oblong shaped navel, and her black pants and black boots, and black grappling gloves with metal knuckles as she crashes into me, knocking me over the barricade and into the crowd before grabbing me and yanking me back to ringside. I didn’t even know she could do that, but she’s athletic for a girl 6’2” and nearly 200 lbs while I’m stuck at just 5’6” and 125. She easily lifts me up on her shoulders, back to back with her hands holding my arms out like she’s a human cross… she runs and throws me in a move called the Razor’s Edge right into the ring steps.
“So, here I stand, so patiently, for your lights to shine, on meeee, for your song, insiiiiiiide of meeee, this we briiiiing to youuuuuu. In the shadow offfff love, time goes byyyyyy, leaving me hellllplessss, just to reach and try, to live my liiiiife… these are my reasonnnnnnns.”
My mind can’t stop drifting back to that night before this match; I was singing for a new life and a better world, but most of all… peace of mind. The bar had hardly anyone in it and I was singing in English, not Japanese or my native language of Chinese, and the few who were there were more concerned with their watered down drinks than any of my words. I’m not a singer and while I can carry a tune and play a guitar, this is not my career and that night, I wasn’t trying to become a star… I was hiding, singing with my eyes closed and singing like I’m by myself so that I can’t see the ugly looks on the faces of the people here.
I was hiding because of who I am; my natural blue eyes and auburn hair shine my American mother, but my Chinese features betray my father. Being a biracial child and growing up in a place where racism exists, which would be anywhere, loving outside of your race can be difficult, especially when you have a child. My father knew this, but his love of my mother was greater than what some people, who don’t account for so many other good people in China and around the world think. They always looked at me differently; well, not everyone did, but most I‘ve known have and growing up was hard back in Hong Kong before I moved to Japan. There, I found a way to hide, not in music, but behind a different mask. I was trained by a Drunken Master in a very unique combat technique after mastering my father’s form of Kenpo. He laughed at me, belittled me, called me “mixed,” but his jabs were intentional and meant to prepare me for what I would face and when he became sick, I never committed myself to anything like I gave myself to nursing him back to health. I am the second most popular wrestler in Asia, and wrestling started as a hobby for me. A stomp to my face snaps me out of it as the Japanese crowd goes “ohhhhhhh!!” once again; my opponent puts my head between her legs and now, I realize that she’s standing on the ring apron and I am on the bottom set of ring steps… the top ones were knocked off when I hit them. She lifts me up and powerbombs me off the ring apron and to the floor… no mats on the floor here.
“Shut up!!” she says to the crowd and yanks me up by my mask, “Now, I’m gonna show you all why I’m called The Hurt!”
She slams my face full force into her crotch and my head hits something that I know is metal under her pants and as I place my hands on her stomach and shove myself back, my hand happens to touch her crotch and it feels like a giant cheese grater. Thank goodness I wear a mask. She grabs me by my mask and tosses me back into the ring stomping down on my bare stomach with her boot, and as much as I pride myself on not groaning, I let out an “uuuuuh” and roll over. She hurt me very badly with that stomp and I’m trying to get my air back, but she reaches down, pulls me up in a full nelson and puts enough pressure on my neck that I think it’ll snap. I try to send my mind away from the pain, but I can’t stay in this position for very long. I can hear the commentators talking very loudly in Japanese and I can hear the crowd’s subtle noises and I can hear The Hurt’s whispers in my ear about sexually dominating me when the match is over. She’s backing up and I know she’s going to try and tiger suplex me over the top rope and out the ring… very ironic. She tosses me out of the ring and I flip and hope I time this right… I land on my feet on the barricade and when she turns around, I launch myself over the top rope and back into the ring, twisting my body and hitting her with both feet in a high angled missile drop kick as the crowd oohs again.
