The Battle for the Throne
As I'd mentioned before, pro wrestlers enjoyed fairly long careers.
After all, we weren't actually competing with our bodies in the way true athletes did.
Harley, who'd wrestled me back in GCW, was well past sixty.
And yet he'd stepped into the ring, lost, but shown real heart doing it. The drama that came out of that match struck a deep chord with everyone watching — because a legend fading from people's memories had returned to prove he still had something left.
That was why I believed anyone could keep wrestling, given the right conditions, no matter their age.
But the moment that age started to compromise their safety, the story changed completely.
There were exceptions like Nick Flair, of course, but he functioned mostly as a manager and rarely wrestled actual matches anymore.
Greg, on the other hand, wore the expression of a man determined to keep himself going forever.
And that was what worried me.
A full-time wrestler working every date on the WWF schedule had, strictly speaking, a career life expectancy of about forty.
One match a week might be survivable, but full-timers ran multiple matches every single week, and the physical toll was brutal.
Will he really be okay?
After turning the question over for a while, I emptied my mind and committed to focusing solely on the King's Rumble.
My feud with Orton had been mostly comedic, so we wound it down naturally.
And I began appearing on shows to promote the King's Rumble.
...Though "promoting" was a generous word for it.
All it really meant was climbing into the ring and adding my own flourish to what had already been agreed upon with creative. The gist went something like this:
"So I hear there's a King's Rumble coming. When you think about it, this company really loves the word 'king.' I mean, you've even got the King of Kings himself — Triple H."
A beat of silence.
Then I pointed off into the distance and let one line fly.
"Everybody — say his name. He's recovering from injury, and he deserves to hear it."
[Triple H! Triple H! Triple H! Triple H! Triple H! Triple H!]
The crowd answered.
Good or evil aside, Hunter was a legend-level star who commanded respect. Wishing for his return was a beautiful bit of performance.
By now, I had become a wrestler fully settled into the hearts of the audience.
Especially my mic-work — flowing from that silver tongue of mine, nobody in the company could keep pace with it.
They followed along with everything I said, ready to savor every step of how far I would grow and how high I would climb.
"But you know what — you're right. If we're all kings, then the King's Rumble is nothing less than a battle for the throne, isn't it?"
[Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!]
"So tell me — who do you think deserves to wear the crown? Let's go through them one by one, shall we?"
I smiled.
As the crowd's cheers rolled on, I began naming the contenders one at a time.
"Greg Hart."
[Yeeeeeeeaaaaahhh!]
"Casket-Taker."
[Yeeeeeeaaaaahhhhh!]
"How about this one — JBL comes out himself and takes the title shot for his own."
[Boooooooooooooooo!]
"Haha, yeah, didn't think so. What about Silverback?"
[Boooooooo……!]
Silverback was currently a babyface, but the booking around him was so transparently stale that the fans were showering him with boos.
That one didn't land so well.
In moments like this, pretending you didn't notice was basic courtesy between coworkers.
"What about... me?"
[Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhh!]
The biggest pop of the night came crashing down on me.
Even I might have blinked back a tear or two at that.
They wanted me.
Feeling that, strength flooding through me, I kept going.
"Hearing that, I can't just sit on my hands! You really want to see me win this thing?!"
[SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN!]
"You want me to BLOW UP the world you all know?!!"
[Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!]
Backstage was probably in chaos about now, drowning in sheer bewilderment.
And no wonder — I had gone off-script, pushing myself as the favorite to win the King's Rumble.
But mic-work, wherever it wandered, only ever needed to arrive at one final conclusion.
I fell silent.
Hardening my expression, I glared straight ahead into the camera. The crowd followed my lead and matched that silence exactly.
A single moment of total focus.
And then, carefully, I let one man's name cross my lips.
"Shawn Cena."
The crowd went quiet.
I read their reaction, felt a flicker of relief, and pressed on.
"You know the guy. The hottest rising star on Rakedown right now."
Only then did a modest cheer rise up.
