To Summon the Storm; To Live Your Truth; Stevens vs Connelly

Mad Dog Connelly vs Erick Stevens [Dog Collar Match] DPW 12/12/25

Erick Stevens didn't come back for fame, fortune, or glory. He didn't come back to get a cushy agent or coach job. He was out of the game, was living his life, was raising his family. He was done.

But life has a way of not being done with any of us. 

He saw Mad Dog Connelly out on the horizon, off in the distance, and unlike so many of the Mad Dog's opponents, unlike commentators and even fans, he knew Connelly for what he was. He was a test, a crucible, an obstacle sent down by the gods so that man could prove himself, so that he could be pushed to the limit, so that he could know the truth within his own heart. He was a white whale worthy of turning Stevens into a modern day Ahab, to send him back out to sea.

No matter what he said, no matter what he claimed, no matter what he convinced himself that he believed, Erick Stevens came back for one reason and one reason alone.

He came back to live his truth.

So he started the work. He trained. He prepared. He fought with friends at his side. He gauged himself in contention for a title, and finding himself wanting, he called back a friend to push him to be his very best.

He grew stronger, sharper, fiercer. Yet he wasn't ready. He wasn't close to being ready. 

But then life doesn't care if you're ready or not.

Deadlock was closing. There may not have been another opportunity. 

Sometimes you can't just live your truth. Sometimes you have to seize it.

He stole the chain. He stormed the ring. He disrupted the show before the main event. He laid this unholy, profane instrument of leather and steel on the mat before him. 

He made an offering.

The gods heard it.

Mad Dog Connelly was summoned to the ring, bringing with him the storm. 

Erick Stevens charged headlong into it.

He was not ready for this, but that did not mean he was not prepared. He took the fight to Connelly, brawling evenly with him, reversing a shot towards the post, tossing him into chairs, tossing a chair down upon him. 

It was not enough to just summon Connelly, however. He needed to chain him, so that he could chain himself to him, so that he could face the trial as the gods intended. Connelly was no mere beast. He had a mind of his own, a will of his own. He was a mountain to climb, but this mountain contained a canny sort of lava within. He resisted Stevens' efforts and bound Stevens instead with the chain while he remained untethered.

Chain in hand, he began to rain whipping blows upon Stevens, the storm bringing thunder and hail. In control of the moment, the aspirant stunned, cowed, battered, Connelly went under the ring, found another instrument of destruction, a screwdriver. Stevens was an open target, but an unyielding one. He kept coming back for more. 

So when Connelly opened him up with the screwdriver, things shifted. The chain had been the first offering, but this was no simple Mad Dog; this was Cerberus, hound of hell, and for him to affix the collar around his own neck, a second offering would be necessary, an offering of blood. 

With Stevens opened up and the collar around Connelly's neck, they were finally connected by the chain, and so connected, Stevens was able to pull himself back into the fight, using Connelly as a tether to drag himself closer to life, closer to truth. They crashed into one another, Stevens with a rolling forearm, Connelly with a low dropkick in the corner, Stevens with a powerslam, Connelly with a torpedoing headbutt, until finally Stevens wrapped the chain around his body, became one with it, and propelled himself into Connelly again and again. 

With a lariat, with a powerbomb, he finally took control, finally had the beast on his heels. Those blows would have felled almost any other man, but Connelly was no man. Stevens escalated matters, placing chairs in the center of the ring, meaning to utilize another powerbomb. Connelly thrashed and strained at the confines of the double underhook and back body dropped Stevens into them instead. 

Now Connelly looked to end it, locking in a half crab. Stevens began to crawl. Up until this point, he had been a man fighting, straining, pulling against nature, but now he had to become something more, a beast himself that could contest with the gods. He crawled to the corner, grabbed the abandoned screwdriver, and gauged at Connelly's knee. Thus freed, thus lost to the moment, living a truth beyond that of mere men, he jammed it between Connelly's toes, looking for a literal Achilles heel.

But Connelly was no hero, and that would not be enough. He went straight for the soft fleshy bits that all men have, tearing at Stevens' eye to escape. This was entering endgame. Seeing the red of his blood and Connelly's, Stevens charged in. Connelly lived his whole life in these moments, swam in this truth, and redirected Stevens over the top, into the hanging choke with which he'd slaughtered many a prey. 

Stevens hadn't been ready yet. The time hadn't been right. It was too soon. Connelly was too much. 

That's the thing, though. We're never ready. We're never truly prepared for what life throws at us. You can read every book. You can train every day. You can prepare for every eventuality. Life will still find a way to screw it all up and leave you gasping for air. 

It's in that space of risk and uncertainty that we truly feel alive and it's what we do in that moment that defines us. 

And what Stevens did here? He persevered. He stared truth in the eye and he did not blink. He managed to crawl back over the top. He survived the subsequent lariat from a Connelly that had been laying in wait. And when the hangman's choke followed, he pressed off against the top turnbuckle to land on his feet. 

He had tried to fight fire with fire, to embrace the monster he had become to defeat a monster, but when trying for his own hangman's choke, he got caught up in the chain. The spark of the man that still remained burst aflame. He shifted direction slamming a forearm into the back of the Connelly's head.

Then, with a moment so purchased, he took off the collar, becoming a man once again. In possession of his facilities once more, having passed through the crucible and seized control of his own fate, Stevens set up one last chair and dropped Connelly upon it, slaying the white whale and earning a three count that felt impossible both a few minutes and a few months before.

It's easy to mistake Mad Dog Connelly as some mere monster, but he's not. He's not the Minotaur, but the labyrinth itself. By traversing this ordeal, Stevens found not a mere earthly treasure, no golden fleece, but instead something that we all search for inside ourselves and that so few of us ever find. 

He found his truth, and he'll live every day of the rest of his life feeling the phantoms aches and lingering exultation of that discovery. 

The question now is this: now on the other side of this odyssey, what will Stevens do next?

And as for Mad Dog Connelly? He'll rise up again, fury and anguish in those crystal clear eyes, for the gods created him with Purpose and weary as he may be, it is not yet his time to rest.

Not while others still have their own truths to live.