The Lethal Lottery was a bust. Ace eliminated me fair and square, when I slammed down on the mats outside I realised I couldn't sit and wait in the Gorilla position, I jumped in the shower, threw my bags in the car and joined Dinah in the crowd for the main event. I managed to catch the end of Kurtsey v Barbosa and I saw fragments of the other matches on the monitors.
Watching the lottery match itself was great. Disappointed as I was to not be involved, counting down with the crowd and cheering on Triple X as he evaded elimination time and time again was fantastic. I even joined in with the crowd booing Burna when he won, for a night I got to be a fan again.
As Dinah and I left the arena, a couple of kids noticed me; they looked at me, surprised to see me in my civvies as I tried to find the exit of the Staples Centre. I was disappointed when their mother spoke to them and they backed away. It seems like people will never forget what happened to Alex.
The journey home felt twice as long as the journey there. Before we'd even left the car park Dinah was asleep on the passenger seat. We checked into a hotel round the corner rather than risk it. I decided at 1am to head back to the Staples Centre, I sat with the crew and helped them strike the set for the arena and remove the WZCW logos from everything. An hour later I was sat on the remains of the entrance area when I thought about the Mayhem division. The sheer volume of people involved, they had a battle royal with nine people all of whom were competing for the chance just to get a title shot. Between Justin Cooper, Johnny Scumm, Stevenson Marquel, Myself, Mikey Stormrage, Darren Bull, Joe West and the new champion Ace Stevens it was comfortably the largest division in WZCW, aside from the world title, but that division was made up of the guys who regularly headline shows or pay per views, the guys who didn't need a title to fight over because they had history. The mayhem division was full of guys who are almost literally climbing over each other to get their shot at the big time and I needed out. Reduce the competition there and boost the competition elsewhere.
I had an idea; as soon as I got home I needed to make some calls.
I tried not to wake Dinah when I got back to the hotel room, but I didn't manage it. After the customary bible rebounded off the wall and hit me on the back of the head me and Dinah had a chat, she was furious, but she eventually calmed down.
The following afternoon I got back to my house just outside San Francisco, only took around five hours, which was good. Clear roads and no cops most of the way there. I called up Vance and told him my plan; I even managed to get some other numbers from him. I dialled the first on the list hoping that they'd like my idea.
"Hello?"
"Hey, is this Mikey?"
"Who's asking?"
"James Howard."
"Oh, hi buddy, what can I help you with?"
"You still in California?"
"Yeah, decided to stay here for a day or two. My girl wanted to see Disney Land."
"Excellent, you fancy heading to San Francisco for a day? Got a suggestion for you."
"Oh yeah, what?"
"Tag team."
"Hey Rose, we're going to Frisco!"
He hung up. That went better thanI had expected. I kind of relished the thought of being in a tag team, I'd never wrestled before a few years ago and I'd only ever been in a handful of tag matches full stop. It gave me the opportunity to work on my flaws.
Mikey agreed to visit the next day and I noticed on WZCW.com that they had recruited a couple more new guys, “The Local Talent” and “The Beard”, a tag team. They called themselves BLT. Typical, within hours of deciding to join the Tag division they go on to sign another one.
The brief news piece was interesting, for what it was. The bearded guy was drinking wine and spouting Chaucer and Wordsworth. As for the other guy, called himself the Local Talent, he was older, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be a threat. Sometimes even the goofiest looking guys have a mean streak a mile wide. As I continued reading about the two new wrestlers the phone rang, it was Alex.
“Hello Mr Howard.”
“Hi Alex, how are you?”
“I’m doing very well thank you, I paid a lot of money to see you in the ring. I was disappointed”
“You’re not alone; I was in the dark match though so that was something.”
“Ah, I see, you really are back at the bottom of the barrel eh?”
“Yeah you could say that. You know me though, give me something to prove and I’ll step up.”
“Very true, I have learned that the very hard way.” There was an awkward pause. “That Comedian, he is not very funny.”
“I think that’s the joke.”
“You Westerners have a weird sense of humour. Anyway, I will call you after you win your next match, train well and fight well my friend.”
“Speak soon bud.” The phone went back on the desk, Alex sounded well and his English was coming on, probably too formal to be a commentator, but he did OK. He wasn’t there to be flash or fancy; they just wanted someone who can correctly identify every variation on an armlock at a moment’s notice.
I thought back to the two new guys as I sat in front of the TV that night. The Local Talent looked like he knew his way around a ring, hell he probably knew enough to go into MMA if he were ten years younger. I think I may have encountered him during my time in the Indies, but for a while I was working with different people at every show, especially in the early days. I’d definitely never been in the ring with him before.
The following day I was woken by the doorbell. Dinah had gone back to work and left me in bed. Mikey was staring through the window hopping up and down like a kid in a candy store, looking at him in his civvies I almost wanted to ask him to do the truffle shuffle. I opened the door and invited him in.
“Hey man, can I get you a drink or anything?”
“Got any Gatorade?”
“Probably, let me check the fridge.” I walked out and left Mikey in the lounge, I could hear him sizing up my TV and talking about playing Call of Duty on a really big screen. When I returned he was sat on the sofa with his DS.
“No Gatorade. Grabbed you some water.” I flicked the bottle in his direction. “Mikey, we need to talk about our Tag Team, we need a name and we need to work out how we’re going to work together.”
He stared intently at the screen. I didn’t know what he was playing but he was engrossed. The water bottle was by his side upside down, he hadn’t even noticed it.
“Mikey.” Still no response, I thought I saw his eye twitch but I realised it was involuntary, his tongue was sticking out of his mouth, he may as well have been a zombie.