“Uhhh!!” she cries and staggers back as I flip off of her, land on my feet and nail her with a running clothesline, arching my arm upward to hit her across the throat. She grabs at her throat and for the first time, I see this large woman look in serious pain. I give her a sidekick to her stomach, but she only bends a little, then she comes forward with a clothesline, but I arch my body back all the way to the mat, then roll on my shoulders, post off of my hands and give her a dropkick to the back of her head, sending her towards the corner. While she’s still facing that way, I run, cartwheel, and hit her with a spinning toe kick to her solar plexus just as she turns around. I throw a lightening fast combination of punches and kicks and she seems to take them well, before shooting forward and head butting me… unnnnhhhh…. That woman must have the hardest head on the planet; I stagger back and she grabs me, knees me hard to the stomach, then before I can even groan, she flips me over, lifts me up and slams my back across her knee, but before I can scream in agony, she flips me over her head and my stomach hit’s the top turnbuckle… it’s bare… she took the pad off; that’s why she took so long to turn around. I’m draped across the top turnbuckle with my legs and arms hanging outside the ring on either side, but she lifts me up while climbing to the top rope and I hear the crowd stirring once more.
“I’m gonna break your back and end your fuckin’ career,” she says and she balances herself on the top rope, holding me high above her head in a gorilla press… I only have one chance. I slip out of the gorilla press and climb down her back, my chin pressed against her large backside, my legs locking her arms in a leg full nelson, and my arms around her waist. She loses her balance and falls forward and I use that momentum to flip her on her back in a variation of a flipping Powerbomb that is called an Avalanche Tonic. As much pain as I’m in, I keep myself from falling backwards as the ref counts 1,2... The Hurt violently slams her legs together on my head and I go down on my back.
“You’re gonna pay for that, little girl,” she says with her raspy voice as she gets to her feet, whips me into the corner, backs up and I know what’s coming, but I’m so weak right now; I’m trying to get my air and UUUUUUUUUH!!!! She charges and slams her body into mine and I fall out of the corner face flat on the mat.
“This is your so-called superstar?” she yells in Japanese, “I came all the way from California for this pathetic little girl who dressed in a stupid mask and some arm warmers and calls herself The White Tiger? This is the best you’ve got?”
I walked the streets as Drunken Master’s student to get him, of all things, strawberry cheesecake and grey goose. We lived high in the mountains, but I’d have to walk all the way into town for his precious cheesecake and grey goose. He loved that so much; he poured orange juice into his cereal and eat it with chopsticks. I would often get to test my fighting skills in the streets, stopping muggings and sometimes, being challenged by girls who thought that because I was biracial, that I was somehow weak.
“White Tiger my ass!” The Hurt shouts, “She’s more like a yellow pussycat!”
I wish I could say that the break does me some good, but I’m still trying to breathe and get up. She pulls me up by my long brown hair and places her hand around my throat.
“Look at me,” she says, “After tonight, I will be the number one contender for the Black Widow’s belt and you will be in the hospital.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I say, “Do your worst!”
She lifts me up to give me the choke slam, but I start giving her kicks to her head, hard, furious kicks. When your career is on the line, you have to go back to what you know, and I know that while I am still learning wrestling and submissions, I am a master at Gold Hand Kenpo, the style of fighting developed by my late father; it uses samurai sword techniques as the basis for striking, kicking and blocking. I am able to free myself of her grip and hear the commentators say that I was the first to ever break free of her choke slam, but she is able to get her arms around me in a bear hug. I begin to strike her face relentlessly with shots and she begins to back up. I am able to back her all the way to the corner, but she scoots me up on her shoulders and tries to throw me down in a sidewalk slam, but I am able to slip free, run, jump on the second rope and do my tigersault high arching armless moonsault… right into her arms as she power slams me to the mat. 1,2 I arch my back, forcing my stomach and chest up and because she chose to simply drape her arm across me instead of putting her full weight on me, I am able to easily escape the pin. I kick myself to my feet as she stands, run and bounce off the ropes and come back with my lightening attack of tiger palm thrusts to her solar plexus, backing her up as I can hear that the crowd is behind me… but she plants her feet and doesn’t budge, suddenly able to shake off my hard strikes, strikes that could shatter cinder blocks, grabs my arms at the wrists and pulls them in opposite directions, stretching me…
“I’m gonna rip you in half like the rag doll you are,” she grunts
“Ahhhhh…” is all I can muster in response. The pain is excruciating, but I bring my legs up and start running on her face in a classic bicycle kick. She tries to slam me down, but I kick her on her back, run to the ropes, tigersault off, and this time, she brings her head up to meet my bare stomach… UUUGGGGHHHH!!!! She really got me that time and she prepares to choke slam me.
