Then the clicking broke into bouncing synths! As the verse began, the golden backlight dropped, and LAW's newest fighter came into view!
Darina Daybreak
The blonde slipped into the ring without much effort or flash. That was still to come. She picked up a microphone, tapping it a few times before beaming wide. "Yo." The syllable hushed the crowd. "Name's Darina. My friends call me Dare, my fans call me Daybreak, and my opponents call me–" She snapped her head to the side, closed her eyes, and snored loudly into the microphone.
Taking a moment to laugh along with the crowd, she put her free hand on her hip. "Y'know, where I come from – in the wide world of mixed martial arts – there's a lot of boring old farts. They've got way too much time on their hands, y'know? They sit around. Complain, complain. Podcast Guys. Hot take merchants. You know the type."
"Anyway, when I said I wasn't moving on to UFC or Bellator, but into pro wrestling? Into LAW? Man, lemme tell you." Darina ran her hand through her hair and whistled, looking more like an exasperated comedian than a LAW debutante. "Those assholes went into conniptions. Seriously! They looked like they were gonna blow a vein live on stream." She shook her head. If they did, she thought, would anybody really miss them? "The combat sports world just hates professional wrestling." The LAW faithful, chips on their shoulders from buying into the hottest piece of sports entertainment since League of Legends, booed their doubters. "One of the reasons, I think, is because of the…" Darina popped her free hand in the air, pantomiming a firework. "Theatrics of it all. They think coming out here and shooting a promo like this is stupid."
"And you know what? They're right." Darina nodded, and the life was sucked out of the room. That definitely wasn't where they thought this was going, huh? "Oh, come on! It's dumb as hell! Strutting out to 2000's rock or rap, dressed like it's a Marvel themed strip club. Then preening all over the place, talking about how you're the biggest or the baddest as if it proves to anyone that you can fight worth a damn. Tweet about it the next day, and you've got your average pro wrestler's biggest moment."
Now the boos were starting to come for Darina herself. "Wait, waaait!" She pumped the brakes on the hate train. "I have a secret to tell you." Looked to the left, to the right. Leaned in conspiratorially to the nearest camera. "This brand of stupid? I think I kinda like it…!"
Where was the crowd supposed to go with that? They settled on a polite, if confused, applause. "It's fun! We're just having fun. A really hot girl and a few thousand of her newest friends. How could you hate on this?" They giggled alongside her. "See? You just gotta know your audience."
"And speaking of audience…" She pointed to the fans, wrist flicking with every other word. "You, my good shes, theys, and gays, have been short-changed."
"You deserve more from your Heavyweight Division. You deserve more than… what's the phrase? 'Big meaty women slapping meat?' Give me a break."
She moved to the corner of the ring, shrugging her arms high to the murmuring audience. "Seriously, it's like half the division never made it past Physics 101. There's more ways to hurt somebody than throwing a shit ton of weight at them or picking them up and dropping them. Tell that to Suplex Central, though. They'll be right with you, as soon as they finish winding up for their next move." Darina crouched down and lunged, taking two massive, slow motion steps as if lining someone up for a spear through molasses. Nobody laughed with her this time.
"Even when someone says they're gonna break the mold, they just run the same damn playbook with extra steps. We've got chicks in the other divisions doing their best Ninja Gaiden, and whenever a heavyweight jumps in the air, it's just to fall on the other girl."
Darina stepped to another corner, feeling her roll. "And don't even get me started on some of the moves these girls pull out." She wrapped her arms around herself, flashing disbelief as she turned towards the entrance ramp. "Bearhugs? C'MON! Hammerfist. Elbow. Knee, kick." She mimed each move in the air, like class was in session. "Hell, you use lariats like I use jabs, but the one occasion where you really wanna clobber someone in the head, you just squirm around between the other girl's tits!" On second thought, that didn't sound so bad. "…I'm starting to think some of you backstage like getting the air squeezed out of you. Which, like, I don't blame you, but come on. We're fighting here, right?"
The air was heavy with broken sanctity. Kat Hart, Karen Starring? Stale, Darina said. Grace Kenning and Alaina Sanders-Haines? Boring and one-note. The various Reinhardts and Rines and others of stock both famous and not? Old hat, all of them.
Who was this girl, this fresh blood from another world, telling them that a whole division was nothing but unskilled copycats?
"Don't get me wrong. Maybe it works." She sucked her bottom lip in, fiddling at it with a bite as if chewing the very idea. Then Darina nodded. "Maybe it works," she repeated. "There's been a lot of MMA chicks, freestyle wrestlers, and who knows what else coming in here with bright ideas like mine. They waltz in here talking a big game, get steamrolled by a few superstars, and leave." Her shrug was a concession.