But the audience was locked onto something else — the deadly serious look on my face.
"The man I barely beat at Ring Survival. And he's only gotten stronger since."
I climbed the turnbuckle and dropped down onto it, sitting with my weight settled on top.
"Want to know why? Because he wants to snap JBL's neck and walk into Wrestle Imperium with the belt raised high. That makes him the most dangerous contender in this match."
The atmosphere turned grave.
But the crowd was hanging on my every word.
"And honestly? So am I. Every one of us lives day by day with our eyes fixed on the top of this business."
I spoke from the heart.
Because of that, the mic-work landed even harder, striking something deep in the audience.
They, too, were people chasing a goal somewhere in their lives.
They listened to me.
"And just now — hearing you all roar for me — I remembered exactly what my goal is."
The crowd sent up another cheer.
I rose from the turnbuckle and swept my gaze across the entire arena.
Twenty thousand fans who had come here tonight just to see me.
"All right, San Diego! For all of you! For everyone watching me from behind that TV screen — I will beat Shawn Cena, and I will WIN the King's Rumble!"
When I roared that final vow, even calling out the name of their city, the people gave me the loudest reaction of the entire night.
[SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN!]
Chants and cheers swirled together into a deafening wall of sound that shook the whole arena.
And at the very peak of it, the instant I threw my arm into the air, my theme music detonated through the speakers.
The crowd didn't stop cheering until the show cut to commercial break and I finally left the ring.
On the Rakedown side, Cena stepped up to answer.
Flexing his signature delinquent swagger, he laid out his reply to everything I'd said first.
And I was watching it live from inside a camper bus somewhere on the road.
[Sin beat me at Ring Survival. Sure. But this time is different. Because that guy doesn't have the desperation I've got right now.]
What a deliciously tongue-flicking performance.
The man in that ring looked nothing like his usual easygoing self.
[Right now, I'm one second from exploding. I want to rip that damn title off JBL right this minute and spit in his smug face!]
[Cena! Cena! Cena! Cena!]
[Desire is what moves people! And I am its living embodiment! I'm going to win the King's Rumble — and that's a promise!]
Knowing what the real Cena was like, watching him like this was hilarious on any number of levels.
Come to think of it, the same went for everyone.
Orton, who'd spent most of his career as a heel, was in reality a remarkably petty, small-minded human being.
Russell, too, was a fair distance from the perfectly righteous character he played.
He was a genuinely good guy — but he wasn't the caricature of goodness you'd find in a comic book, was the point.
And then there was me.
'I'm not so different either.'
Anyone who knew me would probably react with some confusion at that.
After all, I'd carried myself with unwavering confidence both above the ring and below it.
But all of that had been an act.
The real me ran deep on insecurity. I simply made a point of never letting it show.
'No sense airing it out now.'
Besides, it was precisely because I could hide it that I could afford to act arrogant in front of others.
I worked harder than anyone else to match the size of my inferiority complex — and I had the advantage of knowing the future, too.
In other words, Sin was a character built to amplify one part of who I already was.
And my friends, as I said, carried those same seeds inside them.
Cena could be startlingly cold when it counted. Orton was genuinely cruel. And Russell really was fundamentally decent.
It was only those traits, cranked up to maximum, that became their characters on screen.
Seen through that lens, Cena's new persona fit him like a tailored suit.
He had taken my advice and grown enormously because of it.
To the point where he could stand toe-to-toe with Sin, the de facto ace of Burning Kong.
'I can't wait.'
This King's Rumble was guaranteed to set the world on fire.
The day of the King's Rumble.
Fifty hulking men in total had gathered at the arena.
On top of that came roughly ten Divas and well over a hundred staff members from the two production crews.
Inside a coliseum built to hold a hundred and fifty thousand fans.
The screen was a custom-built monster so massive that several crane trucks had to be driven inside the venue just to hoist it into place.
Amid all this bustle — structures rising, installations grinding forward — Bart Maxen and Paul Hagan were deep in conversation.
A tucked-away corner of the arena's second level.
