The Retirement Reversed
Greg Hart had reversed his scheduled retirement.
The fact wormed its way out through some rat hole in this massive company, and in the end, the world found out.
It started when the pro wrestling press caught wind of it and started yakking about it on the radio.
"Greg Hart, it turns out, was offered a two-year contract extension by the company. And he accepted it."
"Greg's in a feud with Sin right now, isn't he?"
"Yeah, the two of them are running a gorgeous storyline at the moment. The Intercontinental belt, their history, even the whole King's Rumble affair thrown in."
"A clash between a veteran of the past and a rookie of the present. Both of them babyfaces, and yet it draws fantastic reactions. A hell of a feud."
"People are cheering for both men. Which is exactly why nobody can guess who's going to win."
"In that sense, I thought Sin was remarkably shrewd."
"How so?"
"Think about it — drawing cheers while going up against Greg Hart of all people? That's a tremendous accomplishment."
"Fair point. Greg's a super veteran with twenty years in the business — respect piled up to the rafters."
"So I was happy. I thought, what a way to go — putting over a phenomenal young star like Sin on his way out the door."
"But that's not how it turned out, apparently."
"Right. Greg reversed his retirement, and the story has gone murky. If he ends up taking the championship belt... we're headed into territory nobody could have imagined."
"There'll be a backlash, no question."
"Greg's been great all these years, but he's worn out. Word is he can barely handle the schedule anymore — he's been skipping house shows too."
"Greg?"
"Yeah. That Greg."
"The Greg who, overflowing with professionalism, used to work house shows — shows that don't even air — full-time?"
"Well, it's only natural, honestly. Veterans filter out house shows as their bodies give out. The WWF schedule is murder."
A wrestler's life meant three hundred or more days a year on the road, up to six matches a week at the worst of times. Enduring that past the age of forty was, for all practical purposes, impossible.
"The problem is, Greg was one of the guys who used to fight veterans for doing exactly that, calling it an unearned privilege. Remember? Guys like Jace Roberts and Rang Savage."
"Of course I remember. It got pretty loud back then. ...And now the man is behaving exactly like the seniors he once tore into."
"It's sad — and on top of that, kind of funny. Honestly, I think it's time he let go."
"Agreed. Greg Hart puts over Sin at Wrestle Imperium and rides off into the sunset. That's the right picture."
"That's how it should be. It's tradition, isn't it? A departing wrestler goes down in defeat."
"And instead of leaving, he's ended up standing in the way of the young guys."
"How to put it... it's a genuinely sorry thing. Watching a hero fall."
The reporters ran their mouths as they pleased. They spread the industry's secrets to the outside world and made their money off it — it was the sort of thing that laid their parasitic temperament gloriously bare.
Even I, who made a habit of listening to the broadcasts of the closest thing the industry had to outside experts, had always felt a sour taste about this part of it all.
Not that it could be helped.
I let out a sigh. Either way, now that the secret was out, there was probably no avoiding a backlash at the show — even if I never took the belt at all.
Thanks to those remarks, one image had been stamped onto Greg, whether he liked it or not.
An obstacle blocking a rookie's path. An old remnant that refused to be cleared away.
Inside the company, everyone hushed up the mood, and Greg himself said nothing either — but the audience wasted no time pouring their feedback out at the show.
It was the third week of February, with Cold Blood right around the corner. Greg and I met in the ring and kept the feud rolling.
Until now, I had painted Greg as the old fossil standing in the way of my future.
And Greg had countered by insisting that the road I walked was not the right one.
And he had a point. Greg was a man who always fought fair and square and seized his victories through honest combat.
But I had no qualms about cowardly tactics when they were needed, and in the Rumble I had pulled off the feat of eliminating Greg with Stacey's help. That became the detonator for the feud, which was set to run all the way to Wrestle Imperium — and Greg had agreed to all of it.
Right up until the newsletter incident, the crowd had cheered the both of us. Each man stood for something distinct, and they expected a beautiful drama to carry through to Greg's retirement ceremony.
But things had gone sideways.
"You've got no honor, Sin. A man is supposed to stand and fight with nothing but his bare fists."
[Boooooo……!!]
The audience answered Greg's mic-work with boos, unhesitating and immediate.
Until now, Greg had received absolute respect as the legend who held to his convictions to the very end. And I had drawn cheers as the fearless rookie daring to challenge a legend.
But once the re-signing came out, the story flipped on its head. Greg was no longer a legend burning down the final stretch of his career — he was an old-timer clinging disgustingly to his own lifeline.
That was how powerfully real-world circumstances bled into the script.
"You wouldn't understand. Frankly, that belt sitting on your shoulder is a disgrace to the WWF. And I will take it back."
[Boooo……!!]
"I can't let that one slide."
I cut in right on the heels of Greg's line, working to keep the boos from swelling any further. But how long could that hold?
And considering the lines I had coming up, the backlash was only going to multiply — because the dialogue waiting in the script was, at this exact moment, cutting Greg to the bone.
"My holding this belt is a disgrace? That's not your call to make. It belongs to the countless people watching us."
I raised the belt high. White leather, gold plates blazing under the lights — the secondary belt of Burning Kong. A title that had been the goal of just as many wrestlers as the main strap itself.
"Chicago! What does everybody think?!"
[SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN! SIN!]
An endless flood of chants came pouring down.
