The Rookie's Initiation
As I stepped up to the ring, I was greeted with a rousing welcome from the seniors.
"What the hell is this kid wearing?"
"Did you crawl out of some refugee camp?"
"You'd be a perfect fit for gay porn, you punk!"
It was a strange feeling. Twenty professional wrestlers were all glaring at me with hostility — which, flipped around, also meant every one of them was curious about what I could do. Could they really trust their backs to some newbie who'd appeared out of nowhere? That was what they all wanted to see.
There were plenty of ways to prove myself without resorting to a ritual like this.
But so be it. It was 2002, after all. Their ways might be a bit dated, but it was better to play along — and besides, I had my confidence.
I climbed into the ring with my head held high, and Sheamus, already waiting inside, cracked his neck with a snap and turned to look at me.
"You warmed up?"
"Yes, senpai."
"Then let's start with chain wrestling."
Speaking with a domineering expression, Sheamus raised his hands and took the position for exchanging holds.
Chain wrestling. It referred to the opening sequence where two competitors locked up, matched their strength, and traded joint holds back and forth in succession. Most matches began with it, which made it a foundational skill of the trade.
The basics of the basics.
But executing it crisply while weaving a story into it was considerably harder — think of it as the omelet of the pro wrestling world: simple on the surface, yet demanding endless effort to give it real depth.
"Whew."
And so I deliberately took a wide lap around the ring, keeping my eyes on Sheamus the whole way. He tilted his head.
"What are you doing?"
"Chain wrestling."
"...Then get in here."
"How am I supposed to just charge at a big wrestler I'm facing for the first time?"
At those words, the hostile stares aimed at me froze for a beat. The veteran wrestlers at ringside burst into snickers, and Sheamus, brow furrowing, lunged at me.
196 centimeters, 110 kilograms. The hulking white man seized my head and arm in an instant — and I grabbed him right back the same way.
I was shoved back a step.
"...?"
Sheamus looked puzzled. He had clearly locked up and was now pushing me back with everything he had. But I held my ground.
Not bad.
Since my regression, I'd gained nearly five kilograms of pure muscle — I'd been eating well, sleeping well, and training systematically on top of it. Of course, that alone wasn't enough to overcome a twenty-kilogram weight gap. So I used technique.
Every time Sheamus poured on the pressure, I twisted my body just enough to keep his weight from transferring properly. That chalk-white face contorted with momentary bewilderment. After several more attempts to shove me off, he seemed to give up and whispered the next instruction.
"...Headlock."
At the same moment, his arm shot out. I feigned surprise and stumbled back, letting myself get caught in his grip, then let him steer my body where he wanted. Sheamus tucked my head under his armpit and squeezed. I writhed in agony.
It was real agony, too.
Ah, the B.O...
Mixed with deodorant, the musky stench was no joke. ...Though I couldn't exactly let it show.
Having somehow endured it, I kept trading holds with Sheamus back and forth. Every time an arm was bent or released, I rolled my feet big and smooth. Sheamus watched me with a furrowed brow — flustered, no doubt, that I was keeping up with the ever-quickening exchange as if it were nothing.
Looking to shake me off, he called the next move.
"Rope run."
Chain wrestling was a battle to seize the upper hand from the very first moments of a match. It was also a yardstick for measuring the gap between two competitors' levels — much like the way comic books rank the strength of their heroes. In other words, if this had been a real match, the fact that I was trading chain wrestling without ceding an inch of ground meant I stood on equal footing with Sheamus.
Not that it was anything more than hypothetical.
I picked up the pace. Whipped toward the far side, I hit the ropes and came back to find Sheamus bending at the waist to take me over. I ran straight at him and leapt clean over his back.
I wasn't about to cooperate.
Sheamus sped up, clearly plotting to catch me off guard — but I wasn't the type to play along so easily.
"Kgh!"
Sheamus genuinely flustered, bit down hard on his lip. Fair enough. Some greenhorn fresh off the indie circuit was running chain wrestling at this kind of clean, blistering speed?
And so about ten minutes passed. Finally, unable to watch the endless exchange any longer, one of the wrestlers climbed into the ring.
"Sheamus, come down."
"What? No, I—"
"You've broken him in enough for one day. Take a breather and come back up."
Husky Harris, was it.
I looked over the man draped in an oversized shirt over his wrestling gear. 195 centimeters, 150 kilograms. Husky was a truly enormous frame, fat layered over dense, powerful muscle. Right now he was a thoroughly forgettable heel going by the name Husky Harris — but he was the kind of wrestler who would hit the jackpot once he reached the WWF main roster and dreamed up a new gimmick.
The cult-leader gimmick, right?
With it, he'd hold the World Championship multiple times and become a bona fide star.
That same Husky now shook out his body lightly in the ring and glared down at me.
"Alright, let's go again."
The exchange resumed.
So that's how it is...!
Having drained my strength trading lockups with Sheamus, I now had no choice but to move at Husky's command.
Back body drop. Body slam.
"Nngh!"
I somehow gritted through it, slapping out take after take.
It was the wrestling industry's signature brand of "breaking in the rookie" — keeping a man exercising even after his stamina had run dry. Wrestler after wrestler rotated in to face me, and I took them all on.
