Debut Preparations, Part 2
Anne finally waved the white flag at me.
Under Sophia’s supervision, the two of us agreed to practice hardcore matches together once or twice a week.
House show! House match!
Dark matches were closer to practice bouts—almost no connection to the storyline, and no broadcast at all. House shows, though, might have a single match cut, edited, and aired.
Of course, as wrestlers who hadn’t even debuted yet, we wouldn’t be getting that kind of airtime.
Unlike the dark match last time, which had drawn fewer than two hundred people including staff and wrestlers, this house show was set for five hundred seats.
“It’s been a long time since a house show sold out.”
“Right? And with five hundred seats, no less.”
“I checked the boards—interest in the kids is off the charts.”
Last time we’d only run our three matches, but today there was also a men’s singles match and a women’s singles match on the card.
On the men’s side, Lorenzo Barrera—given the ring name “Ghost of the Amazon” and wearing a mask—had a bout. On the women’s side, it was Vanessa Wise.
All five matches today featured this year’s rookies from the Team 3D Academy.
Lorenzo would face Luke, the TPA Intercontinental Champion and a Secondary Champion, while Vanessa was booked against Isabelle Basloni, a Mid Carder.
When the show started, TPA World Champion Michael Santana climbed into the ring for some mic work.
Even though we had no match of our own, we gathered in the lounge with the other wrestlers who’d come to watch and stared at the monitor.
“Wow! This is completely overwhelming.”
“Why!”
The crowd fired right back.
“Look at this. Do you know how long it’s been since we ran a house show at five-hundred capacity? We did one in January this year. About three hundred showed up then? Ah! You—you were there too, right? I remember you. Was your name Michael?”
A guy in the crowd raised both hands and made a circle.
“That’s right. Just because I don’t have a lot of moves doesn’t mean I’m stupid! Right?”
“Hahaha!”
Michael had a reputation for solid charisma but somewhat monotonous technique, yet his voice was husky in just the right way and easy on the ears. On top of that, his self-deprecating gags were landing hard.
It was the kind of comedy he never would have attempted in a regular match, but this was a house show—he was clearly trying to loosen the crowd up.
“So what’s the occasion today? Why so many of you?”
“Came to see the rookies!”
“I heard the idol lifted Olivia!”
“Prove it! Prove it!”
“Get out already! Send the rookies out!”
Listening to the shouts from the seats, Michael leaned casually against the ropes.
“Man! Word travels fast. Damn it, how about showing me a little of that attention? I’m the champion, you know! And I’m several times better-looking than those rookies.”
Michael bantered with the crowd for another five minutes or so, building the energy, then climbed down from the ring. The wrestlers greeted him with applause when he returned.
“Nice work, Michael.”
“Haa. When I was a heel I never had to do this ridiculous stuff.”
“What can you do? You’re a face now. And the World Champion.”
“Luke, want to swap titles and you go face?”
“Who are you trying to mess with? With this face of mine, what kind of face am I supposed to be?”
When Intercontinental Champion Luke snapped at him, Michael just laughed and dropped into an empty seat.
“Luke. Time to drop those stereotypes. Look at Charina. Stereotypes get shattered just looking at her.”
That was when Vanessa’s match started.
She still had power, but her selling was awkward. Worse, the screams she made when she hit someone and when she got hit barely differed. Even for a show, it needed to look somewhat convincing, yet neither of them seemed to give it a thought. If her opponent had at least paid attention to that, it might have been salvageable—but both Vanessa and Isabelle were fixated only on landing their own moves, especially the big ones.
It wasn’t a match. It was a dull play.
I wasn’t the only one who felt that way; the other colleagues were fiddling with their phones or yawning while they watched. Back at the academy her acting had been mediocre, but her strength had let her pull off a variety of techniques well enough. Now she seemed to have regressed. Maybe she’d spent the six months since arriving here just goofing off instead of practicing.
Isabelle clamped Vanessa’s head between her thighs, yanked her arm up behind her back, and sat down hard, crushing her. Ever since Triple J retired, every dog and his brother had been using the Pedigree as a finisher. The move carried the lingering reputation of being an overwhelmingly strong finish because of Triple J, and from the attacker’s perspective it was ridiculously easy to execute. Just jam the head between the thighs, haul the arm up, and drop. In other words, anyone could learn the Pedigree in under ten minutes—and that made the acting the most important part of the move.
Clumsy offense. Boring.
Then again, if Isabelle could act, she wouldn’t still be in TPA.
After the finish she went straight into the cover, and the match ended without any upset. The crowd reaction was lukewarm at best.
“They’re academy rookies just like us, but the skill gap is ridiculous. What’s her problem?”
Michael glanced at me as he asked.
“I don’t know. Vanessa was a lot better than that back at the academy… It’s strange. Maybe she’s in a slump.”
“Don’t pretty it up. She’s been like that from the start.”
“…I really don’t know any more than that.”
There was no need to trash-talk someone who wasn’t even in the room. At least the match had been so bland it wrapped up in a little over ten minutes, which was a mercy.
Then came Lorenzo’s match.
This one was even worse than Vanessa’s. Intercontinental Champion Luke was a fast-tempo worker, but Lorenzo kept hesitating and chopping the rhythm to pieces. The whole thing turned into a scattered mess.
