We were happy to do the slot, since there were still a couple of thousand seats left in the big arena, and Everett was keen to have a full house.
Jan would have loved our night on the town too, at a long table in one of the Catalan capital’s most famous restaurants, a big galleried place with some seats which let diners look down into the kitchen, with its huge, original, cast-iron range.
Eventually I couldn’t restrain myself any longer. I dug out my mobile phone and called her, from the din of the restaurant. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Having dinner.’
‘In the street, by the sound of it.’
‘Naw, honey, the street’s quieter than this place.’
‘Well lucky you. Me, I’m still working on Susie’s papers.’
‘Turn it in love. There’s always tomorrow. You’re sleeping for two now, remember.’
The satellite link was clear, but I could barely hear her against the background noise. ‘I suppose so. I’ve got the hairdresser in the morning, and I’m shopping in the afternoon, but I can always work in the evening, before your show.’ There was a roar from a table near ours, and I had to strain even harder to make her out. ‘I’m getting there, Oz. I’ll let you see what I’ve found when you get home.’
Jan would have enjoyed the next morning too; a tour of the city on our chartered bus, with stops at the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s great cathedral, which has been under construction for over a hundred years and is still nowhere near completion, at the Ramblas, for coffee in one of the dozens of street bars, whose tables are set under the trees between the avenue’s twin carriageways, and at the enormous Camp Nou, home of Barcelona Football Club and a place of worship for most Catalans, where a light buffet was set out in a hospitality suite.
By the time the bus arrived at the Arena, dead on one pm, I had decided to spend some of my windfall income from the GWA commission on a surprise spring weekend trip to the city for the two of us.
Sonny Leonard was standing at the performers’ entrance to the stadium, smoking a cigarette, as we dismounted from our vehicle. ‘Everything ready?’ Daze called to him.
‘Yeah, boss,’ the foreman replied. ‘These Spanish guys know what they’re doing okay. The CWI crowd did a couple of tour events here last summer, so they had a good idea of what our business is like.’
‘That’s good. Take a break, Sonny. You and the bus driver take a cab back to the hotel, go into the five-star restaurant and have some lunch. Get back here for six.’
‘Yeah, okay. I’ll do that.’ He dropped his cigarette and ground it into the tarmac with his right foot, then headed towards the bus.
Watching him go, Everett grunted. ‘CWI, huh? Guess we’d better show these people how a real wrestling promotion should be.’ He turned to the team. ‘Come on, Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s get inside and into the run-through. ’
He beckoned to me. ‘Oz, while I get changed into my ring gear, you go find Barbara and ask her how the tickets have gone since Channel 33 broadcast our interviews last night. If there are any left, tell her to let them go half-price.
‘After you’ve done that, with Leonard off patch, I want you to do what you did last week. Go over the staging and look for problems — anything that shouldn’t be there.’
I did exactly as he asked — everyone always did exactly as Everett asked — steadily through the afternoon; during breaks in the run-through action, and while I wasn’t polishing my minimally bilingual introductions for the show itself. As I checked the staging, I was careful to ensure that I wasn’t noticed by Liam Matthews, who had joined the commentary team for the event. However the Irishman seemed to be well on the way back to top form, which meant that if it wasn’t female, he didn’t notice it.
‘All clear, Everett,’ I told the giant as he stepped out of the ring after his last run-through with Jerry and Rockette, a heavily curtailed affair, with only the speed moves but none of the power stuff being rehearsed. It looked like a good match; I had never seen Daze and The Behemoth go at it before, other than that one time on television in Anstruther, and I was looking forward to it.
‘You didn’t find anything unusual?’
‘Nothing at all; everything seems fine. Did you check the whiz-bangs?’
‘We ain’t using them here; they’re against regulations. Just lasers, lights and noise. . lots of noise. I’ll put four of our hired Spanish security guys on duty at the ring before we let the crowd in, to make sure than no one — marks or otherwise — goes anywhere near it.
‘With luck, we’ll get through this show clean.’
Chapter 27
Because of Central European Time, we were running an hour later by the watch than usual, and so it was after six when the doors were opened and the first of the curious public came filing in. I had just checked with Barbara: the last of the tickets had gone; it was a full house.
The feeling from the crowd as it grew was different from either the languid Geordie curiosity of Newcastle, or the proprietorial buzz of the Glaswegians. The Catalan marks were full of Latin excitement, shouting and laughing among themselves, singing football songs and waving the home-made banners which seemed to be obligatory at all televised wrestling promotions. By six-fifty-five, as show time approached, they even had a Mexican wave going.
It was on its third circuit of the arena when my own private wave swept over me. It seemed to begin in the pit of my stomach and radiate outwards. I felt my heart hammering, I seemed to explode into a cold sweat, my head swam, the arena seemed to fade to red, then back again, and I felt overwhelmingly weak. I had experienced stage fright before, but never anything like the pure dread of those moments.
Fortunately, my attack vanished as suddenly and as completely as it had visited me. The lights dimmed, the wave stopped, the audience fell silent, and we were in business. I climbed into the ring, the lighting director found me, and my silver spot winked on. Wrestlers are judged, to a great extent, by the acclamation of the crowd. I’d guess there’s nothing new about that; I imagine the same was true in the Coliseum of Ancient Rome. Today’s gladiators call it a ‘pop’. I’ll swear that in my third week as the GWA ring announcer, when the spotlight hit me, I got a ‘pop’ of my own. Or at least I thought I did; that’s how tightly my new role had taken hold of me.
I got through my few welcoming words of passable Spanish, repeated them in English, then got on with introducing the first match. That was easy; it featured Sally Crockett, the first genuine, pan-European ring superstar.
As usual she was superb as she worked over a beefy Swedish girl who wrestled under the name of Valkyrie and who came into the ring wearing a horned helmet and carrying a huge brass shield. At the end of the match, two of our Spanish roadies carried her out of the ring on that shield and up the ramp towards the dressing room, leaving Sally to milk the adulation of the crowd for all it was worth.
As she stood perched on the middle rope I sneaked a glance towards the wrestlers’ entrance. Jerry was there, in a track suit and without his helmet, adulating with the rest of them. For a moment, I wondered how he would take it when the time came — as it would, in accordance with the laws of unpredictability which govern pro wrestling story lines — for her to lose.
The crowd’s enthusiasm for Sally’s show carried on through the programme. I was still learning the game, and my lesson for the night was that sports entertainment is to a great extent about firing up the crowd to a point just short of hysteria, to the level at which it has an addictive effect on the viewing audience. They’ll be well hooked tonight, I thought as the excitement reached fever pitch with the entry of The Behemoth, flanked by Tommy Rockette and Diane, The Princess.