“Time!” the ref says in Japanese, “Thirty minutes is up!! This match is a draw!!”
She boots the referee to the mat, lifts me up and choke slams me… and again… and again… and I can’t even feel it anymore. She puts my head between her legs lifts me up and carries me, preparing to Powerbomb me out of the ring and to the floor, and she succeeds; I go crashing through a small wooden table and banging the back of my head, neck, and shoulders onto the floor. There is no pain I’ve ever felt like the pain from this match. But I hear “Symphony of Destruction” by Megadeth blasting throughout the arena and I turn just in time to see the 5’9” Rage, with her flaming long curly red hair and the orange and yellow highlights to accentuate the flame, her fiery face paint, and her bronze two piece with matching boots that shows off her toned body, run by and slide into the ring. Rage and The Hurt were tag team partners back when Rage was also a menacing heel (a heel is a bad guy), but The Hurt got jealous of Rage‘s growing popularity, and turned on her, starting the feud. The medical staff does not come out to help me and I slowly pull myself to my feet just as Rage hit’s a brain buster into a power slam that is more commonly known as the Jackhammer on The Hurt and The Hurt rolls out of the ring as Rage shakes the ropes in a fury. The Hurt rolls out of the ring and I make my way to the back, as the fans honor me and honor Rage.
I know there are bigger promotions in the world than ours, but our locker room follows a simple principle: everyone, heels, faces, the more brutal fighters, the light hearted types, all of us are together in one locker room, including the champions. Everyone in the locker room knows what I look like when I take off the tiger mask. My outfit is a white top that stops just below my breasts; it has black stripes and a heart opening below the collar. I wear matching gloves that extend to my elbows, matching tights and matching boots. The first time I saw what I would be wearing, I thought it was ridiculous. I am a master of my martial art, and when I first showed up here to wrestle, I wanted the name “The Gold Hand” out of tribute to my style, but because I was biracial, the promoter demanded I fight under the name “The White Tiger.” He thought it was a joke and he and his constituents all laughed at me because in Chinese culture, the white tiger symbolizes peace, but the color white represents the west. This was a mock on me being “half White” and having a mother from the US (the West) and I hated the name with a passion… but I hated the costume more.
I didn‘t know what the fans would think of me, and they laughed at me when I first came out, but I defeated one of the top stars, Dora Kong, in my first match. She was large, as wrestlers with “Kong” in their names tend to be, and she was very athletic, but she underestimated me and I beat her with a nerve hold after a match that pushed me to my limits. I’ll never forget the way the crowd reacted when I won. They thought I was just a girl who was coming out to get destroyed, but they understood that I was serious when I won. They took to me and the image of the girl in the white tiger mask who fights with every ounce of heart she has. I got very popular very quickly.
“Good shit out there, Hitomi,” Terry Bohannon says to me. Like I said, the wrestlers know who I am without the mask on; the idiots who judge me by my race hate me as Hitomi and love me as The White Tiger. Terry’s a 5’9” 140 lb brown haired girl with blue eyes. She’s very fit and has been wrestling for a really long time, but she hasn’t made it big. Terry is known as “The Cannon” because in high school, she was a starting quarterback for the football team back in the US, despite her girly looks. She was the girlfriend and tag team partner of OPW wrestler Justine Credible, but Justine went solo and made it big while Terry never fully committed to the business and has been a journeywoman for a good while. Galina passes by; she’s a 6’1” Ukrainian who looks like Brigitte Nielson, from the whitish blonde flattop looking hairstyle, to the stone cold facial expressions, to the killer but strong body. She’s an accomplished amateur wrestler and trained in the fighting style of Russian combat Sambo with the man who is supposedly the greatest male fighter of all time, Fedor “The Last Emperor” Emelianko. And then I see her, heading right towards me, the champion, standing 5’6” and weighing a solid curved 150 lbs in her black lycra one piece with silver web designs and thigh high boots, her long straight black hair and black eyes, her blood red lipstick… The Black Widow. Widow is only 20 years old; that’s two years older than I am, but she’s been wrestling for a very long time and she’s become a legend in the sport. When I was training, I would watch her matches and I really do look up to her and admire her. She is what I aspire to be in the wrestling business and she’s looking right in my eyes.
