485
It was, truly, a monstrous chorus of boos.
[BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!]
I had brilliantly betrayed the audience's expectations, and now I stood atop the entrance ramp.
A match's beginning and end can be two entirely different worlds.
When I'd first walked out to the ring, the reaction had been middling at best — an occasional flicker of ambiguous jeering, nothing more.
But a single match had changed everything.
From bell to bell, I traded blows with Greg in a back-and-forth battle, milking the crowd's anticipation for all it was worth.
And then, at the final moment, Greg grabbed my leg as I lay sprawled on the mat.
The crowd rose to their feet, expecting the Sharpshooter. Instead, I cowardly betrayed that expectation too — I kicked free from between Greg's legs and slipped out of the ring. A disqualification was declared, and a furious Russell charged into the ring.
I absorbed a few of his strikes, then scurried away beneath the ropes.
And that brought us to now.
[You Suck! You Suck! You Suck! You Suck! You Suck!]
A full-on chant had broken out.
Which meant I had done a masterful job of betraying their expectations. In other words — they had expected something of me.
Having talked plenty of trash, I'd also delivered a good match. And precisely because of that, the final betrayal had landed all the harder.
Not bad at all.
With that thought, I glanced back up at the ring, where Russell was helping Greg to his feet. I milked the mockery for everything it was worth, then made my exit to the backstage area.
After the show ended, my group crossed yet another state line, driving on to the next city.
Next week's Burning Kong would be held in Denver, Colorado.
Must've driven over a thousand kilometers.
Stepping out of the car, I could feel how thoroughly the long drive had drained me. All I wanted was to get to the hotel and collapse.
With Russell as the only person available to spell me behind the wheel, the fatigue hit twice as hard as usual.
As I stood on the asphalt taking deep breaths, Baku wandered over from the back seat, where he'd ridden the whole way.
"Tired, kid?"
"Ye-eah……"
"Tell me about it. And I didn't even drive."
"N-no, sir. I'm fine."
I hurriedly shook my head, feeling cold sweat on my neck.
Baku was great in every way except one: the man kept knocking back whiskey while he drove.
Which was why Russell and I had been trading off every three hours.
Still, all things considered, it had been fun.
Exhausting, yes — but getting to drive across the entire country like this was, in its own way, a precious experience.
Flying would be better, though.
That was a luxury reserved for someone like Maxen, who owned a private jet.
Think about it — traveling every week to cities far apart made constant flying impractical. Tickets weren't cheap, and the company offered zero support for it. So most of the roster rented cars and caravanned together with whoever they got along with.
In my past life, I'd never been close enough with the other wrestlers to travel with anyone, so it was always a grind. And that bastard Adam, once he hit the main event, outright ignored me the whole time.
That son of a bitch is probably getting his teeth kicked in by Bobby right about now. Good.
Served him right.
Having drifted into old memories, I found myself chuckling — because weirdly enough, I felt genuinely good about this. Yeah, that saying was right.
A life spent traveling hundreds of thousands of kilometers a year lay ahead of me, and still — I was happy.
Granted, that was because my career had gone well so far.
Maybe thanks to Greg's help, the crowd reactions were coming. And with them, I was actually looking forward to the next show.
I was unpacking in my hotel room, thinking along those lines, when an unexpected call came in.
"Is now a good time?"
It was Tiffany.
"Did you watch it all?"
"What? Oh — the feud? Yes, of course, all of it. I've honestly lost track of how much coffee I've had."
"Well, if you stayed up all night, I hope you at least enjoyed yourself."
"It was a blast. Funny at times, dead serious at others — a genuinely great drama. When you betrayed Russell, I honestly wondered if that was allowed."
"That's exactly why I did it."
"Fair enough. I suppose nothing's off the table when the ratings are on the line."
That wasn't what I'd meant at all.
"Anyway, I'm calling because there's some interesting news."
"What is it?"
"Burning Kong's ratings went up."
"……Hmm?"
