‘Jerry’s my best friend in the business, Oz,’ Everett rumbled. . fortunately with a smile; I still wasn’t one hundred per cent sure of my ground with the big guy. ‘He has twenty per cent. That ain’t just for old times sake though. The Behemoth and Daze were the biggest drawing cards in the US before we came over here to start the GWA. I wanted to make sure he was tied in for stage three, and there’s no better way than to let him in on the action.’
‘So what’s stage three, then?’ I asked him.
‘That’s when the GWA goes truly Global. We go back to the States and take out our main rival, Championship Wrestling Incorporated, but not at the box office; in the boardroom.’
‘Won’t you have competition there? What about Triple W, the people you used to work for? Won’t they be a bit pissed off if you pop up as their new rival?’
The gold flecks glinted in the neon light as Daze shook his head. ‘It won’t come as a surprise. Michael has been locked in a ratings war with Anthony Reilly, the Prez of CWI, for years, operating on rival cable networks. Their programming is timed in direct opposition to each other. Though not their pay-per-view events; the networks wouldn’t allow that.
‘When Jerry and I left, Reilly thought that he’d won the war. He hasn’t, because Michael has other resources, but there’s no doubt that CWI is top dog again. Triple W can live with that, though, because they know my long-term plan. Mike and I dreamed it up together.
‘When I set up over here, and did my deals with the European broadcasters, I took some business from Triple W and CWI, but not enough to get their attention. CWI were probably grateful, for they’d been losing money running live events in the UK and Germany.’ He grinned. ‘They won’t be grateful when I take GWA to the States and cut a deal to run shows on their network.’
‘That’s the plan is it?’
‘Yup. It’ll work too. Triple W will make sure that my name and Jerry’s stay box office over there. The line on its programming is that we’re on sabbatical. When I go in to cut the feet from under CWI, its network will snap me up, and they’ll be out. Once I’m in the driving seat, I’ll make Reilly an offer for what’s left of his company and merge the two.’
‘What if he won’t sell?’
‘If I get that far, he won’t have much choice.’
I surprised myself by asking another sensible business question. ‘Why hasn’t Triple W tried to buy him out?’
Everett smiled. ‘Organisations like ours are made and broken by television. Suppose Triple W did buy out CWI, what would it get for its money, apart from some wrestlers’ contracts? Nothing. It couldn’t operate on two networks, that’s for sure. All it would do is help a smaller organisation make the step up to national television, and create a new and maybe an even nastier rival for itself.’ He shook his great head again, and I began to realise that there was a pretty big brain in there too.
‘No. Through his deal with me, Michael will get rid of Reilly without spending one cent.’
‘Hold on a minute,’ I said. ‘You’re the biggest draw in the game. Won’t you be an even bigger threat to Triple W?’
‘In theory yes; in practice, no, because as part of my network TV deal, I’ll specify that our programming will no longer be in direct competition to Triple W. They’ve always gone live on Mondays. We’ll switch to a Thursday slot. On top of that, Jerry will go back to Triple W for two years.’
‘Won’t you miss him?’
‘Personally, yes, but America’s seen our act before. On his own, Jerry will be on top dollar at Triple W, plus he’ll still have his percentage of GWA. Professionally I can handle his departure. Darius and Liam have had no US exposure. When the marks in the States see the Black Angel and the Irish Devil they’ll go crazy.’
‘What about Diane? Will she stay with GWA?’
Everett nodded, so emphatically that he created a small breeze. ‘Oh yes. We’ve discussed that.’ He smiled, vaguely. ‘We gotta start a family sometime soon, if we’re gonna.’ He glanced across at me. ‘How about you, Oz? You got kids?’
‘Bloody hell, no. Jan and I only just got married.’
‘What the hell does that matter these days? You been living together for long?’
‘No. We’ve known each other since we were kids, but we never did live together. The fact is, until fairly shortly before we decided to get hitched, I was living with someone else, and so was Jan. But our paths crossed again, and we realised that what we wanted most of all was each other. I don’t feel very proud of leaving Prim-’
‘Who?’
‘Prim. It’s short for Primavera.’
‘She Spanish?’
‘Christ no, she’s from Perthshire. Her mother liked the sound of the word, that’s all. As I said, I don’t feel proud of leaving her, but the fact is, she’d fallen in love with someone else too.’
‘She with him now?’
I smiled, in spite of myself, at the impossibility of that. ‘No. He’s dead.’
‘Yet you still left her?’
‘Yes. She realised how I felt about Jan; and how she really felt about me, I suppose.’ Suddenly I felt awkward. ‘It’s all worked out for the best. I’m married and Prim’s off in search of her next adventure. She’s a magnet for them, believe me.’
I tried to fix a business-like look on my face. ‘So, Everett; you’ve shown me GWA and you’ve told me all about it. Now, what’s your problem?’
The big man had been looking idly out of the window. Now he spun round and fixed me with a sudden stare. ‘Like I said yesterday, someone’s out to screw me.’ He paused, as a bizarre picture flashed momentarily in my mind.
‘Our business is very profitable, but it also involves high risk. We guarantee to provide quality programming to our satellite customers. Two shows a week, Saturdays and Mondays, shot and screened as live, plus two one-hour edited segments for later screening. Everything is staged before live audiences in stadia around Europe. Also, like I told you, we do regular shows which are sold to satellite and cable subscribers on a pay-per-view basis.
‘When I say “as live” that means that we shoot the events in one piece, then transmit them the same way. Everything goes down in a single take. There’s little or no margin for error built in there, especially on BattleGround, the Saturday show. That goes out on network just over an hour after we finish shooting it. It runs for two hours; the Monday Night Rumble — that’s what we call it — lasts for one. We tape matches for that on the Sunday, the day after BattleGround, in the same venue.
‘Around four weeks ago, we were two thirds of the way through the taping of BattleGround in Dortmund, Germany, when the technicians discovered that they had been running for half an hour with empty video cassettes.’
‘Jesus,’ I whistled. ‘So what did you do?’
‘We stopped the taping, kept the audience there, and put the whole thing out live. We got away with it, by the skin of our teeth. I raised hell with our production contractors. They were full of apologies; they assumed that they’d been given duds by the tape supplier.
‘I accepted their guarantee that there would be no repeats, and got on with business. Then, a week ago, in Nottingham, this happened.’ There was a television set with an integrated video player in a corner of his office. He reached across, switched it on and pressed the play button.
A wrestling match sprang into life on the screen. ‘This is a tag-team fight — that’s two wrestlers on each side, one in the ring at any time — involving our hard-core guys, the Rattlers, and Chris and Dave, the Manson Brothers, who are really cousins. Watch it.’
I did as I was told. The Rattlers, big guys in jeans and workshirts, seemed to be taking a real pasting from the non-brothers. As I watched, the Rattler in the ring was slammed across the ring into the padded corner turn-buckles, caught by the combatant Manson as he rebounded off and slammed to the canvas with a crash which seemed to shake the ring.