“The Avalanche Tonic is my move,” she says, staring daggers into my eyes. This woman is my idol in the wrestling world and I am quick to apologize.
“It was spur of the moment,” I say, lowering my eyes, “I am such a fan of your work and I saw no way out of the hold I was in but to use that move. My apologies.”
She slaps me very hard, hits me with a punch hits my stomach, just above my small egg-shaped navel, freezing me long enough for her to lock on a standing guillotine. I could get out of this, but I’m shocked. Since I’ve been here, I’ve tried to talk to her; I’ve expressed a desire to team up with her and train with her so that she can help me make the transition from primarily being a striker to being more of an all around fighter… but she stonewalls me every time. It’s as if she only cares about competition and sees me as a threat to her title. We’re both considered fan favorites and we’re both young… isn’t there enough room for both of us? As she tightens her grip on the guillotine, she lets out that signature scream; she’s a very loud fighter; every time she kicks or kicks out, or does a move, she screams. She’s been in every type of violent match imaginable, for such a young woman and she never complains. She goes out and executes.
“Let’s not have this conversation again,” she says, slinging me to the floor. I get up quickly; I’m not as hurt by her attacks because my body can take punishment, but my feelings are hurt. I don’t understand Black Widow… I have never asked for a title match against her because of the respect I have for her and because we have common enemies. Black Widow is also involved in the promoting, but she’s not known as the type who tries to take away a new star’s push or bury wrestlers she doesn’t get along with. She’s fair; I guess she’s just mean. I go and sit in the promoter’s office, having changed to my white gi and sandals. I am going to practice Kenpo as soon as I get home from the arena, but they told me before my match that I needed to see them before I left, no matter what condition I was in.
“We wanted to tell you that we are sending you to America,” Jun Rose says, her red hair cupping around her face, a white rose on the left side of her head, a black one on the right.
“Why?” I say and I notice Black Widow looking away and rolling her eyes
“OPW called and they have an interest in you,” Yin says smiling, his dimples showing, “They want to use you at a televised show in a match against their tag team champions.”
“Okay,” I say, quite puzzled, “But I would need a partner. May I suggest Makoto Kang. We work well together.”
“No you may not,” the old black bearded Mao Khan says, “Makoto is not going anywhere right now; she’s working a full schedule and teaching at her martial arts school. We already have a partner for you.”
“Who?” I say
“Black Widow will be going to America with you and the two of you will be teaming together,” Khan says, “The person I spoke to in OPW said that they are interested in both of you. They are interested in several of our other stars and may buy shares of our promotion, which would be great. Go and represent us well.”
Widow and I walk out of the office and Widow seems quiet, but talkative enough to say, “I don’t like this and I don’t like you.”
“What did I ever do to you?” I say, finally putting some stern into my high pitched baby voice
“You are too nice,” she says, “You have no sense of competition and I will be carrying you through this match. You are soft.”
And with that, she went back to the locker room. I knew the next few days would be a challenge as I headed home to pack. They gave me a tape of the OPW World Tag Team Champions Shay and Yuri. Shay is White and is 5’5” 140 lbs, with puffy red hair and brown eyes, very busty. She was in the special forces to say she’s only nineteen, but she’s the powerhouse of the team and very hotheaded, the type of girl who has a strategy, but once she gets hit, she goes all out. Yuri is 5’9” 140 lbs with dyed violet hair and hazel eyes and she’s more like a graceful martial artist; watching these tapes, she fights like a ballerina or trapeze artist would… similar to me with flips and twirls, but the interviews give away a bubbly personality (author’s note: Shay and Yuri are based on Kay and Yuri from the anime “Lovely Angels: The Dirty Pair. Whenever it’s this similar and this obvious where I got these two from, I want to site the source material out of respect for the original creators. I can‘t use the name “Kay” because there’s already a “Kay” in OPW lol). I notice that these two do as much arguing as they do fighting… I guess that will make me feel right at home teaming up with someone who hates me like Black Widow. I watch the rest of the tape, meditate for two hours, and head to bed. I don’t know what awaits me in America or even what city I’m going to, but I’m eager and nervous at the same time.
TO BE CONTINUED...