"But you know what those girls didn't have?" Darina stood in the center of the ring, waiting for a response. One beat. Then two. Then three. Only silence greeted her, and-
Darina's elbow flashed, the right swinging into an uppercut! Then it swung down, cutting through the air as the martial artist spun in place. The next right was a thrust like a spear, a spinning back elbow that turned into a quick jab. She flicked her wrist out, and the other came to join it. Darina clinched an imaginary foe and brought her knee up with a victorious cry!
As the yell echoed around the stunned hall, Darina brought the microphone back to her lips.
"They weren't me."
Then, she threw the microphone up into the air! She lashed out again! This combination came even faster, almost blurring. Right jab, left straight, right elbow! Left uppercut, haymaker with the right, leap and launch a one-two with the knees! All swung in the time it took for the microphone to fall back to earth. Only… Darina caught it in the crook of her ankle and foot. She kicked it back up into the air, caught it in a single-armed clinch. Finally, with another shout, she pulled it down, slamming the business end of the microphone with her knee!
A thumping boom reverberated through the room. It bounced from wall to wall as the mic hurtled through the air. Where at the edge of the lower bowl it landed, nobody knew, but the near-explosion of sound caused by the impact was enough. Imagining your favorite wrestler taking that knee to their skull was a nightmare.
The second the mic left their sight, the stage crew knew what to do. They pumped up the gain on their boom mic, hanging it far and low, just above the center of the ring.
"And what do I got?"
Darina launched into the fastest combination yet, seamlessly transitioning from strike to strike, from razzle to dazzle! Now the world was on its feet, raising its roar with each passing second. Glimmer and gold caught the glint of the light. Eventually, Darina brought her shadow boxing routine to an end. She planted her feet out wide. Arms akimbo to the cheers.
"I got what you deserve!"
When the swell finally ended, Darina went back to her sauntering swagger. "Now… I know what you're thinking. 'Didn't Dare here just get done saying how dumb it is to talk about what you're gonna do instead of doing it?'" She paused again for effect. "Well, it's like I said earlier. We're just having fun."
"I don't need to tell you what I can do. Even that little appetizer wasn't meant as a 'warning shot' or whatever. My body of work – all the bodies I've caught – it speaks for itself."
"Trust me. When I'm up here talking my talk, I'm not trying to send any kind of message. I'm not trying to make you a believer." Darina shrugged. "Google me. Or just fuck around long enough, and you'll find out what I'm all about."
"I'm not trying to put the fear of God, the fear of me, in anyone out there. Because if they were smart, they'd know what's coming for them. And if they're not scared? Well…" Darina flashed a wolfish grin, eyes gleaming at the nearest camera. "That's even better."
"And I am definitely... not trying to make myself look good for the camera. I mean…" She pointed to herself. "Really." Knocked her chiseled abs. "You think I need that?" Then curled her right arm into a flex, bulging her biceps to the crowd's delight! "Look at me! I do a pretty damn good job of that myself, don't you think? Oh, man, and just wait until you see me in action."
"Don't get me wrong. I 100% believe everything I say. I am gonna beat your ass. I am gonna put you to sleep. But one last time, it's like I said." She held up three fingers, knocking one down at a time as the world said it with her. "Know. Your. Audience."
Darina nodded vigorously, sweeping a finger across the lower bowl. "And I think I know what you want. I really do. You just wanna have fun." She pointed to the center of the canvas. "Whether it's a shadow-boxing routine in an empty ring or a massive knockout blow that'll scramble your brains, you want fun."
"You don't want big meaty women slapping meat with moves straight out of the 80s. You don't want an angry chick pacing around the ring, fuming empty promises. You want action. High-octane, jaws-on-the-floor, unapologetic action!" Big words and a big promise, screamed to the stars by an even bigger personality. Still, when Darina said it, every man, woman, and child in the stadium could believe it.
"You want Ali and Frazier! You want Magic and Bird! You want the best of the best going all out to take each other down!" By now, the crowd was on their feet, screaming and chanting and clapping. Half the crowd loved her, and the other half was ready to see the clash of styles Darina promised. If they weren't all the way behind her, they were sure as hell eager to see if this upstart could turn the very fabric of modern professional wrestling inside out.
"Well... News flash to you, Japan: I AM THE BEST! I'm the best at what I do... And what I do is niiice… aaaas… heeeellll!" At each word, she raised her hand higher and higher. Her fingers curled in on themselves slowly, a shining star collapsing into a single point. One triumphant fist.
"It's a new day, LAW. Take care not to get burned."