Counsel from the Viper
The next morning.
I had just checked out and stepped out of the hotel when I found someone waiting for me.
Booker-Lee? No.
Tiffany McMahon? No.
...Incredibly enough, it was Lance Orton.
The man had been standing awkwardly outside my cheap business hotel, and he shuffled over as I spotted him.
“Uh, h-hey.”
And then he greeted me.
Dorky sunglasses and a dress shirt. The trunk bag every pro wrestler hauls around looked strangely out of place on him.
He looked every bit as awkward as the bag did.
Truth be told, I hadn't expected him to reach out out of the blue either. Still, the moment he took the initiative to greet me, I had a decent guess as to why he'd contacted me.
He's at the age when a man carries a lot of worries.
It was surely for that kind of reason.
“Uh, did you eat breakfast yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, funny thing, I happened to find a pretty good sushi restaurant. Want to go?”
“...”
Don't tell me this bastard thinks I'm Japanese and that's why he suggested it.
A refreshingly creative form of racism, that.
Even actual Japanese people don't eat sushi for breakfast.
Is he an idiot?
But I couldn't be bothered to call it out, so I decided to let it slide.
“Let's just find somewhere nearby.”
“O-okay.”
“Yeah, there was a place around here that does a breakfast set.”
I started walking, dragging my own trunk bag behind me. Orton scrambled to follow, and a strange tension hung over us the whole way.
The reason he'd wanted to see me was, well... how to put this delicately — he needed some counseling.
Of course, the Orton of today was an arrogant, insufferable piece of garbage who looked down on everyone.
But that was only because everyone around him kept propping him up.
The company's future. A handsome face, height, a sculpted physique — and on top of all that, he was white.
He was, to the letter, exactly the kind of talent the company wanted. So he'd been given a massive push from the moment he signed.
Hunter and Flair had both marked him early on, and he'd climbed all the way to the Intercontinental Championship — the belt on the second tier.
Strip all of that away, though, and he was still a rookie who knew nothing.
That's why I always carried this question with me... so he would say in his autobiography, years later. Why is the crowd's booing toward me different from the boos other heels receive? Why am I never accepted?
The moment he understood the answer, he grew — and he became Sin's rival.
Which is to say, until then, he had been working under a crushing weight of pressure.
And honestly, the pressure on a wrestler in the ring is no joke.
Tens of thousands in the arena. Millions more watching on television.
Every single one of them judging you.
Some might ask here:
Isn't a heel getting booed a good thing, no matter what kind of boos they are?
But boos have levels of quality.
Good boos come when the audience is deeply immersed in the story. That's why, if the heel wins in the end but the story holds up, the people still send up a roar of appreciation.
The boos raining down on Orton were the exact opposite. It was closer to what I'd once described to Hunter as the x-factor reaction.
Pure, raw backlash against the man himself.
Who do you think you are, holding that spot? We don't accept you.
The wrestlers weren't fools either — they could tell the difference perfectly well.
Good boos elevate the value of both the performer and the company. Bad boos did the opposite.
Just as it's hard for a babyface to draw genuinely great cheers, it's hard for a heel to draw genuinely great boos.
In those early days, Orton was one of those performers who drew the bad kind — a wrestler on the verge of failing.
He even cried about it, you know.
It was hard to imagine this insufferable punk bawling his eyes out in his hotel room. Even so, I was a little proud of him for coming to find me.
In fact, that was exactly why I'd locked horns with him in the first place — to make him come to me bent at the waist.
It was happening sooner than I'd expected, but everything else was flowing precisely the way I'd planned.
“Where are the rest of them?”
“The rest?”
“Your buddies.”
“Ah, I told them I had some business here and slipped away.”
“I see.”
“What about you? Don't you have Booker or your friends around?”
“Someone called for me, so I stayed behind.”
I gave the short answer and pushed open the diner door, stepping inside. The place smelled gloriously of sizzling sausage. The staff recognized us and showed us to a table, and we took the most tucked-away corner we could find, ordering quietly.
I ordered a protein-heavy meal. Orton ordered the same thing — and then added pancakes on top.
