History Lesson: Ronnie Long & Daeriq Damien

[Old Line Jeff]

Ronnie Long made his professional wrestling debut in what was then known as the Global Wrestling Federation (it would later become Global Wrestling, and then GLOBAL).  He debuted in the fall of the year 2000.

At the time, Ronnie was an unknown signing. Twenty-four years of age, he refused to answer questions as to where he trained to wrestle, and won his first match with a high jump guillotine legdrop.

Daeriq Damien, on the other hand, had arrived a month or two before Long, and was a major signing - GWF President Jason Ayers believed that Damien had main event potential, and made him the original corner stone of what was, honestly, yet another Corporation ripoff, the Ayers Foundation.  Young Ronnie was invited to join the Foundation, and moved into a team with Daeriq Damien.  The idea was that Damien could teach a few things to the young rookie.

Damien and Long won the GWF Xtreme Tag Titles, a lower card gimmick tag team championship where matches took place exclusively under hardcore rules.  More prestigously, Long defeated future multi-time GLOBAL champion Ben J. "Firestarter" Palethorpe to win the Television Title. 

However, despite undercard success, Damien did not develop into the main eventer Ayers was looking for, and new talent were added to the Foundation, including a tag team called Heavy Artillery.  Damien and Long were pushed to the back end of the stable, with Ayers withholding a World Tag Title shot from the pair.  A wrestler named Vegas was one of the various faces opposing The Foundation, and Ayers locked Damien and Long in a room with Vegas' valet Lady Luck (real first name Kyrsten, last name not on record).  He ordered them to attack her in exchange for their tag title shot - Damien did willingly, Long reluctantly only when Ayers threatened to fire him.

Lady Luck subsequently suffered a miscarriage.  Ayers actually apologized, settled with her out of court, allegedly for multi-millions, and left GWF. Long and Damien were not held liable - the room could not be unlocked from the inside and they were found to have been illegally coerced into the act.

Around this same time, Long's then-girlfriend Deanna D'aimore suffered an injury to her achilles tendon in her third and final match as a pro wrestler.  Long departed GWF, and although he would make a few returns over the years, he wouldn't have any more sustained runs with the company.

In the spring of 2001, Jeff Andrews had opened the Innovative Wrestling Alliance, and successfully poached Damien and Long from GWF.  He, like Ayers, had planned to build a heel stable.  Damien immediately went non-compliant, Long didn't.  The two drifted apart in IWA.  Damien had more success, winning the IWA Heavyweight Title, but he was also suspended when he was caught doping during a shot at the CAL World Title (IWA was part of an interfed called the Coalition of Affiliated Leagues).  Long would remain in the tag team ranks doing the heel stable thing.  GWF and IWA briefly interpromoted - IWA backed out when it became obvious that GWF wasn't interested in an equal partnership and chose to treat IWA as a developmental promotion - and Long ended up in an IWA version of the same stable he was in in GWF, The Foundation.  He won the IWA Tag Titles alongside stablemate Chris Wright. 

It was during this period that Long began drifting towards friendship with Jeff Andrews, Heidi Christenson, and the other Untouchables, but that is not the focus of this history lesson.  Long was kicked out of The Foundation after losing a match to Heidi on PPV.  This is where he began working deathmatches, and although his performance in them due to pain tolerance and willingness to take punishment - notoriously taking a headshot from a chair wrapped in razor wire and kicking out of the ensuing pin - was well-regarded he also couldn't stay healthy long enough to build up a successful streak.

Long and Damien would not interact until IWA had closed and Old Line Wrestling opened.  Daeriq Damien had been teaming with his then-girlfriend Gemma Lockhart, and when OLW abruptly switched from a traditional tag division to a trios tag division, Long was brought on as the third man of the team.  Getting older and having developed a melancholic streak after his suspension from IWA, Damien was as interested in egging Long into being the person he was during their time in GWF than the person he had become.  OLW, being a Maryland based regional fed, had a Chesapeake Title instead of a Television Title - Long won the Chesapeake Title and lost it in his first defense due to dirty tricks from Damien.  Damien subsequently tried explaining to Long that the reason he'd lost is because he was willingly fighting with one hand tied behind his back - this was (and probably still is) how Daeriq Damien actually views following the rules.

Then Damien retired when OLW closed in 2008.  Long jumped to the WfWA where his career finally truly took off - during the WfWA's dying days and its vain war against DEFIANCE, Long was arguably the only WfWA wrestler who struck blood in the feud, winning the WfWA World Championship off DEFIANCE's Cobra.  The WfWA lost the war and Long was hired by DEFIANCE, but he was always seen as an outsider there and, after a disappointing Untouchables reunion, retired from wresting, married Deanna, and bought a farm in northwest Georgia. 

That was until Andrews contacted him about returning to feud with Dane's stable in NPW.  Long refused to get involved in that, pleading with Andrews to just let the Untouchables name rest in peace, but it did put NPW on his radar.  When he heard Jay Stevens and Gordon Carlson needing a tag partner, he volunteered for a one off.  A bit later he witnessed the simultaneous arrivals of the ReVenants, the Galactic Sex Pirates and the KGB, and decided to stick around.

Damien, who despite being quite the villain in some ways, couldn't handle the politically incorrect atmosphere of classic DEF and that was one place he never pestered Long in.  But within the first month that Long was active in NPW, he had again begun to try to involve himself in his former tag partner's career...