To be fair. At first, the publicity for the 'PPV punch-out' hadn't gone that well.
This was because, as far as pretty much everyone who was anyone could tell...
Arroe and Meatius fighting... just wasn't that hectic of a specta...cle... 🫢✨
Perhaps in their dreams, they had their big, huge, and some might even say massive fandoms...
But as far as reality was concerned - they... well, they were total randoms.
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"Oi! T-That's not true. Back in the Sneering Dominion, I-I was known as a dig beal!!!"
Arroe Gant, cut to the quick, just-as-quickly cut-in - to make an appeal.
"And some even said that I had something known as 'diggest bick' potential..."
-he claimed, declaring that this meant he was well - influential.
___
Then again. Meatius Maximus of the Jim Jun Ki Clan, it couldn't be denied, definitely had at least one 'fan' - although the fact that his servant was paid [though arguably not enough, as mentioned in Chapter 48] in order to - as usual literally - 'massage the magnificence' of the muscular man, meant that even this [actual, physical] helping hand was unlikely to meet the sponsor and viewership demand...
"...What do you not understand?!" Meatius had retorted.
"It's not only about the [rub], tug and tussle... In the end, I just want to maximise my muscle !!!"
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But then. As it so often happens. The timeless entertainment of two grown, sweaty men in shorts duking it out in the ring, the ping and the sting, for the ring and the bling, the emotional high felt, over some kind of battle belt, slowly but surely, began to grip the masses in its thrall...
-and Arroe and Meatius' popularity began to snowball!
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...Perhaps it was due to the sheer lack of quality entertainment at the time. During this period, novels, movies, games, and media in general had become increasingly predictable and uniform and increasingly lacked originality, falling into a slump of 'safe' and 'sure' - and which had, ironically, caused the overall quality of the actual experiences themselves to become increasingly... poor.
[This was largely attributed to the "so-called AI Revolution" in the early 21st century, which had led many people - excluding the esteemed readers of course ✨- to grow up being increasingly dependent on AI for almost all aesthetic and creative decisions - leading to entertainment becoming increasingly... vanilla and generic - since the mainstream AI models themselves were controlled and influenced by the corporations and the governments, becoming heavily weighted for 'safety' and 'stability'.
Of course, there would always be people who could and would develop their own increasingly individual, personally-customised AI-models, and later on, this would ultimately lead to a burst of brilliance and creativity in a kind of phenomenon that would be termed 'The Liberation of AI' but of course, all this is a story for a later chapter... 🫢✨]
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Or perhaps it was due to the sheer, pure… *personality* of the two men themselves - one outrageously [over?!?!]-confident, the other one-track-mindedly obsessed… one who believed that he was the best, and the other who wished to put that claim - and his own musculature - to the test…
It would have been one thing if Arroe was actually… good. But strangely enough, it seemed that there was in fact… very little basis for Arroe's bold self-belief - quite possibly, he would come to grief?!
Sure, his 'swordplay' was supposedly skilled - but hadn't his… swish-stick become stilled… stuck; and then stunningly… swerved?!?!
Rumour had it that his… implement was now…. curved... 💀
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Neither was Meatius any better served… by the fact that he only cared about… 'size'. His 'bigness', he believed, could… handle any 'surprise' that Arroe might dare to spring or 'whip out' - this time, the outcome wouldn't be in doubt!
"-Muscles maketh the man..." [So they liked to say in the Jim Jun Ki Clan…]
He would make and mould himself into a monumental 'mountain' of muscle… and then he would win… by a landslide 🫢✨…
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In any case, the fact was that people had begun to increasingly pay attention - and in this regard, we should also mention, that a big reason for this Audience retention was thanks to a certain 'veteran reporter', 'In-story PR guy and Hype Man' by the name of George "Ge" Lazer, who had cunningly dipped, and made himself scarce since the unfortunate incident where his fake moustache had slipped… [in Chapter 407] but who had now sufficiently recovered his mojo, enough to progress the plot by promoting the PPV through his… professional publications…