"The team's chalking it up to there being no football game this week, but I suspect it might be because of you."
"I-I couldn't say."
I furrowed my brow. It was out of nowhere.
A single possibility flashed through my mind, but it was the kind of thing that demanded a careful approach, so I didn't say it out loud. Instead I asked again.
"Why do you think that?"
"Four point seven four million to four point eight five million. That's not a number you can wave off as coincidence. There has to be a reason."
"Perhaps GCW's audience followed us over to Burning Kong?"
"Why?"
"……"
"Are you telling me there's a viewership that watches only GCW and skips the main show entirely? I don't quite follow."
"Because the audience we've cultivated is completely different from the main show's."
"Ah. Right, that's true. GCW targeted family audiences, didn't it?"
"Exactly. If you can pull the viewership numbers by time slot, I imagine it would become much clearer."
"I'll look into it. I also want to gauge the live reaction, so we can talk about the rest when you arrive."
"Understood. I'll be waiting."
The call ended.
"Hmm."
An interesting situation, indeed.
I was standing there holding my phone when Russell emerged from the shower.
"You're not gonna wash up?"
"Got some things to think about."
"Like what?"
"Apparently we gained a hundred thousand viewers since we started appearing on Burning Kong."
"……So it is because of us?"
"I'll need to gather more data, but I'd say there's a real possibility."
WWF's main show currently carried a TV-14 rating — blood, sexual content, the works.
Which is exactly why our audience mostly never watched Burning Kong.
But had Russell's and my appearances changed that?
If this is real……
It was a staggering result.
Even I hadn't anticipated that the stories we'd built in GCW would generate this kind of ripple effect.
That evening.
Tiffany McMahon flew straight to Denver on her private jet.
Ah, to be a tycoon's daughter.
My group had burned an entire day in a beat-up rental getting here. The gap in wealth hit home all over again.
And the place she'd summoned me to was a five-star hotel downtown. Meanwhile, some of us had no lodging stipend at all and were bunking with roaches in fleabag motels.
Suffocating under a distinct sense of relative deprivation (?), I walked inside and met a bodyguard waiting alone in the lobby.
"Ah, there you are. This way, please."
Under his guidance, I took the elevator upstairs.
Forty-seventh floor.
The entire level was a bar.
"Go on in."
"……In there?"
"Yes."
Into a place packed floor to ceiling with men in James Bond tuxedos and women in glittering gowns?
Ugh, I'm exhausted already.
Resigned, I stepped inside. Leather jacket and jeans.
I definitely stood out here.
And sure enough, a staff member sidled up to me.
"Um, sir……?"
"Yes?"
"Excuse me. Might I see your room key, or something confirming you're a guest here?"
"……Don't have one."
"My deepest apologies, sir, but this establishment serves drinks only to registered guests of the hotel."
Yeah, I figured as much.
Well, of course. I understood perfectly.
And that was the exact moment it happened.
"He's with me."
Someone slid between us, cocktail glass in hand, trailing an intoxicating perfume.
Tiffany McMahon.
"Ah. Is that so, ma'am."
"Yes, don't worry about it."
Having smoothly dispatched the staff, she giggled and looked me over.
"I thought nothing on this earth could stop you in that ring. And yet here you are, oddly shy about places like this."
"……Isn't this a little too glamorous for a business conversation?"
"Is it? Seems perfectly normal to me."
"Take a look at me, then."
"Aha — right, they do offer tuxedo rentals, don't they. How about it? Though I'm not sure they'd carry your size."
"I'll pass."
"Hmm, fair. Not really the type to appreciate a necktie, are you?"
She smelled of martini.
Feeling my senses loosen just slightly, I followed in Tiffany's wake.
At a private room in the back, a laptop sat open on the table.
"What are you drinking?"
"Water."
"……Boring. I'll order you something sensible."
I ignored her and checked the data.
An Excel document.
WWF Burning Kong — Week 2, November 2002. Oklahoma City Athletic Center, blah, blah, blah. Skipping that.
