Debut Preparations III
TLC Match.
Tables, Ladders & Chairs.
A match fought with tables, ladders, and chairs as legal weapons.
All of it fake?
Half right, half wrong.
"The tables are just regular, fully usable tables. The plywood is just thinner — designed to break more cleanly."
Vivi tapped the open table with her finger as she explained.
Thok. Thok.
A clear, hollow sound rang out, as if to prove just how thin it was.
"Sometimes we also score or saw into them at random. That way the wood splits clean and pretty for the cameras — and so the splinters don't lodge in a wrestler's body."
Next came the ladders.
"Until recently we used specially built wooden ladders painted over for the show. But they were expensive, and wood chips kept embedding in the talent, so we switched to hollow aluminum. Being hollow, they ring out louder than the old ones ever did. That said, for big matches we still break out a wooden ladder now and then — like when someone's hitting a powerbomb off the top of one."
Last came the chairs, so common on broadcasts that most people never gave them a second thought.
A thin alloy of steel and aluminum, she said, deliberately engineered to make a bigger noise on impact.
"Coach, did Lorenzo and Vanessa learn TLC matches last time? I don't think I ever saw them do it."
"No. Those two only learned how to use a chair and left."
"Then why are we learning this?"
"James, you think just anyone gets a TLC match? You need to be at least contender-level before they'll even consider booking you one."
Which meant the two who'd gone up ahead of us weren't even contender material — and that the company had real expectations for us. The trainees who'd gone pale at the mere mention of TLC puffed up with pride at Vivi's words.
"I'd love to put you through a proper TLC match, and a cage match too while we're at it, but we just don't have the setup. So everyone gets hit once and takes a fall. James, you're up first."
"Yes, ma'am."
First, the table.
Vivi hoisted James high and drove him down with a powerbomb.
CRASH.
The table split clean in half with a spectacular noise.
"James, how was it?"
"Huh. Honestly less painful than getting thrown on the ring mat."
"Exactly. Which is why you need real acting chops. Al, you're next."
Al and Selma both took clean powerbombs, and then it was my turn.
CRASH.
Just like James said — it hurt far less than expected.
"Everyone survive the table? The table absorbs the impact, so it doesn't hurt as much."
"Yes, ma'am!"
"That's why selling is such a critical skill. In reality it barely hurts, but you have to sell it like it hurt ten times worse. Keep drilling your pain reactions stage by stage. Especially you two, Selma and Al!"
"Understood."
"I'll practice hard."
The two of them scratched their heads in near-perfect sync, looking sheepish. For people who claimed to hate each other to death, their unconscious habits were uncannily alike.
What a pair of clowns.
Next up: the ladder.
We laid mats across the ring floor and practiced splashes onto a dummy. Two heights — 2.5 meters and 3.6 meters.
James faced the dummy, then flipped 180 degrees midair into a Swanton Bomb, landing on his back. Al turned his back first, then rotated 180 to hit a moonsault chest-first. Selma went with a diving elbow. I spun inverted through 270 degrees and dropped into a Shooting Star Press, landing on my chest.
James came down on the dummy's thighs with his back. Al's chest crashed into the dummy's head.
"Neither of you freeze up. Again."
It took three or four attempts before they passed. Selma nailed it on both of her tries, landing perfectly on the dummy's upper chest near the neck — body absorbing the impact first, then the elbow pressing down on the throat.
Compared to a Swanton Bomb, where you face forward and flip onto your back, or a moonsault, where you start facing away and flip onto your stomach, Selma's dive was straight-on and far more stable. What she lacked in flash she made up for with hang time, leaping higher to stretch the aerial.
"That was excellent, Selma. I'd take that hit right now."
"Thank you."
"Last up — Rina."
"Yes."
Only 2.5 meters, but standing up there still made my stomach tighten a little. Still — I had to trust this sturdy body of mine.
I steadied my breathing and threw myself off.
The instant I jumped I arched my back like a drawn bow, and my body carved a clean arc through the air. Time stretched. The gym lights streaked past my eyes.
WHUMP.
I landed dead-center on the dummy's chest.
For a moment, absolute silence. Everyone held their breath, staring at me.
Then Selma was the first to rush in.
"Whoa! Rina! I've never seen a Shooting Star Press that beautiful!"
Vivi clapped in open surprise, and a moment later the rest of the trainees joined in a wave of applause.
"Uh. Yeah. Thanks."
Clap. Clap. Clap.
"That was genuinely spectacular. Use that in a match and it's an automatic home run. You've been practicing hard, haven't you?"
"Ah — yes, ma'am."
"Weren't you scared?"
"I was fine."
"Good. Glad to hear it."
Vivi nodded and continued.
"But you wear knee pads. No exceptions. Got it?"
I'd been skipping them — they were mildly annoying, and this was only practice.
"It doesn't hurt, Coach. And they get in the way of the move."
"Until the day you wreck yourself for real. Wear them. Always."
"Yes, ma'am. Understood."
I did one more rep and passed on the spot. With the confidence from 2.5 meters under our belts, the 3.6-meter drops actually came easier. The extra height gave us more time to set clean form. The only real enemy was the fear of height itself — everything else was manageable.
"Very rarely, a six-meter ladder gets used in a match. Anyone seen one of those?"
"Yes. They used them a lot in the old days, from what I know."
"I saw the footage of you wrestling the Hardy Boyz, Coach."
James and Selma answered for the group.
"That's right. We don't use them much anymore, but they still come out occasionally. When you jump off a ladder that tall, you take every precaution. If a match with one of those gets booked, you practice it. No exceptions. Memorize that."
"Yes, ma'am!"
"Last up: chairs. These show up all the time even outside TLC matches, so you need to get comfortable with them."