I called over the waitress.
“Cancel the pancakes, please.”
“What? Why?”
“Because if he eats them, he dies.”
“Wait, what—”
“Do what I say.”
When I glared at him for a moment, Orton finally gave up and canceled the pancakes. The waitress, who'd been scribbling down the order, flashed a little smile.
“You two were fantastic yesterday.”
“Ah, thank you.”
“Watching from the stands, I could really feel the difference in your presence. But you two must be pretty close in real life, huh?”
She was getting a bit excited, poking into personal territory. Orton's eyes darted away, flustered, so I answered for him.
“We are close.”
“Wow! That's amazing! The world of pro wrestling really is something else!”
“We're certainly close. It just makes punching each other in the face a little awkward.”
I gave a suitably diplomatic answer, and the waitress retreated, satisfied. Orton finally opened his mouth.
“...Were we close?”
“What do you want me to say — that we're actually not, and you suddenly demanded to meet me out of nowhere, right in front of her?”
“N-no...”
“Pull yourself together, Orton. This is no time to be putting on airs in front of me.”
“Wh-what's that supposed to mean?”
“Why people hate you. What the difference is between you and me. That's what you came to ask, isn't it?”
“...”
Orton's eyes went wide.
He hemmed and hawed for quite a while, and only after the pre-meal coffee arrived did he finally manage to speak.
“You... you really do know everything, don't you.”
“Did it really take you that long just to say that?”
“Y-you didn't have to be so harsh about it. We're eating together, looking each other in the face. Did you really have to?”
“Every time I look at you, my split forehead starts aching again. Something must be wrong with my brain — the words come out rough.”
“That's because—”
Another stretch of agonizing. The breakfast plates had already landed on the table before the answer finally came.
“I'm sorry. It was my fault.”
“Do you actually believe that?”
“I-I learned it from Hunter.”
“What a wonderful teacher.”
“He said you can't let anyone look down on you. That you have to beat the hell out of any wrestler below you, no exceptions, so the hierarchy is set in stone.”
“Below you? Says who?”
“Well... that's what they told me.”
“So that's why you're such an arrogant bastard.”
He wasn't entirely wrong. Rookies generally got trampled in the locker room — that was just how it went.
“But I did everything those guys told me to, and I'm not happy with the results. So that's why you came to me?”
“...Yeah.”
“Do you want advice, or do you want a solution?”
“Both?”
“Pick one.”
“Hmm... the solution, then...”
“Hand me the belt.”
“...What?”
“You've never once handed the belt over properly as a heel. Your last feud — who was it with, and how did it go? Tell me.”
“Uh... Rock Bandnam.”
“What was the story?”
“Just a title match. We fought over the belt, that's it.”
“...”
“I mocked him for being short, and I insulted his father.”
“And Rock Bandnam?”
“He swore on his father's honor that he would win, no matter what.”
“Then here's your question. Did it make any narrative sense for you to win?”
“...I just did what I was told.”
“If you were a dog we kept in our yard, that would be perfectly fine. But you're a human being, and you're a champion — which means you answer for your own actions.”
I stabbed a sausage with my fork and swallowed it.
“That's why they hate you.”
“Because I did what everyone told me to?”
“Blaming other people again. The problem is that you've lived your whole life without ever thinking for yourself.”
“U-uhm...”
“The fact that they fed Rock Bandnam a script like that is a problem too. If they were going to make him lose, they should've at least done it halfway. The man staked his father's honor on that match — what the hell were they thinking giving him an ending like that?”
“So... I should have lost.”
“Look at the great industry scripts. How many of them have the babyface stake everything he has — everything — only to eat the loss?”
“...If that happened often, there wouldn't be any babyfaces left in the pro wrestling business.”
“Exactly. And you swallowed that win whole. That's where the disgust came from. That script utterly demolished Rock Bandnam's standing.”
I pointed my fork at Orton.
“It makes no sense. Nobody can immerse themselves in it. People think you're being handed far too much, far too fast. So the boos coming at you aren't coming from the story — they're coming from reality.”
“From reality...”
