The Hype-Ro Crisis
The Hype-Ro virus outbreak of 2004. First appearing in a small Mexican town, the virus went on to infect countless people across the entire globe.
Its fatality rate was close to zero — yet in a way, an even worse problem emerged, and it put people through absolute hell.
Chills. Fever. And vomiting of catastrophic proportions.
On the transmitted footage, Booker-Lee was heaving everything he had eaten into a barf bag.
...He had apparently had a burrito.
There was of course no way to smell it through a screen, but the dismal color of what came up was more than enough to drag every single person watching straight down into the abyss.
And the footage kept rolling. One after another, wrestler after wrestler I knew personally could be seen clutching bags and retching, projected onto the wall in an endless stream.
The few dozen team leads watching it all wore expressions of deepening nausea.
And it wasn't just because of the videos.
An arena in Nottingham, England. In total, only four wrestlers had reached Europe by a separate route and been lucky enough to dodge the virus:
Me. Shawn Cena. JBL. And Triple H.
So there we all were — those four, plus Bart, Tiffany, and roughly thirty team leads from Burning Kong and Rakedown, gathered in a single room.
"...God damn it all."
Bart Maxen heaved a sigh. Only minutes earlier he had been erupting at the wrestlers — You'd better haul yourselves over here on fighting spirit alone! — but the moment the so-called 'evidence' footage sent from the States began to play, he had gone silent.
No matter what anyone said, there was no way they could board a flight to Europe in that state.
A sealed cabin slowly filling with the smell of burrito... just imagining it was enough to bring the bile up my throat.
Either way, this was the worst possible situation.
Because the shows we had to produce right now weren't just one. Burning Kong. And Rakedown.
And it wasn't even a single city. Nottingham and London, in England. We were expected to produce Monday Night Burning Kong in one and Thursday Night Rakedown in the other.
As if that weren't bad enough, the European tour ran a full four weeks. For four weeks, we would have to make shows out of four wrestlers.
It was an insane set of conditions.
Perhaps that was why the very people who should have been putting their heads together and squeezing out ideas sat there in silence, unable to string a sentence together. Canceling the tour outright would mean the company swallowing a massive financial loss — and even if everyone flew back to America, there was no way to produce a proper show there either.
Bart's expression was mournful. Before him, Tiffany couldn't carelessly open her mouth, and neither could anyone else.
But I was leaning against the wall at the back of the room, doing my damnedest to hold in the laughter.
The reason was simple. I knew exactly how this European tour — a crisis for the history books — would unfold, and how it would be resolved. All that remained was to watch everyone's reactions and slip in at precisely the right moment.
Bart spoke first.
"...What do we do? Director."
"W-well... perhaps we refund all tickets in full and return to the United States?"
"Head Writer."
"What if we edited together old matches and aired them documentary-style? Featuring retired wrestlers, like Rockcold or The Pock."
"...That's all you've got?"
Bart Maxen went on to call out several more of the team leads and demand ideas. Not a single one managed to live up to his expectations. Every last one of them pitched ideas built on the assumption that the shows would be canceled.
It was the conventional way to think. By any common-sense standard, running a show with four wrestlers was impossible. Physically impossible.
But the real idea was the one that shattered that common sense.
THUD!
"You're paid that much and the best you can come up with is THAT?!"
Bart exploded.
"Four weeks of shows run like that shitshow, and you think the fans will happily keep coming back?!"
"..."
"A documentary of the legends? What I need right now isn't those old bastards! It's current, active stars!"
"I-I'm sorry, sir!"
"If you've got time to spout that garbage, go drag the wrestlers over from the States!!"
Terrified by Bart's tirade, the staff could not manage a single word. It wasn't that they didn't understand him. Ninety-nine percent of the wrestlers he paid good money to employ had just been rendered 'unusable.'
But losing your temper in a situation like this helped absolutely nothing.
Everyone's terrified.
The staff were afraid that Bart's next words would be a round of layoff notices. Before things deteriorated any further, I decided, it was time for me to step in.
I had no idea whose head this idea had popped out of in my past life. But in the present circumstances, it was guaranteed to sound sweet in Bart's ears.
The moment I said it, every head in the room turned toward me in bewilderment. Tiffany McMahon looked the most stricken of all, her face nearly drained of color.
Understandable, really. To them, I must have looked like a man reaching for a poisoned chalice. But then, this particular poison didn't work on me.
"...Ah, it's you, is it."
"The sanitation checks were your side's failure, weren't they? Airport or anywhere else — let's file suit first and recoup the damages."
"Yes. That's the right call."
Bart Maxen rose from his seat. Putting on a threatening expression, he shoved his way through the crowd and came toward me.
"So. Do you actually have an idea?"
"Of course I do."
"Let's hear it, then. Though I trust you've steeled yourself to match."
"There are pro wrestling promotions scattered all across Europe, aren't there?"
"So?"
"We put their wrestlers on our shows. We hold an open recruitment for new WWF talent, right there in Europe."
At those words, a flicker of suspicion crossed Bart's eyes for an instant. I swatted it away and laid out the rest of my proposal with total precision.
"And Hunter, Cena, JBL, and I would serve as judges — split between Burning Kong and Rakedown."
"Judges?"
"Yes. Obviously we'll need to speak with the fans who bought tickets about the current situation and the refund process... but at the end of the day, people only come to a show when WWF Superstars are on the card, don't they?"
Seen in that light, the four of us were a perfectly chosen lineup.
The reigning WWF World Champion, Triple H.
The reigning WWF Universe Champion, JBL.
And then, to set off those two veterans — the rookies.
The U.S. Champion, Shawn Cena.
And the WWF World Tag Team Champion, Sin.
