The Underdog Phenomenon
Underdog Phenomenon.
A social-science term for the psychological impulse to root for the weak to succeed. Why does such a thing exist at all? Opinions vary, but my own belief was that it came down to empathy — people related to the underdog.
Most people living in this world are the weaker party. Absolute strongmen make up a vanishingly small fraction of humanity. Even your department head at the office might well be under somebody's thumb the moment he walks through his front door. That's just life.
Only two kinds of people win all the time: genuine geniuses, and people so relentless that everyone else backs off as if they've lost their minds. Which is precisely why such people are, without exception, lonely. In other words, the vast majority of humanity is destined to lose to somebody, eventually — and out of that shared fate, empathy is born.
Even in professional wrestling, where wins and losses are scripted, the underdog story was a blueprint that got trotted out now and then. It just so happened that it wasn't the kind of story Bart liked, so the company had never used it openly.
Simply put, the underdog arc wasn't a script the company wrote. It was a script the fans wrote.
An underdog performer, carried on the roar of the crowd, all the way to the championship. Clichéd as hell, yes — but moving all the same. And I had judged that this story fit Will perfectly.
A former factory worker. A nobody who had never managed to stand out even in his home promotion, IPW. But here was the important part: he needed one unmistakable strength. One dazzling quality that none of the other prospects possessed. Or failing that, being someone who could do everything — like me.
For Will, that quality was his aerial game. The number of wrestlers in history who could scale the top turnbuckle and deliver a 720 splash could be counted on one hand. And doing it flawlessly, twenty minutes deep into a war of attrition, when his body was already spent?
I couldn't pull that off myself, honestly.
Not that I had any intention of trying. I was a performer whose strengths were plenty obvious even without aerial theatrics.
Anyway. That one strength was going to make Will a genuinely beloved performer. Of that, I had zero doubt.
And so the show began. I and Cena each sat in the locker room with our chosen rookies in tow. The moment the opening pyro faded, the show kicked off to a volcanic ovation — this was a spectacle fans got to see only once a year, and every Brit in the building had arrived primed to lose their minds.
First came the pre-produced video package. Terry, WWF's backstage announcer, launched into the setup.
"The red-hot passion of the United Kingdom is burning alongside Burning Kong tonight! And an occasion like this deserves a man to match it, ladies and gentlemen — BAT MAXEN!"
The crowd sent up a cheer. Bart was a heel, technically, but he commanded a level of respect from wrestling fans that transcended such labels. So long as the script didn't call on him to do anything truly hateful, he drew cheers by default.
Bat Maxen appeared on Burning Kong for the first time in ages, suit and all, and the interviewer tossed him the first question.
"It's been a while, Bart. How are you enjoying the UK?"
"A magnificent country. The fact that our show is loved in a place like this — it's an honor, truly."
"I understand you've also met with some of the British talent?"
"An impressive lot. Which is why one particular idea came to mind."
"And what would that be?"
"Who is the very best of Europe?"
Bart delivered the line with maximum emphasis, and the explanation rolled on.
"ENGLAND!"
The crowd cheered.
"FRANCE!"
Boos.
"GERMANY!"
Boos.
"SPAIN!"
Boos.
"Four national representatives, chosen through a rigorous selection process! And of those four, only ONE shall receive a contract!"
The explanation continued as the CG team's labor-of-love video package played out: four WWF superstars serving as mentors, each assigned one European rookie to develop over four weeks. Fans could vote for their pick online and by phone, and after four weeks of competition, the final winner would earn a contract with the WWF.
Not bad at all.
It was clearly a better system than my past life's version — and the fact that the voting could print extra money was a nice touch, too.
And then, finally, the screen cut to our pre-taped segment. Under dim lighting — Hunter, then me, then Cena, then JBL. Every time one of the four appeared, the arena erupted. Then the camera pulled back to take in all of us at once, and showed the four rookies walking out of the darkness toward the light.
The commercial break followed. It was our time.
"Alright. Let's go."
The moment I spoke, the other three — who'd been watching the video with dead-serious faces — rose from their seats. The two European rookies among them were already half-deaf from the crowd's fevered roar, their faces pale before we'd even started.
Maybe I should give them a word of advice—
Before I could, Cena beat me to it, offering them some encouragement.
"Don't be too nervous. Just focus on the role you've got tonight."
"Y-yes, sir!"
"We'll do our best!"
I watched Cena and thought: he's grown. Looking after rookies who were scared out of their wits — that was a senior showing real class.
During the commercial break, we made our way to Gorilla Position. And I had to say it:
What a gorgeous segment.
When it came to the craft of live performance and live broadcasting, WWF's technical superiority was simply beyond reach. Inside a tightly limited window, they'd laid down a story through Bat Maxen and a video package, and made the audience swallow it whole. And yet even now, the company never once violated the 'rules' it had always upheld. No apologies to the viewers, no mention of any rival promotion. All of it was a form of kayfabe — protecting the WWF universe, the sanctity of its own world.
You walk out there like you own the place.
And that was the right way. You had to act as if this broadcast had been planned from the very beginning. Only then could the audience watch with total peace of mind. Before stepping through the curtain, I turned that conviction over in my mind one last time.
The crowd's reaction was feverish. When Will and I made our entrance, half the building shot to its feet — and the reason was a simple one.
I walked through the curtain and whipped the British flag I'd brought with me in wide, proud arcs.
"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah!"
