Entrant Number One
Just before the Rumble match began.
Lily Garcia, the ring announcer, began speaking in her crystalline voice.
"Up next is tonight's MAIN EVENT — a 30-Man Rumble Match!"
The voice of the WWF.
At her words, the crowd rose from their seats in a thunderous cheer.
The explanation of the Rumble rules followed, and under normal circumstances, it would now be time for entrant number one to make his entrance.
Yes — me.
But instead of an entrance, a video played on the giant screen above the entrance ramp.
Inside Gorilla Position.
"Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhh!!"
When the crowd saw my face appear on the screen, they roared their approval.
I had just finished loosening up, moments away from throwing back the curtain and stepping out — when someone called for me.
"Sin!"
I turned around, puzzled. Stacey had appeared just off-camera.
The crowd sent up another wave of cheers.
"Why are you number one?"
"I volunteered. I wanted to take a crack at John Michaels's record."
"You're truly impossible to talk out of anything."
Saying that, Stacey walked up to me and, with perfect naturalness, kissed me.
"Wooooooooooooooooo!"
...People who were pleased in more ways than one.
Romance between a man and a woman, it seems, gets a pop no matter where you are.
I froze for a moment, then wrapped my arm around Stacey's waist and let myself enjoy the kiss for a little while.
On film alone, it looked impossibly sweet. The reality was rather different.
Stacey had cracked up laughing over and over during the shoot — that scene took twelve takes before we got the okay. And afterwards she'd teased me mercilessly: 'You're a pretty good kisser. Some of those NGs were on purpose, you know.'
Anyway.
The kiss ended, and the sound engineer raised a finger toward me.
On the screen, my recorded self kept the conversation with Stacey rolling.
"What was that for?"
"A victory spell."
"Ha. The curse of a succubus, is it."
"Win the whole thing, come to my hotel room, and I'll lift the curse for you."
"Deal. Let's see you try."
Then I grabbed the camera that was filming the two of us and pushed it away.
And with that, the video ended.
"Go!"
The sound engineer threw the cue signal at the perfect moment.
'Alright.'
I slapped both my cheeks hard and shoved straight through the curtain.
A rampantly unhinged dubstep intro, bleeding into a choir of angelic voices. It matched my intent — shattering every preconceived notion — better than anything could have.
"Yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhh!"
The crowd went berserk.
150,000 human beings, not a single one holding back, rose from their seats and hurled an enormous roar of welcome at me.
"Let's go! You beautiful bastards!!"
I screamed at the top of my lungs, working both sides of the entrance ramp, wringing every last drop of reaction out of the people.
They hummed along to my music, responding with pure explosions of energy.
Smiling in satisfaction, I strode back to the middle of the ramp. At the head of that long road leading to the ring, I clenched my fist and thrust it into the air.
KABOOM-KABOOM-KABOOM-KABOOM-KABOOM-KABOOM-KRAKA-BOOM!!
I felt it — a riot of colored pyrotechnics streaking up behind my back. Gunpowder smoke billowed upward, and it swallowed my image on the camera screens whole.
I pushed through the smoke and walked forward. Blasting through everything that stood in my path, I drank in the cheers.
These people love me.
I have the talent to take their hearts and play them like an instrument.
In this moment, and this moment only, I was the greatest professional wrestler of all time.
"SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN!"
I tore down the long entrance ramp and vaulted straight into the ring.
Lily Garcia, waiting for me at the center of the ring, flinched and took a step back in surprise.
Then I flashed a wide grin, caught her by the waist, pulled her in, and collected the victory spell one more time.
"Oooooooooooooohhhhh!!"
The crowd lost their minds all over again.
Lily, hesitating for just an instant, soon had her arms around my waist as naturally as anything, her body sliding down and—
Whoa — hold on, noona. Wait a second.
Why are you grabbing my—?!
And is that your TONGUE—?!
Neither of those two things was in the script.