The chairs — so ordinary on TV that nobody ever thought twice about them.
The real problem wasn't the ladders or the tables. It was the chairs.
They appeared so often I figured taking a shot from one would be no big deal.
Yeah, right.
It just hurt.
Thin alloy of steel and aluminum, deliberately designed to make a loud noise — none of that mattered. Getting hit with one simply hurt. Taking it flat was manageable enough, but catching the frame felt like getting clubbed with a steel pipe.
"Hhk!"
"Ugh!"
"Aaagh!"
"Ow!"
Vivi spent a full thirty minutes rotating through us, beating us with chairs. Just when we thought it was over, she ordered us to take turns hitting each other.
The trick was to sell big on the swing, then ease the grip a fraction at the moment of impact. Compared to Vivi, our strikes were clumsy — which meant we hit each other a lot harder.
"Aah — ease up, Selma! I'm dying!"
"Sorry, Rina! I thought I did!"
"If you've got a problem, say it with your mouth!"
"That's not what this is!"
"Aaaah! You're dead later!"
It was a TLC session of nonstop wailing.
Makeup was completely foreign to me — but thanks to the memories the system had planted, I at least knew what dozens of different cosmetics were for. Without that knowledge I would have stalled out at the first step of applying toner and essence.
I passed makeup and hair styling in four days. Selma and Al, studying with professionals at a salon academy, improved bit by bit as well. Give them a full month and they'd look pretty solid.
"The New Era of tag teams! The Burning Boys — James!"
"Alf G!"
"Pfft — hahahaha!"
"Heh heh heh."
The two of them stood there in black robes patterned with flames, black wrestling pants with matching fire motifs. Knee pads, elbow pads, even the headbands around their foreheads — all covered in flames. The colors and shapes of the patterns differed slightly, but the overall effect was uncomfortably close to the Akatsuki cloud emblems from a certain Japanese ninja manga.
"Lose the headbands. They look cheap."
"Way too much. You look like nineties midcarders."
Selma and I zeroed in on the headbands immediately.
"James. I told you — no headband."
"Alf, you said it looked good!"
The two of them bickered over a single strip of fabric.
"Al. So you're going with Alf G for real?"
"Yeah. Alf G. Alfred's too long and sounds like a soft academic."
"Then is Selma going Selma G?"
"That's the plan. It stands for Generation, too — we're the backbone of the next era. And God. We're going to go past Icon and become the gods of wrestling."
Grand meanings aside — Alf G? Selma G? The ring names made my head spin a little. But what could you do when the last name was Gonzalez?
"James, isn't your name a little too common?"
"I'm going with James Holmes. Doesn't it sound smart?"
James had dropped the surname Holt in favor of Holmes. At least he hadn't gone with Conan.
"Is the gimmick a detective? An intellectual character is seriously hard to pull off."
"It's not that."
James shook his head hard.
"Then what gimmicks are you two running?"
They answered in perfect unison.
"Hot-blooded!"
Hot-blooded. Grit that overcomes hardship and trial. A sense of justice. That kind of thing played anywhere — kids and older adults especially ate it up. Solid choice.
"Not bad. But what happens if they put you in heel roles?"
"Self-righteousness! Only our justice counts."
"Obsession! Once we've marked you, it's over. We'll follow you into the bathroom to mess with you."
"Whoa. You two actually put in the research."
The admiration slipped out before I could stop it. The obsession angle in particular looked genuinely strong.
"Tag-team finish?"
"James hoists the opponent, and I hit a diving neckbreaker off the top rope."
A neckbreaker — grab the opponent's neck from the front and drop backward. Plenty of tag teams existed, but modern ones with a signature tag-team-exclusive finisher were rare enough that this would land.
"Hey, can I borrow that obsession thing a little?"
"No! Do you know how hard we worked on this?"
"You, running obsession? That guy must've been Lincoln or Eisenhower in a past life."
"That's not how I'm using it."
"Then how?"
"Hitting only one person. I'm running it as 'Beat Only One.'"
"What's that?"
"Beat only one?"
I explained it to my curious teammates. In multi-person free-for-alls — Triple Threat Matches with three wrestlers, Fatal 4-Way Matches with four — I'd lock onto a single target and refuse to let go.
"That's good."
"Shorten it to HOO. Or H2O? Not bad."
"So I can use it?"
"Totally different flavor from ours. Go ahead."
A little later the two of them presented their gimmicks and gear to the coaching staff. The finish was solid, but the coaches especially praised the gimmick itself as outstanding.
For my own wrestling gear, I went with plain jeans and a sleeveless tee.
"Rina. Isn't that a little weak?"
"Coach, I'm planning to evolve it gradually. Or only break out the more revealing stuff for big matches."
"So if people want to see skin, they'd better book you in a big match? That's a little crafty — but good judgment. You've got to look out for your own cut."
Selma chose black leather pants and a leopard-print crop top.
"Selma, what's your gimmick?"
"Coach, I'm the jaguar of the Amazon. Raw wilderness itself. As a heel I'll lean into a jaguar's cunning, cruelty, and obsession with its prey."
"And as a face?"
"A big cat? Animal purity? Cleverness?"
"Hahaha. Run with it."
Selma went on to walk the coaches through the connections between her gimmick, her gear, and her core moveset.
"All good — but switch the leather pants to shorts or leggings. You'll cook in those. Your stamina still has a long way to go."
"Yes, ma'am. Leather shorts it is. And leopard print on the knee pads."
"Good. Do that."
And just like that, all four of us cleared gimmicks and wrestling gear.
"Sometime next week we're bringing in TPA people for a showcase. This is the final stretch, so prepare well."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Understood."