The only thing I cared about was the ratings graph, broken down by time slot.
The show's opening.
4.83 million.
From there, the graph rose and fell in twenty-minute intervals — spiking, then briefly dipping.
My match with Greg pushed the viewership to 4.80 million.
And the moment it ended, the numbers plunged, sinking all the way to 4.75 million.
The final score: 4.85 million — a total count of every household that had watched at least twenty minutes of Burning Kong.
This is quite……
An astonishing result.
"Well? What do you make of it?"
"What's your read?"
"Hmm, hard to say. Oh — here, your drink."
"……"
I said water.
My plan had been to talk, make my exit, and get some shut-eye.
"As I said on the phone — it looks like GCW's audience migrated over."
"That's my read too. Our viewership clearly drops off right after our match ends, doesn't it?"
"Yes. Optimistically speaking, at least fifty thousand of them watched Burning Kong specifically for you and Russell's storyline."
"Exactly."
I nodded. It was almost certainly true.
Why was I so sure?
Because in my past life, I'd lived through this exact thing. The moment a paradigm shifts.
But this time, unlike at GCW, it had happened without any deliberate orchestration on my part.
The audience is changing.
Just like with Shawn Cena.
The family fans we'd targeted in GCW were chasing us all the way into the WWF, tuning in to the show.
Granted, it was a phenomenon born of Russell's and my storyline continuing on —
But this will help.
I swallowed.
"Tiffany."
"Hm? What?"
"Do you happen to know how many tickets are left for Never Escape?"
"……No idea."
"Find out for me."
"You really do treat people like errand girls."
She gaped at me for a moment — then, without another word, picked up the phone.
"Hey, it's me. How many tickets are left for Never Escape right now?"
Her face flushed scarlet as she drained her martini and asked.
Well, thank goodness she can still understand what I'm saying.
"What? You clocked out already? Then go back in and check, obviously?"
"……"
Or not.
"……Yes. Uh-huh. Right. I'll wait, so don't hang up — go back and find out."
With that, Tiffany set the phone down on the table and smiled.
"They're going back to check now."
Thank God I'm not on the receiving end of this bloodline's high-handedness.
"So — anything new from Hunter?"
"The moment I mention your name, his tail wags like you wouldn't believe. Genuinely fascinating. I was certain he'd come after you at least once."
"That bastard doesn't have the guts. He's got no affa●r going for him either."
"……No affa, what?"
"Point is, the man's all bark and zero charm."
"……Come to think of it, you two dated, didn't you?"
"Huh? How did you know that? It was a very brief secret romance."
"……I inferred it from our conversation just now."
The absurdity slipped out before I could stop it — a piece of future knowledge I should never have spoken aloud.
Tiffany McMahon would eventually marry Triple H, but that was nearly a decade away.
"Anyway, a man needs audacity. At least as much as you have."
"You're quite drunk."
"Am I wrong though? A GCW rookie mailing documents straight to the main event with that kind of nerve? You're the first."
Tiffany beamed at me.
She was beautiful, so in theory the smile should have been lovely — but her eyes had gone glassy and it was frankly terrifying.
"Okay then. Let's do right by each other, as business partners. I'll oversee your GCW operation, and you'll keep climbing in the main show — become champion, even~."
I decided to ignore that.
Because someone on the phone on the table was shouting.
[Miss! There are still about twenty thousand tickets left for Never Escape!]
"Great work."
[Yes, Miss!]
Excuse me — I was the one who answered.
"That's a lot left, isn't it?"
[Absolutely! The Chairman's in the hospital saying if you don't sell them all, he'll kill every last one of you!]
"Go get some rest."
[Thank you! Miss!]
He means me.
I narrowed my eyes and ended the call myself.
Either way, it was valuable intel.
If we sell out those tickets, crowd reaction won't be a concern at all.
The problem was how.
"You do have an affa●ir, don't you?"
Somehow I was now expected to discuss the topic with this lunatic who'd just thrown me under the bus.
What am I going to do with her.