The domed stadium was so vast you couldn't even make out the far side.
From here, the ring looked no bigger than a booger. Anyone seated up here would be watching the match on the jumbotron, squinting through cheap zoomed-in camera feeds just to pick out the wrestlers.
And yet tickets cost more than a hundred dollars. Plenty of people couldn't even get their hands on one at that.
The company had certainly come a long way from two years ago.
And who stood at the center of that turnaround went without saying — so much so that saying it made your mouth ache.
Though everyone kept it hushed, he had quietly flexed his political muscle and left an enormous imprint on the company.
Hagan spoke first.
"I think winning this one is exactly what a man like him deserves."
"...It's already decided. What would you have me do about it now?"
"Just giving you my honest opinion, boss."
The relationship between the two men was a delicate one.
Bart, strictly speaking, was the man who had stolen Hagan's ideas and turned them into a global phenomenon.
But without Bart, those ideas never could have been transformed into a business empire of that scale.
It was Bart and the WWF who had taken violence and bloodshed, added 'sex' to the mix, and made it all the more electrifying.
So Hagan, at this point, was simply grateful to still be working in pro wrestling at all.
Even if he scraped by on borrowed time, on a fly's lifespan, straining to voice his opinions where he could.
And yet, practically speaking, Bart couldn't afford to cut Hagan loose.
Because Hagan, already packed and ready, might walk off somewhere and found a wrestling promotion to rival the WWF itself.
With a wealthy backer tucked under his arm, no less.
Believing that story was exactly why Hagan pressed the question again.
"Is that really the only reason?"
"What?"
"The fact that he's Asian."
"That's the biggest one. I don't know whether people would accept an Asian world champion."
Bart gave a bitter smile.
"But I've also got no appetite for shoving a rookie that far, that fast."
"Cena, though—"
"That kid has failed once. Which means he'll work himself to the bone to protect the position he's earned."
"And Sin hasn't?"
"Heh. Your eye's not as sharp as I thought."
Bart's gaze sharpened to a blade.
"Since the day he walked into this company, that man has done exactly whatever he wanted. A guy like that gets bored easily. And bored guys leave."
Bart still didn't trust Sin. No — the truth was, there was no one on earth Bart trusted.
He loves pro wrestling, does he?
'The moment that love curdles into hatred, that man will walk out without looking back.'
Unlike himself, that is.
Unlike a man who had everything he was chained to this place, Sin could do anything he pleased.
Bart let out a dry snort, and in Sin's face he suddenly saw another man's.
"He was the same way."
"Who do you mean?"
"The one you pushed so hard."
Brook Lesner.
In two years with the company, he'd received a push for the ages — then abruptly declared he'd 'lost his passion' and quit.
Rumor had it he'd been exploring football and mixed martial arts ever since. Bart hadn't bothered to look into it.
"Do you have any idea how many wrestlers I ground into the dirt for two years to build that bastard up?"
"Brook was a man who could never make peace with a wrestler's loneliness. Sin is clearly different—"
"It's hunger that teaches a man to endure that loneliness. Which is exactly why Sin can't be sent up yet."
"That's sophistry."
Cena had failed before, so he would keep grinding once he reached the top.
But Sin had never failed. So the moment he climbed, his passion would surely die.
What kind of twisted logic was that?
It wasn't as if anyone could actually know what failures Sin had or hadn't suffered.
But Hagan didn't bother saying any of that out loud.
A man you simply couldn't talk to — that was Bart Maxen, plain and simple.
Besides, Hagan's unease had another root entirely: the sense that Bart was hiding one particular truth.
Somehow, lately, the old man had been sleeping badly.
Bart sometimes thought about it.
If Sin ever became world champion.
'By then, this company might not belong to me anymore.'
With that thought, Bart gazed down in silence at the colossal arena below.
A venue so enormous that the rental fee alone burned through tens of millions of dollars for a single night.
But this kingdom could make a hundred times that in a day.
And that was why he could never leave this place.