This was the reaction of Chicago — the holy city of professional wrestling — and nothing could have spoken more definitively. Winning over even the pickiest fans in the business was proof that I was doing my job, and doing it right.
"How about it, Greg? Doesn't that make me a champion with some legitimate recognition?"
"Then you'd better change, if you want to stand tall in front of them."
[Boooooo……!]
"If you want to be their representative, that is. I'll teach you how at this Cold Blood."
The boos kept getting worse.
Ever since word of the re-signing spread, Greg was no longer the superstar people wanted him to be. And the fact that he kept ignoring that reality and running his babyface mic-work anyway only stoked the fire hotter.
By the time the segment ended and we returned to Gorilla Position, the atmosphere was anything but good. Greg walked straight into the locker room without so much as a greeting.
This is serious.
After a moment's hesitation, I followed him inside. Fortunately, apart from Greg the room was empty, which would make talking easier.
"Greg, you got a minute?"
"...Yeah."
His complexion was bad. From the look of him, he knew it too.
All right. Time to get to the point.
"Today really didn't go well."
"I know."
"Seems people didn't take the retirement reversal too kindly."
"That's not it."
Greg smiled bitterly.
"What they hate is the very possibility that I might beat you."
"......"
"They've decided that losing at this Wrestle Imperium and retiring is supposed to be the final page of my career."
"But you're booked to win at this Cold Blood."
"You got a problem with that?"
"No, it's not that. It's just a headache when you're the one working alongside you. We absorb the backlash together, remember."
"...!"
A savage glare. For an instant Greg stared me down like that, then ground his teeth together.
"It'll get better soon."
"Based on what?"
"I've got a career behind me. The people will come around and accept me again. It'll be fine."
"Will they, even when you take the belt at Cold Blood?"
"......"
"Well. If that's what you want, and that's the call the company makes, then I've got nothing more to say about it."
He was being stubborn.
Sensing that much, I rose from my seat. Just before I left the room, Greg added a word, carefully.
"Don't worry."
"Sir?"
"It'll work out. Just trust me and follow along until Cold Blood."
"...You said that in the ring just now."
"Said what?"
"Told me to act like a man who could stand tall in front of the fans. If that's what you're doing right now, then we've got no problem at all."
At the sarcasm dripping from my voice, Greg glared at me once more.
I ignored it and walked out.
Letting out a long sigh, I turned the whole thing over slowly in my mind. So that's roughly how it is.
A great deal had shifted from my past life. And from those shifts, an answer began to take shape.
In my past life, Greg had passed the baton to Russell without a hitch and brought his twenty-year career to a safe, clean close.
But this time around, unlike before, he had suddenly grown greedy and declared he would keep his career going.
The cause, naturally, had to lie somewhere in what had changed from that other timeline.
Namely — me.
Embarrassing as it is to admit.
Somehow or other, my present self had exerted an influence on Greg. As for exactly what kind of influence, I'd need to talk it over with someone who knew the man well.
And really, there was only one person for that.
With that thought, I gathered my things and headed back to the camper bus. Russell and Orton, who had finished their appearances before us, were already aboard.
"Hey, Sin."
"Good work out there today."
They tossed the words at me like consolation prizes — no doubt because my ring segment had been such a mess. Which meant I didn't need to explain a thing.
"Russell, got a minute?"
"Hm?"
"Let's talk in the back."
I led him into the bedroom at the rear of the bus. Since this was a private matter, I shut the door first — and when I turned around, Russell was looking at me with eyes full of guilt.
"I'm sorry, my uncle......"
"Any idea why he's doing this?"
"No clue. I poked at it a little, but he wouldn't give me a word."
"There's got to be a reason for him suddenly digging in his heels."
"Well... one thing has changed lately."
"What?"
"Ever since he decided on the re-signing, he doesn't talk about you at all."
"What? And before that?"
"He beat it into my ears. Every single time he taught me something, he'd use your matches as the example. Every time."
"......Hm."
That was news to me. Greg — the man hailed as the greatest technician of all time, praised for generations to come — had been using my matches as his teaching material.
And now he'd stopped.
No need to hear more. I get it.
I had lived through this once before, in my past life, so I understood what was happening. Greg was afraid of his career ending — afraid of the ending itself.
If he had truly built his own era to perfection and made it a mega-hit, he would have ended it cleanly, without regret. But the peculiarities of the era and plain bad fortune had never let him. His era — and the era he and his rival John Michaels had made together — was, frankly, the kind the industry wrote off as a slump.
For some, it had been a fantastic time. For most people, it hadn't. That was Greg's era.
And that was why Greg was afraid — afraid that maybe he had spent his whole career walking the wrong road. That was why he wanted to challenge it all one more time.
And at the center of it all stood me — still wrestling on, with what looked to him like flawless, transcendent skill.
I'd been there myself, once. I had feared the day this ring would hold nothing left for me to do. I'd told myself that if I just hung on a little longer, surely my chance to stack my own Empire State Building would come around too.
That's the kind of worry it was.
If even a jobber like me had felt that ache, imagine what it did to Greg. If anything, it ran far deeper in him — he believed in his own skill that much. A tower built with such labor is hardest of all to abandon right before its completion.
Truly a pity.
But that was exactly why.
I was certain of one thing: the man to retire Greg Hart had to be me.