At some point, the bump ring was reduced to nothing but the sound of thud! and slam! Dizzy from the parade of every technique in the book, I felt my consciousness flicker.
But I was fine.
All the more reason to dig deep...!
I never let my focus slip for even a heartbeat, receiving every single technique flawlessly and enduring. As time dragged on and I showed no sign of collapsing, the veterans slowly began to panic.
And the one most stunned of all was the leader of the GCW wrestlers — Bobby Ashley. Sweat trickled down his dark skin as he stared at me, still holding out to the bitter end, with an expression of sheer disbelief.
Panting hard, I lifted my head to meet his gaze.
"What would you like to do next?"
"........That's enough."
After a long silence, the answer finally came. The veterans turned away, the aftertaste clearly sitting sour in their mouths. I stood there heaving for breath until the last of them left the training facility — and then I collapsed.
With a crash, I flopped flat onto my back on the bump ring. All I could hear was my own breathing, the pounding of my heart, and the creak of the old ring beneath me. Somewhere along the way, the sun had begun to set.
Not that I'm trying to get sentimental about it.
Had that been about two hours? Pretty impressive that I lasted, honestly. But if I hadn't done it this way, my future here would very likely have been a rough one. And if I'd rebelled instead, I'd have made myself an outcast in a business where teamwork meant everything.
Did I handle that reasonably well?
Just as I was turning the question over, something suddenly thrust itself over my head — followed by a splash of ice-cold bottled water dumped straight onto my face. My mind snapped wide awake.
"...What was that for?"
"You okay?"
It was Russell. "Is this bullying?"
And this naive young man was the future Icon, Shawn Cena.
"It's fine."
With that short answer, I took Russell's outstretched arm and pulled myself up, then accepted the water bottle from Cena and downed it in one go.
"So it was an initiation."
"You should be jealous, Cena. The seniors seem planning on treating Jun very nicely from here on out."
"Want to trade places?"
"I'll pass."
Russell laughed playfully. He probably understood full well that our current situation was a poisoned chalice.
The attention — physical — of men who all weigh well over a hundred kilograms.
But then, that was the inescapable fate of a guy who was doing well for himself.
Bobby Ashley.
A former collegiate amateur wrestling champion. After graduating, he'd dabbled briefly in bodybuilding before throwing himself straight into the pro wrestling business. Three years into his run as a GCW competitor, he felt an inexplicable vigor surging through his whole body.
"Hmm..."
The locker room felt cramped. Fifteen of the twenty wrestlers had filed off to shower, and Bobby lifted his head to study the faces of those who remained.
Sheamus. Big Tika. Mohawk. Gorilla Moose.
After the babyface Johnny Ace and the heel Sneaky had been "called up" to the main show, these five were now considered the closest thing GCW had to a champion. Their careers were relatively long, and every one of them was a veteran of outstanding ability.
Until very recently, however, they had all been nursing a quiet anxiety. The two main eventers had rocketed upward in the blink of an eye — which meant the ratings and attendance would dip, and once that happened, management might well pass down the judgment that they "lacked star quality," putting their jobs on the line.
And so an uncomfortable silence had hung over the locker room for a while now. They couldn't even focus in training; just recently, one of them had rolled an ankle in a minor, avoidable injury. This wasn't child's play or a hobby. It was work — work that demanded results, however they managed it. In a situation like that, the only people they could rely on were the GCW brass and the coworkers they labored alongside.
Then Baku had come to them, proudly laying out a plan. Hearing about the cocky rookie behind the idea and agreeing to take his measure had been decided just that morning.
Some kind of lunatic has joined us.
That was the conclusion Bobby reached as he felt the spring return to his body.
A good wrestler never hurts his opponent. And he makes that opponent feel comfortable. Through twenty straight opponents, that little brat had never once slipped on either count. Thanks to him, everyone had gotten in the best workout they'd had in ages — so good, in fact, that their spirits had lifted.
And only the five men remaining in the locker room knew that all of it had been the rookie's deliberate performance, and were quietly chewing it over.
The first to speak was the twenty-seven-year-old white wrestler, Mohawk.
"Where'd that kid say he was from?"
"China, probably."
"Knock it off."
After chiding his teammate for the racial jab, he mulled over the question himself. "Hmm... not sure exactly where he's from, but word is he did about three years on the indies before coming here."
"A guy like that receives moves like that? What the hell is he?"
Unable to answer easily, the wrestlers fell into troubled silence. The aftertaste was so bitter because Junho had performed far, far beyond their expectations. They wouldn't admit it out loud, but the truth was that today the veterans had been the ones receiving a lesson from Junho.
The feeling of taking a fall without pouring in real force. The perfect timing for applying a hold in the middle of a lightning-fast exchange. That was why they were bewildered — why, refusing to acknowledge it, they kept grinding their teeth over the problem.
Watching them all, Bobby made his decision as locker room leader.
"Call him in again tomorrow morning."
"Hmm, the day after that is the TV taping, though. You think that's wise?"
"He was still smiling through it today. He'll handle his own conditioning."
What he wanted to see, just once, was the rookie's reaction when his pride kept him pushing and pushing until his body's limits finally arrived and he broke.