“A heel takes the pin when it's time to take the pin. But you're winning way too much. That's why you're a son of a bitch nobody wants to look at.”
“So that's why you want the belt. You're one of the hottest babyface rookies in the company right now.”
“That's right. And there's another reason I want you to pick me as your feud.”
“Wh-what reason?”
“Because I can fill in the part of you that still hasn't been accepted.”
“That is...”
“We'll settle it when the feud begins.”
I took a sip of water.
“Honestly, it's not time yet. Booker and I are planning to take the tag team titles first.”
“I heard about that.”
“And those tag titles are only holding up because of Flair. If you and Batista had been champions, you'd have been drowning in the same ugly boos you get with your Intercontinental belt.”
“So there's a difference between Flair and us?”
“Obviously, you idiot. Flair is a genuine, once-in-a-generation hyper super—”
Catching myself mid-rant, I shut my mouth and composed myself.
“Figure it out yourself.”
“Ah, come on! Keep talking!”
“Heh. Do you really think now's the time to be raising your voice at me?”
“U-uhm...”
Orton clamped his mouth shut. I slid the check across the table to him.
“You can pay the consulting fee in installments.”
“Installments...?”
“Come find me after every show from now on. If I like what I hear, you'll cover the rental car and every meal we've had. All of it.”
“Mm.”
Orton took the check.
And just like that, the deal was struck.
August 2004.
Summer Suplex — one of WWF's four crown-jewel pay-per-views.
The Big Four dwarfed every ordinary pay-per-view. The feuds ran deeper, the match cards ran longer, and the fans who packed the building came expecting conclusions — not teases. This year, the crowd had blown past a hundred thousand without breaking a sweat.
I was confident that our match had played no small part in drawing that kind of expectation.
The chant rolled on and on.
We were deep into the final stretch of the match. Up in the ring, I rose to my feet, feeling my body hit its physical limit.
Nick Flair's craft was still superb, but his conditioning was a real problem — and because the picture suffered for it, my primary opponent for this match had been Batista.
And this man, honestly, had zero natural talent for pro wrestling.
“Batista, stay with me!”
“Ghhk...”
“This is it! Dig deep!”
As I'd said before — too much muscle mass actually drains your stamina, because your body burns energy just hauling its own weight around. On top of that, Batista had debuted late and was already thirty-five. Yet he still carried muscles straining at the seams, and his gas tank paid the price.
So I had designed our entire feud and every match in it around one principle: put Batista in positions where he could shine anyway.
Thanks to that, the crowd's reaction to him had returned to normal. And now, the finish had arrived.
CRACK—!
My knee strike — the one the company had christened the Stinger — slammed dead-center into the face of the rising Batista.
But he stayed up.
His whole body toppled backward, yet he staggered, wobbled — and held his ground.
That was the selling I had drilled into Batista. The crowd erupted at the sight of it, a deafening wall of cheers.
Gasping in front of him, I gave Batista's chest a light shove.
Only then did the man go down.
He'd passed out on his feet.
Having protected Batista's standing all the way to the end, I collapsed on top of him and hooked the leg for the cover. The referee dropped, and the crowd — every one of them lost in the match — counted along as one.
[1!! 2!! 3!!]
DING DING DING!!
The ring bell announcing the end of the match rolled through the colossal arena.
Over the swelling music, I leaned down to the ear of the fallen Batista and whispered.
“Thank you.”
“Good... work... out... there...”
He answered between ragged breaths. Maybe it was because we'd built this feud together, trading ideas back and forth, but he'd grown genuinely warm toward me.
Even warmer than he ever managed to be around Hunter.
At that very moment, Booker-Lee — who'd been brawling with Flair down on the floor — climbed back up into the ring with the belt in hand.
“Hey! Kid!!”
His face split into a huge grin.
“You killed it out there!! That was the greatest!! You are the GREATEST of all time!!”
Overcome, Booker didn't care one bit about appearances — he just wrapped me up in a crushing bear hug.
With the crowd thundering my name to the rafters, I raised the belt high above my head.
Little by little, my worth was starting to get through — even on the WWF main stage.