She laughed to herself.
***
After watching the clip on ESPN with Rex, Heath retreated to his office. He decided some research was in order, and hopped on the Internet to read about his two strongest competitors—Clay "The Punisher" Cavasso and Richie Marsden. He became engrossed in watching clips of them in the ring, and realized he needed to be adding this form of study to his overall regimen. Just from fifteen minutes of film, he could already see that Clay was very fond of the left roundhouse kick. He tended to punctuate jabs with hooks from the opposite arm, and didn't seem to be very good at blocking. However, he seemed to be able to take a fair amount of hits without it even fazing him. Richie liked to feint and then catch his opponents from the other side. He also was extremely quick and agile, and if he took hits that put him on his back, he was quick with the leg sweep on his way back to his feet. Heath knew he'd need to watch out for that. Neither one of them seemed any stronger than he was, or even better or faster than he was. He could simply read their strengths and pick out their weaknesses from these couple of clips he'd watched. He'd make a point to watch more and dissect their fighting styles even further. He knew the same was being done to him. He knew that whatever seed he was put into, his opponents were chomping at the bit to take a bite out of the famous Heath Riley. He'd be damned if he let it happen. He was unofficially nicknamed "The One Hitter Quitter", a name he didn't particularly care for or ask for, but there it was anyway. It stemmed originally from his fight with Mad Dog, although it had taken slightly more than one hit to knock him out. At Ultimate Warrior, he had mowed through his first several opponents that way. He'd have to make sure it happened as such at Smackdown.
As he continued clicking through different clips, his cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at the ID. It was Carter.
"Hey," he said. "What's up?"
"Heath," Carter's voice said. "I have….not awesome news."
"What's that?" Heath asked evenly, scrolling through a list of videos on YouTube.
"It's about Smackdown." Carter hesitated and Heath grew impatient.
"Spit it out, man," he said. "What?"
"It's no longer an eight-man tourney," Carter said. "The size of the purse fell under debate, and the game warden in New York said that for a purse that size, even if the money was willingly and legitimately fronted by Smith and his company, there either needs to be more fighters, or they need to reduce the purse. Well, no one wants the purse to be reduced, so they added eight more fighters."
Heath sighed. It wasn't, as Carter said, "awesome" news by any means—who wanted increased competition with a $2 million purse on the line? But it was far from the worst news he'd ever received. Still, another sixteen-man tournament? Ultimate Warrior all over, he thought, annoyed.
"All right," he sighed. He reached for a pencil and pad of paper. "Give me the new names." As Carter rattled them off, Heath jotted them down. He recognized a couple of the names; the others were not well known to him at all.
"Who are these guys?" he asked. "I know the first couple but not the others. Never heard of 'em."
"The others are amateurs, too," Carter said. Heath knew better than to scoff at the word "amateur" and assume they were an easy win—people had done that to him and then gotten their teeth knocked down their throats. "They do have some YouTube clips though. I sure hope you've been watching film on these guys, Heath."
"I'm on it now," Heath said. "Thanks for the heads up."
He hung up with Carter and sighed again. Another sixteen-man tournament. He thought back to Ultimate Warrior. That had been a long couple days. Smackdown would have to be a two-night event now, with two rounds on the first day and two on the second. He hadn't been given the exact details of the tournament yet, but his best guess was that on day one, all sixteen of the fighters would be paired up randomly. Whoever won those fights would progress to round two, where the fighters would be whittled from eight to four. The first two days would be the longest; the first two bouts of the fights would be two three-minute rounds, with a third round possible if there was a tie at the end of the two rounds. With the fights, the breaks in between each round, the commercial breaks, and any and all other inconveniences that would surely come up, he knew the first day would be at least three hours' worth of fights. The second day would be less fight-heavy, with the third bout consisting of five three-minute rounds and the final bout being five five-minute rounds. For television purposes, the fights would be intermingled with live interviews, fighter profiles, behind-the-scenes footage, and whatever other shit people tended to want to see.