“MIKEY!”
“What?”
“Tag team names.”
“Oh yeah.... um....” He trailed off mid-sentence. I walked over and grabbed the DS. Pokémon. He was playing Pokémon. “I was thinking of something game related, like N7.
“What the hell is N7?”
“In Mass Effect its...”
“Stop right there, how many people will get that name?”
“Everyone who has played Mass Effect is in with a chance.”
“In with a chance?”
“Yeah, not everyone will know about it.”
“Not really what we’re going for here, we need something that sounds like a tag team name, N7 sounds like a haemorrhoid cream.”
“What about Black Dragon? It’s one of the factions in Mortal Kombat.”
“It’s also the name of the Eurasian Champion.”
“Oh yeah, never realised that before, I wonder if that’s where he got his name?”
“I highly doubt it.”
“What about Rage Quit? Or Ultimate Kombo?”
“They sound like finishing moves.”
“What about music? I was thinking of using a chip tune from a fighting game.”
“A what?”
“Chip tunes, guys making music with gameboys.”
“I was thinking of something a bit less nerdy, but whatever.”
“There is always Japanese music.”
“You mean like Polysics? Did a few shows in Japan and they were pretty popular.”
“Yeah along those lines.”
“Ok. Let’s have a look.” I opened the laptop and went on YouTube. After being distracted for a while watching videos of people getting hurt by being idiots we found our theme.
[youtube]jS1gTR5rkog[/youtube]
“I think this will work.”
“You see those new guys? I heard they’re a tag team, they might be our first match.”
“Yeah I saw them. That beard guy is weird, to see a guy so in love with his own facial hair. I think it’s the most surreal thing I’ve ever seen. Honestly, it’s ridiculous. When I saw he was called the Beard and that he had a massive beard all I could think about was beards. I’m just saying beard over and over again aren’t I?”
“Yep”
“Maybe that’s part of the plan, fool people into thinking he’s an idiot with a beard when he’s really intelligent and dangerous. I've seen smarter people do dumber things, and for that matter dumber people do smarter things. I can’t decide if he’s a cunning idiot or a redneck savant.”
“Yeah, that beard guy is crazy.” Mikey said, I’d been talking for less than a minute and his DS was already back in his hands. “The Local Talent looks interesting though”
“I would agree if we could see his face, he seemed to be trying to hide it a lot of the time. Like he was ashamed of being a wrestler or something. Maybe he’s on the lam. The Local fugitive would probably give him away though. He seems like someone who loves the sport, but is hiding from something. I don’t like it, not one bit. We can work out a plan for them tomorrow though, we still haven’t decided on a name.”
“Tomorrow? I can’t tomorrow man I’m busy.”
“Busy doing what?”
“Well Mass Effect 3 comes out tomorrow so I’ll be playing that.”
I sighed heavily. “Mikey we need to hit the ring, work on tag team moves; do some resistance training. We need to work at it if we’re going to make an impact.”
“We have a week off though, we can relax, calm down, enjoy ourselves.”
“It’s a week off from TV, not a week off full stop. We’re hitting the gym. Get UPS to ship your games here overnight and stay here for a few days. MMA purses can buy you a few spare rooms.”
Mikey picked up the phone and dialled. “Hi honey, are you OK to stay out here for a few days? We’ve got a lot of work to do.” I could hear the voice on the other end of the phone. “No, no hotel rooms, we can stay with James and uh...”
“Dinah.”
“Dinah.” Mikey looked at me with a wry grin “Okay, see you soon.” He placed his phone back in his pocket and instinctively reached for his DS. I coughed loudly and he looked up. “Oh yeah, that’s fine.”
“Where is she anyway?” No response, I swear he had ADD or something. “Mikey, where is she anyway?” Still no answer, I got up and grabbed the DS from his hands for the second time that day. Mikey groaned like a kid who was told that he was going to the dentist. “We need a tag team name, and you need to learn some more techniques in the ring. Training is going to be impossible if you won’t put the damn DS down.”
“I don’t need to learn anything more, I learnt from the best. I know how to remove someone’s spine.”
“Oh yeah, how?”
“Forward, down, forward, y.”
“That’s from a videogame Mikey.”
“I learnt my best moves from games; I don’t need any more real world training!”
“Mikey, I used to do MMA fighting for a living, I can teach you more than fucking Tekken.”
“Mortal Kombat.”
“What?”
“Mortal Kombat; the spine rip is Sub-Zero’s fatality in Mortal Kombat. Respect for knowing about Tekken though.”
“Mikey I swear to god when we train I’m going to hit you so goddamn hard you’ll forget games even exist. Worst of all we don’t even have a name!”
“Calm down bro, we’ll find one. If we don’t we can always think of a name later.”
“I suppose, let’s just get going shall we? I have a gym in the basement, there’s a ring there too.”
“Sweet.”
I showed Mikey to his room and gave him a tour of the house. I had a contract on the wall for Strikeforce; it was sent to me the day before the incident. Mikey talked about an old game called Strikeforce, and how it sounded like something from a game.
“Hey Mikey, what about that as our Tag Team name?”
“What? Strikeforce?”
“Yeah, why not, if they hate it we can always change it. I like it though, makes us sound strong and it has a gaming connection. I think it’ll work.”
“Yeah, you’ve got a point. Strikeforce, got a nice ring to it.”
We finished the tour in the kitchen. I told him not to worry about what he ate or used, as long as he replaced anything we ran out of. We agreed to meet in the basement in an hour to give him time to move his stuff in. I looked at the clock. Mikey had been here for two hours and I was already exhausted. This was going to be long week.
