CHAPTER 6
On Friday night, just a few hours after learning he would be the next GWA Champion, Joey defeated Bret Stevens in Lubbock. The crowd treated him like a war hero, exploding in noise, camera flashes and homemade posters when he entered. During the match, they cheered whenever he was on offense and they booed whenever Bret had the upper hand.
On Saturday morning, GWA.com announced there would be a tournament for the World Title on Monday night’s Burn, with the participants to be announced the next day. As the wrestlers gathered in Amarillo for the Saturday-night show, there was a growing buzz regarding the recent announcement on the web site. No one knew who was going to be in the tournament, or who would win. Company leadership was strangely silent regarding the announcement. Joey avoided anyone who might ask him if he knew about the tournament. That night, after wrestling Bret again, in front of another hysterical crowd, Joey rushed to his hotel.
On Sunday, as promised, GWA.com gradually posted the names of those who would be competing in the tournament. At noon, the web site announced Crusader as the first participant. At one, Jumbo. At two, Jack Branson. At three, Deep Six. At four, Zombie. By four-thirty, wrestlers were arriving at the Fort Worth Convention Center for the Sunday night house show. They had been traveling all day, and were unaware of whose names were posted on the web. Joey and Bret put on the same show, to the same response. After the match, Goliath slapped Joey on the back and said, “You’re our hottest commodity right now.”
By the end of the Sunday-night show, after word had gone around about whose names were posted on the web, the tournament was all anyone could talk about backstage. As the wrestlers learned that Duke wasn’t giving away any of the booking, curious speculation turned to giddiness, and then anxiety. Who would win? Why were they putting a tournament on free TV with such little notice? Why wasn’t Duke telling them who was going over?
As far as Joey could tell, most people assumed the finals would be between Crusader and Branson. He didn’t know about the whisper campaign that had started in the locker room. He didn’t hear the jealousy, the vitriol, the angst in the voices of Jumbo and Deep Six, who told their admirers that Joey had disappeared with the boss and the champion for a private meeting before the Lubbock show.
“Hey Joey, do you have a second?”
Joey was on his way to the showers after his third match with Bret in three days, lost in his own world of fan adoration and television tournaments. The gravelly voice that had disturbed him belonged to Shane Walker, GWA road agent, former World Champion, and Joey’s trainer from the farm league. Shane was sitting by himself in a folding chair against the wall, leaning on his cane and not about to get up. Joey went to him.
“You’re getting quite the response these days,” said Shane.
“I know, it’s unbelievable,” said Joey.
Joey had grown up watching Shane on Pro Wrestling All-Stars. At that time, Shane had long, flowing blonde hair and an outrageous physique that no longer was possible in pro wrestling following the crackdown on anabolic steroids. Today, Shane was bald and slim, with skin that could have been removed from a hot dog. He leaned on a cane, even while sitting, and his body shook, as if he were riding a bus.
“How do you feel about the reaction you’re getting?” Shane asked.
“I love it,” said Joey.
“Do you think you deserve an ovation like that?” asked Shane.
Joey’s instincts told him to end this conversation immediately and leave. The last thing he needed was for his idol and teacher to tell him he was stealing the spotlight from more deserving players.
“I don’t know if I deserve it, but I don’t have any control over that,” said Joey.
“You’re right,” said Shane. “You can’t control the fans.”
Joey nodded his head, knowing there was more listening to do. He had spent many an afternoon listening to Shane’s patient speeches.
“You know, Joey, my first TV match was on Pro Wrestling All-Stars. I was twenty-two. I had been wrestling for Clyde Gallagher’s promotion in the Midwest for three years and got noticed by Larry Jenkins. Larry was barely a teenager back then. He invited me to come on All-Stars and be a jobber for a fellow named Igor who wrestled by the name Polar Bear. Igor was a hairy monster who couldn’t wrestle worth a shit, but was tough as nails. Back then, if you were a jobber you were expected to take a beating. A real beating. I let that Igor fellow beat the shit out of me for six minutes, and it hurt. The guy was stiff as a board on me. I finished that match with a broken finger and a black eye. Two weeks later I got invited back to All-Stars to be a jobber for Wrangler Billy Black. Broke my nose in that one.
“For my first two years on TV, every time I stepped in the ring, I had to do the job to some established star who beat the crap out of me. Someone had done it to them, now they were doing it to me. It was tradition. It was a way of making sure that the young crop coming up didn’t make it to the top unless they really wanted it.
“And you know Joey, even though it was painful and frustrating to let those guys pound me like that, I’m thankful they did it. I’m thankful because it gave me an opportunity to pay my dues. It was a chance for me to earn respect from the veterans, one beating at a time. It’s a shame that tradition’s fallen out of favor. Wrestling’s changed. It used to be that it took the fans awhile to warm up to somebody new. They wanted to see familiar faces win the matches. They wanted courageous, good-hearted heroes to defeat the bad guys. Now it’s harder. Now it seems like they want something different every week. Duke’s got to give these fans what they want to see or else none of us get to perform. Right now the fans want to see you. Next month they might want to see someone else. Who knows?”