But Lily, as if she wanted it, pushed her tongue in with real enthusiasm, and like some fully automatic whisk—
I'll spare you any further description.
Kissed while thoroughly rattled, my expression crumbled by the subtlest of margins.
The moment our lips parted, Lily Garcia giggled — well beyond what any script called for.
"I always do this, remember?"
...So this is noona's power.
Having stood there dumbfounded for a fraction of a second, I picked the act right back up.
Thanks to that kiss, the crowd now perceived me as an even bigger star.
The charming playboy who'd won the hearts of the two women widely known as the most beautiful in the entire WWF. And that playboy was me.
"This is awesome! This is awesome! This is awesome!"
An 'awesome' chant had broken out from my entrance alone — the 'holy crap' chant that normally only erupts in the dying minutes of a classic match.
But this was only the beginning.
I tore off my jacket and leaned against the corner, waiting for entrant number two.
And of course, it was—
Keeeeeeeeee—!
"Yeeeeeeeeeeeaaaahhhh!!"
Russell Hart.
Hearing that music alone, the people were back on their feet.
I looked up at the entrance ramp with an expression that said, you've got to be kidding me. The camera drank in my face.
The commentary desk was surely in complete chaos by now, launching into the long history of the rivalry between Russell and me.
The undefeated babyface who had finally surrendered the GCW Championship belt and ascended to the main roster at last.
The moment he appeared, the crowd's roar swelled to something far greater than before.
After a beat of feigned shock, I broke into a smile aimed at Russell.
So this was how we met again.
In the ring of the King's Rumble.
Russell shed his own jacket, sprinted up onto the apron, and looked straight at me.
"Let's put on a hell of a show!"
"Ha. Someone's full of energy."
"In front of a crowd this big? I might be a little excited."
He shrugged, squared into his stance, and readied himself for battle.
I backed away to create distance, about to ease us into a feeling-out process.
Ding-ding-ding!
The bell rang, and the Rumble match was underway.
And in that instant, I changed direction and charged straight at Russell.
A Rumble is not a match you open by measuring your distance and playing chess. Especially when the ring is still sparsely populated — the fewer the bodies, the faster the tempo required to keep the crowd locked in.
But.
That was the rule when the two competitors had no history between them.
I closed the distance in a flash, stopped right in front of Russell, and spoke.
"Think you can hang?"
"That's my question to you."
He answered with a smirk.
The crowd couldn't hear a word of this — which meant, to them, it would read as pure psychological warfare.
I was mocking Russell for a split second of slow reaction, nothing more.
Every last bit of it, we expressed with nothing but our bodies and our faces.
"Uuuuuuooohhh!"
The crowd reacted enormously.
And in response, Russell marched right up and slapped me across the cheek without a shred of warning.
CRACK!
"Uuuuuuoooooohhh!!"
Another tidal wave of reaction.
In a fight between two men, a slap across the face is the ultimate insult.
Grinning through it, I started swinging wild fists at Russell. He fired right back without giving an inch.
The brawl unfolded, and the match ignited in the blink of an eye.
Russell's entrance had been a shock.
But my own stature backed it up every step of the way.
In other words, our rivalry by itself was something the fans could joyfully sink their teeth into.
That was why the conventional way to open a Rumble was to build the early going around the two of us.
It was what kept the viewers glued to the screen.
From there, entrant number three would come out — a relatively low-profile wrestler who'd get eliminated quickly, demonstrating the Rumble's rules. Number four would be mid-card. Number five, back down again. Six, seven, eight — and somewhere in there, one big-name star would emerge to lift the crowd back up, and the match would roll on like that. The big stars, naturally, don't get eliminated easily, so the bodies in the ring would keep stacking up.
But tonight, we were doing things a little differently.
Today's Rumble had been structured, start to finish, so that everyone got their moment — so that each and every one of them could earn a cheer at least once.
While Russell and I kept our war going, ninety seconds slipped by, and the countdown began.
"10! 9! 8! 7! 6! 5! 4! 3! 2! 1...!"