Bart mulled over my words for a moment, then turned back around. Returning to his seat, he addressed the Head Writer sitting right beside it in a voice gone cold.
"Move."
"Y-yes, sir!"
"Sin. Over here."
I could feel the weight of everyone's gazes. They were all looking at the man who had produced an answer on the spot to this worst-case crisis, and every gaze carried a different emotion.
Admiration, affection, gratitude, relief.
Anger, contempt, envy, disgust.
At some point, I had come to hold that kind of position even on this enormous flagship show.
Not that it will last beyond these four weeks.
One thing was certain: for the duration of the European tour, I was going to be a superstar.
The moment I took the seat beside him, Bart swiveled his chair toward me and got down to business. At some point, the team leads had packed themselves in thickly around us.
"Now, then."
"Yes, Boss."
"Walk me through it. In detail."
"First, we'll need contracts with the small and mid-sized promotions in the countries on our tour — England, Germany, France, and Spain."
Bart flicked a glance. One of the team leads immediately hurried out of the room.
"Then we collect the wrestlers' data, organize it, and build the scripts around it. Ideally we'd run actual tryouts, of course..."
I turned to the Director.
"What do you think?"
"What?"
"We have three days. Is that enough time to receive the data, gather the wrestlers, and run the tryouts?"
"Well..."
"Which is why each promotion gets three hours to reply. Packaged, of course, as the opportunity of a lifetime."
Bart flicked his glance again. Another person bolted for the door.
To stay on schedule, everyone would have to move at a truly breakneck pace. Which was why Bart, too, skipped any deep deliberation and threw himself on instinct — simply because my idea was that good. He believed in it completely, and he was determined to run the shows without a single hitch, whatever it took.
If this fails, I get fired. But there was no chance of that. In my past life, the exact same method, at the exact same point in time, had been a roaring success.
The peoples of Europe hold a fierce competitive pride against one another, and the four-week script took aim at that rivalry with sniper precision. Fans cheered for the wrestlers selected from their own countries while enjoying the show.
It was textbook national-pride booking — and precisely because of that, people sank in even deeper. After all, their own countrymen were appearing on the WWF show they loved watching, free to flaunt their talents to their hearts' content.
"For starters, the four of us will have to appear on Burning Kong and Rakedown every single week."
"What about matches?"
"We'll vary it. Tag matches with the wrestlers we each pick, singles matches against the other side's selections — we could even work as managers."
"Sort that out with the management team. Your ideas will be adopted wherever possible. ...Good."
The broad direction of the work was settled.
"The shows proceed as scheduled."
On his feet now, Bart began issuing orders to each of the team leads. Perhaps because this was a moment of crisis, there was no limit to how grave he looked.
"First — get on the phone with every customer who bought tickets this week. Get the intro script into production, and the second the co-operation contracts with the promotions are done, bring the wrestlers in and start selecting!"
Everyone, of one mind, hung on his words. Then, clenching his fist, Bart let out his final order at the top of his lungs.
Now that sounded like him.
Three and a half hours later.
The wrestlers began arriving from Britain's small promotions — IPW, AJW, FAW, and the like. Unlike the WWF, most European wrestling promotions kept rosters of around twenty wrestlers. They traded talent actively with one another and ran operations that leaned into their local character.
Maybe that was why most of the wrestlers filing into the 20,000-capacity arena looked stiff with nerves. And then came the tryouts.
Could they stand in a ring? How did they look? How did they carry themselves? Roughly thirty wrestlers were assessed in rapid succession.
From the second-level stands, I studied the face of each and every one of them.
Yeah... they're all a bit rough, as expected.
These weren't full-time professionals like me; they wrestled as a side gig, and most of them didn't look like much. Unimpressive builds. Unimpressive heights. And thoroughly unimpressive skills.
Even so, I examined every single wrestler with care. There had to be a shining uncut stone in here somewhere.
"So? How's it looking?"
As I sat there, someone dropped heavily into the seat beside me.
"Tiffany."
"I came because I want your read. If any of them strike you as worth using, tell me right away."
"Hmm. Not yet..."
But as I answered and turned back toward the ring, my eyes went round before I knew it. Found it. The uncut gem.
"...Will O Speedy?"
"Hm?"
"No, uh — hold on a second."
The name had slipped out of my mouth in pure shock. Ignoring Tiffany's puzzled head-tilt, I checked again. Standing in the ring was a scrawny young man who looked to be somewhere around 185 centimeters tall.
But that unmistakable presence of his — there was no doubt about it. This was a wrestler I knew.
Will O Speedy. He had worked the British circuit, and despite his height, he was a high-flyer who soared through the air as if gravity were a suggestion. The secret was that skinny frame of his.
And talent.
But he wasn't the archetype the WWF looked for. And so he had crossed over to a Japanese promotion — and become a massive star. Performing gorgeous matches entirely on his own terms, he had picked up the nickname 'the Aerial Hitman.' His success in Japan made him, quite literally, a legend.
And that style was unchanged even now.
When the kid hit his bump with a THUD!, everyone watching seemed to think it had come out a mess. Even Tiffany beside me muttered, what on earth is that? — visibly flabbergasted for a moment.
But that was exactly right.
With his astonishingly flexible body, Will deliberately fell just barely, dangerously short of disaster, staging danger out of thin air. He had admitted as much himself, years later, in an interview.
But.
He's doing that NOW?
In the middle of a tryout, the kid was taking bumps strictly on his own philosophy's terms. The boy was stubborn, apparently. Or an idiot. Possibly both.
Either way.
"I've decided on my wrestler."
"You're not serious — not that kid?"
"That's the one."
Nodding, I pointed at Will, sprawled across the canvas from a single bump.
"Him."
Tiffany McMahon sent back a look of pure, unfiltered doubt. But before long, that doubt had turned to astonishment.