“This kid’s getting worse by the day.”
“Might be better to just take the mask off him.”
“Then he’d freeze and not get a single word out.”
“He won’t be around this time next year.”
“Next year? He won’t even make it through this winter before he gets cut.”
While Michael and a few of the watching wrestlers offered their bleak assessments, the second match ended.
“Rina, we’re heading to the locker room.”
“Be right back.”
“Don’t either of you get too tense, and watch out for injuries.”
“Yeah.”
Selma had already gone to the locker room; now Alf and James headed there as well.
“Rina, should we get moving too?”
“Olivia. Let’s at least watch Selma’s entrance.”
“Fine.”
Under normal circumstances it would have been like the idol waiting rooms on music ranking shows—private rooms ranked by fame, or shared among close friends. But there was no issue between Olivia and me, and since we still hadn’t debuted we hadn’t been given separate lockers. Once we did debut, a rookie like me probably wouldn’t get a private room; I’d most likely share with Selma.
Screeeech, crash—
The sound of a car slamming on the brakes, then a collision. A little more dynamic than last time.
Break it all down!
Huh. They’d even swapped the vocals to Selma’s voice. She couldn’t act for beans, but she’d nailed this part.
Then Selma appeared. The crowd welcomed the new face with cheers. She lifted her chin with cool indifference and strutted out with model’s walk. She’d said the entrance was a secret, yet it had changed like this.
“It suits her.”
“Yeah, it does. Though keeping kayfabe is going to be tough.”
“Why? Looking aloof isn’t that hard.”
I glanced around at Olivia’s question and whispered in her ear.
“The way she carries herself is pure guy. Tomboy through and through.”
“Why are you whispering something like that?”
“The fewer people who know, the easier it is to protect kayfabe.”
“Heh. Word’ll get out soon enough. Secrets don’t last long in this business. And everyone already knows Selma and Alf bicker every single day.”
Ah. Right. They’d been sniping at each other here too.
“Rina. Time for us to move.”
“Yes.”
Selma and the Inquisitors’ match finished to big cheers. Anyone who’d seen the dark match would have noticed how well they’d polished the rough edges; it was tighter and far more entertaining.
I was stretching and loosening up when my turn came, and we headed to Gorilla Position. They might not air it, but they were recording, so the general manager, the PD, Jane, and the other writers were all gathered there.
“Olivia, manage your stamina.”
“Yes.”
“Rina, don’t get too tense. Just do it like last time.”
“Understood.”
Before long the Inquisitors’ match was winding down. Alf leapt high and hit a beautiful diving neckbreaker—the so-called “hangman’s” finish—to end it. Compared to tag teams who’d been working together for years, their match still had plenty of holes, but the fresh faces drew cheers from the crowd. The women in the audience—about twenty percent—especially loved James and Alf. After watching nothing but long-haired, bearded male wrestlers, clean-cut blondes (both dyed) with neat hair and handsome faces clearly hit the spot. And they were young.
The Inquisitors and the Stormboys finished their match and came into Gorilla Position with bright faces.
“Matt. Charles. You two are killing the heel work. Way better than last time.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“I’m thinking of turning you heel for real with this. How about it?”
This house show had been about gauging crowd reaction, and Matt and Charles had gotten far more heat as clumsy faces than they ever had before. They’d drawn a ton of boos. Getting booed wasn’t something to get angry about. It meant they’d performed well enough for the crowd to get invested—and pissed off.
“Sounds good, sir. Please turn us heel.”
“Yes. Let’s do the turn with this.”
“Great. I’ll get the scripts ready. Good work.”
Next it was the Inquisitors’ turn. James received nothing but praise. His acting might even have been better than mine. I couldn’t feel pain all that well, so my selling of it still came off a little awkward.
“Alf.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hmm. It’s weird. The lines are stiff as a robot, but the more I hear them, the more they stick.”
“Is… that a compliment?”
“If you can’t fix it, lean into it. Doing promos that way might actually work for you. A religious type who talks rigid and frozen like that? Sure, those people exist…. Hmm. I’ll bring it up properly in the meeting and let you know. Even if we go with that gimmick, keep practicing promos steadily. You never know when you’ll debut singles.”
“Yes, sir.”
Then the ring announcer called the final match and started with Olivia’s name.
“Olivia, go get ’em.”
“Do well out there.”
Metal music blasted as Olivia made her entrance. Once she was inside the ring and had worked the crowd a bit, the ring announcer called my name.
From Orlando, Florida!
Standing 5'5" and weighing 110 pounds…
Cha~ri~na!
I’d told the PD not to include the body measurements, but he’d insisted it would have more impact and put them in anyway.
The music team had taken the fierce guitar riff of Unstoppable and, at my request, layered in the thunder of bass and drums. Jane Kim had changed her entrance theme midway through her career, but anyone who’d known her from the old days would recognize this song instantly.
The cheer that rose was even bigger than the one for Olivia’s entrance. It hadn’t bothered me at all during the dark match, but this time I felt a little tremor. Was it because there were so many people?
I slapped both cheeks with my palms once to shake off the nerves. Then I set one foot on the skateboard and began rolling slowly forward.
“Woooaaah!”
The moment they saw me, the biggest cheer and flash of the entire night exploded through the building.