BEEEEEEEEEP—.
As the buzzer blared, Taburi's Japanese-flavored entrance music kicked in.
The crowd barely reacted at all. That was simply the level of star Taburi was.
He climbed into the ring and was instantly demolished by a double-team from Russell and me, sprawling flat on the mat.
Under normal circumstances, this would be where Taburi got eliminated — the textbook picture.
But before that could happen, another ninety seconds ran out, and Maino's music hit.
"Yeahh—!"
A modest pop rose from the crowd.
Plenty of people still remembered the tag team of Taburi & Maino.
Answering that call, Maino charged up the steps and threw himself at Russell and me simultaneously, coming to Taburi's rescue.
"Kuh—?!"
Their suddenly accelerated assault left me scrambling.
Russell, too, was helpless against their two-man combination attack.
Even so, the gap in stature was plain to see.
I twisted sideways, caught the charging Maino by the shoulder beneath his arm, and flipped him clean over.
WHAM—!
A scoop powerslam.
The crisp, lightning-quick motion drew a huge cheer from the crowd.
Russell, for his part, dumped Taburi with a German suplex and put him away just as cleanly.
But handling the two of them had winded us, and Russell and I each sagged against the ropes, gulping air.
Then entrant number five arrived: J-Train, a low carder.
Waddling up the steps with his enormous frame swaying, he grabbed the downed Taburi and hauled him up, trying to toss him out.
But in that exact moment—
FWOOOOOOSH!!
"Gguheok?!"
A spray of poison mist burst from Taburi's mouth.
Green Mist.
The truth of it was nothing more than water mixed with food coloring — but in the world of professional wrestling, it was a devastating weapon.
Green Mist temporarily blinds; Red Mist burns the eyes; Black Mist inflicts permanent vision damage.
There were, on top of that, all sorts of convoluted backstage explanations — Blue Mist sends opponents into a deep sleep, Yellow Mist causes paralysis — but those belonged to the twisted depths of Japanese wrestling lore. We only ever used the green.
The reality was simple: spitting a mouthful of dyed water into someone's face blurs their vision for a moment. That was all it took.
"GRAAAAAAGH—!!"
J-Train writhed in agony, spinning away blind — and a single human battering ram came thundering at his back.
WHAM—!
The Gore.
At its core, a simple move — charging in full force and driving your shoulder through the opponent.
Derived from the football technique called the 'spear tackle,' it went by the name Spear in ordinary hands. But when Maino did it, it was famous enough to carry its own name: the Gore.
J-Train launched into the air and crashed to the mat with a sound like a car wreck.
"UOOOOOOOOOOO!!"
Maino rose to his feet, roaring.
The people who'd just witnessed that glorious move remembered the past — and cheered for it.
He was a wrestler too, after all.
A man who had earned his pops, a man who had more than enough to offer the crowd.
The only thing he'd lacked was a script — and the company had thrown him away without one.
But here, tonight, in this ring, he was the Maino of old.
The man whose single Gore carved his name into the crowd's memory forever.
"Gore! Gore! Gore! Gore!"
I looked over and saw Taburi and Maino on their feet, staring at each other and grinning like idiots.
It made me happy. All of it did.
Frankly, I'd have been even happier to take that beautiful Gore myself — but Harley had put his foot down and stopped it.
Russell and I had over an hour of war ahead of us in that ring. We couldn't afford to spend ourselves early.
So instead, I drove a flying knee kick into the chest of Maino, who was busy flexing his muscles and feeling invincible.
THWACK—!
Russell likewise jumped the distracted Taburi, and together we hoisted both men up onto the top rope.
Then, rather than piling onto the fallen J-Train, the two of us turned on each other and started trading blows all over again.
Even with nothing but food coloring in the mix, it takes a while to blink your eyes back open.
And so the countdown for entrant number six began.
The crowd started chanting along at full voice.
"10! 9...!"
Good. The crowd's hot.
Let's keep this Rumble rolling. All night long.