Brits who were already three beers deep swayed in waves, moving with the flag like a stadium tide. The power of patriotism was a genuinely terrifying thing. We'd deliberately carried the flags out so the audience could tell us apart at a glance — my idea, and it had landed.
This show was ours. And what that implied mattered enormously. The first impression. Even if Will came off a little underwhelming out there, the flag would cover for him amply.
And cover for him it did. The crowd showered England's Will with a monstrous ovation — enough firepower that he stood his ground even flanked by the hulks the other mentors had picked. The hero of the people. At minimum, the American fans were going to pin enormous expectations on this kid, and we intended to cash those expectations in immediately.
That was the whole point. An underdog story only works if the crowd's faith gets rewarded on screen.
First match of the show: Cena versus Will.
I gave Will exactly one instruction — and it was probably going to outclass the booking anyone else had asked of their rookie.
I stood ringside as Will's manager, watching the match unfold. Will, naturally, was no match for Cena at all, and he took a sustained beating for it. And every time Cena laid into him, the crowd booed.
"Booooooooooooo~!"
Yes, Cena was a heel. But still — one of the hottest rookies on Rakedown, taking nothing but a one-sided shower of boos.
Patriotism really is something else.
From there, the match flowed exactly as I'd drawn it up. Cena unleased his full arsenal of signature moves on Will. Comebacks weren't entirely absent, but Will almost never sustained any momentum — that gap in standing was the entire point. The booking for the whole tournament would follow the same logic: the rookies could tear each other apart, but against WWF talent, they were simply outclassed.
Which is exactly why I'd booked Will as the underdog. He's going to lose anyway. If the mountain Hunter had drafted lost, the damage would be catastrophic — he'd look like all muscle and no substance. Will was his exact inverse. A wiry frame that looked like it couldn't be trusted. But it made you want to root for him. And we were going to use that.
Final minute of the ten-minute match. Cena, mid-education, hammering Will into the canvas, let his guard slip for an instant. Will seized the opening and fired back.
A DDT — the industry's bread and butter: trap your opponent's head under your arm from the front and fall backward with everything you have.
Even that's a little clumsy, though.
Seen through fresh eyes, Will was a survivor who had lived on a single overwhelming gift. I understood it only now. His perpetually shaky bumping wasn't 'rough edges' — it was a genuine deficiency of skill, one that never got fixed to the end, merely dressed up. He'd never been injured and always managed to endure because his body was astonishingly light and flexible. Without that, he'd almost certainly have died in a ring somewhere.
FWOOSH—!
For a moment, I could almost hear the sound. Overwhelming force. Will, perched atop the top turnbuckle, spun and came down with his whole body whipping through the air.
CRUUUUNCH!
And he obliterated Cena. I caught sight of the fallen man's eyes rolling back in his skull. Taking an aerial maneuver was exactly that brutal. Will went straight into the cover on top of the downed Cena.
One! Two—!!
Cena barely kicked out. It was only then that I, still drunk on the impact of the 720 splash, finally surfaced and registered my surroundings.
And, well.
This isn't what I planned at all.
No — it had gone beyond the plan. The entire audience stood frozen, thunderstruck by that single breathtaking move. The arena had gone utterly silent — so silent that even Cena, flustered, was stealing glances at the crowd.
Right on script.
I smiled.
And so Burning Kong UK came to an end. Every performer discharged their duty with gusto, demolishing their assigned rookies with ruthless thoroughness.
By that point, everyone must have felt it — that they had made the wrong choice. I had turned my opponent rookie into a lumbering joke of a man: Hunter's pick, the two-meter-tall Frenchman. The other rookies, too, all went down in equally sorry fashion. That gap decided everything.
The day after the show. I returned to the hotel for the first time in a while, slept like the dead, and woke on schedule. My phone was drowning in messages from the States — some thirty texts in all. I skimmed past most of them, replying only to my father's.
...What era does he think the Soviet Union ended in?
My father was ex-military, and his anti-communist convictions remained rock-solid to this day. Right then, a message arrived from Cena — the one I was meeting today.
Then I'd just head over first. Decision made, I grabbed my gym bag and slipped out of the hotel. Destination: a health club nearby. It was early enough that the place was nearly empty, and I had all the equipment to myself as I worked through the day's routine.
Training was the one thing I never skipped. Rest came first, of course — without enough recovery, the body just wears itself down — but I was equally relentless about keeping myself in peak condition. On top of that, whenever the chance arose, I drilled the various fighting arts the GCW coaches had beaten into me, just in case. You never knew when it might matter.
An hour later, soaked head to toe in sweat, I racked the barbell and stood up. Right about then, Cena arrived.
"S-sorry. My body just would not move. I was welded to the bed until five minutes ago."
"You're fine, we've got plenty of time. I'll spot you."
"You're already done?"
"Roughly, yeah."
"When on earth did you get here?"
"When you texted me."
I narrowed my eyes at him. Perhaps feeling a twinge of guilt(?), Cena hurriedly buried himself in his workout. The man could lift more than twice my max, yet was the type to shed weight the instant he let his guard down. Those colossal muscles drew my admiration every single time I saw them, and I spent a while spotting him, marvelling between sets.
Then another hour passed. Cena was nearly through his routine when my phone rang — Tiffany.
"We've got incredible results."
"How incredible?"
I leaned against the wall with a faint grin. If she was calling just to tell me this, the numbers had to be spectacular. The vote counts — the live tally for the European rookies that had been running ever since the broadcast ended last night. Who had taken the most votes?
And Tiffany came back with an answer that blew clean past my expectations.