Joey stood silently, unsure of how to react. Was this advice?
“If you ask me,” Shane continued, “I think you should just enjoy it while it lasts, and quit worrying about what the other guys think. They might get angry if the crowd takes to you and not to them, but when push comes to shove, they’ll do whatever Duke tells them to do. In the end it will all wash out. Your fifteen minutes of fame will be over and some new kid will take your place.”
Joey was saved by a deep, rhythmic beating sound that trembled through the concrete floor under his feet and distracted Shane from his spiel. It was Zombie’s music playing out in the arena.
“Zombie wasn’t supposed to go over tonight, was he?” Joey said.
Shane’s eyebrows tightened into a puzzled look. “Not that I know of.” They both turned toward the arena entrance.
While Joey and Shane had been talking, Jack Branson and Zombie had been wrestling. They had performed together two times in two cities leading up to tonight’s show, with plans to get a feud between them on television soon. Branson went over every time, and was surely supposed to go over tonight. It would be an odd booking decision to let Branson, one of the company’s biggest stars, lose to Zombie, even at a non-televised event. But the music out there was not Branson’s blues guitar theme. It was Zombie’s tune, an unmistakable heavy metal riff with a thick percussive beat.
Zombie came through the black curtain, breathing heavily and shaking his head. He made a left turn to head toward the locker room. Outside, in the arena, the fans began applauding, a rare form of recognition in professional wrestling. Amidst the applause were scattered “Bran-son” cheers.
“Did you guys hear what happened?” said Jade. She was approaching from down the hall, dressed in the black rubber outfit that served as her wrestling attire.
“No, what’s going on out there?” said Joey.
“Branson’s hurt,” said Jade. “Something happened when he went for a clothesline.”
Joey wondered if he’d heard correctly. Although it was common to get injured when on the receiving end of a clothesline, it was definitely not common to get injured when delivering one.
“I think he planted his foot wrong,” said Jade. “Looked like h
is left knee buckled under him. He totally missed the move and fell to the ground, holding his knee. They had to improvise the finish. When Zombie figured out what was going on, he grabbed Branson’s neck in a choke and held it until he could be disqualified. The crowd was pissed. For some reason, Tony fired up Zombie’s music and that was the end. It was a total mess.”
The three of them watched the curtain, listening to the crowd cheer. Branson’s familiar blues theme came over the stadium speakers. A few seconds later Branson hobbled through the curtain with the help of Victor Pardo from security. As soon as he stepped through, a team of sports trainers and paramedics swarmed and lifted Branson onto a rolling gurney. Branson’s face was contorted in an expression of pain that looked very real. The trainers grabbed at his kneecap, asked him where it hurt, tested his movement, and yelled at the other wrestlers to get out of the way. A crowd of wrestlers and entourage followed the medics as they rolled Branson through the locker room area and out to a loading dock, where he was lifted into an ambulance.
“Do we know if he’s going to be okay?” Joey asked Jade.
“I have no idea,” she said. “I’ll go talk to Zombie and see what he knows.”
Joey watched the ambulance leave the parking lot and disappear into the dark of an unfamiliar city. He thought about the main event-level spot that would be left open in Branson’s absence. Maybe the locker room would be more accepting of a new star now that an old one was out.
Then he cringed at his own opportunism. Branson had worked tirelessly for years to achieve his dream, and tonight a freak injury might have taken the dream away for good. It was no time for Joey to be thinking of personal gain.
What a crazy business. One misstep in a non-televised match in a forgettable town and a career could end.
With the ambulance gone, the crowd of onlookers dispersed into ten different conversations. Joey, thankfully, was part of none of them. He seized the moment to escape to the showers, alone.
When he finished cleaning up and returned to the backstage area, he found it mostly empty. Everyone who was available to leave had gone to the hospital to visit Branson. Everyone except Jade.
“There you are,” she said when he stepped into the main atrium of the backstage space. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Jade Sleek was waiting backstage for him? His ego swelled.
“Shane and I are going for a bite,” said Jade. “You wanna come?”
Joey’s balloon popped. Why did Shane have to come?
“Yeah, I’d love to go,” he said, and, though he really wanted to go with Jade alone, he wasn’t lying. This was the first time he’d been invited to do anything with people from the company.
Five minutes later, they were in Jade’s rental car, driving the streets of Fort Worth. Joey sat in the back seat. In the passenger seat was his childhood idol. In the driver’s seat was an international sex symbol. Two days ago he was told he’d win the GWA World Title. It was as if Luck herself was giving Joey a push.