A Genius Recognizes a Genius
"Come here. Let's see what you've got."
Greg Hart said it like a kung fu master in an old martial arts film, slowly extending a hand toward me.
The tension in the air was the same as in the moments right after a match had begun.
The first exercise was simple.
Chain wrestling.
Once we'd taken hold of each other's arms, Greg and I launched into a rapid exchange of holds, starting from a headlock and moving through the sequence at a blistering pace.
And within just a few exchanges, I came to a natural realization.
I understood how good Greg Hart really was.
This man is incredible.
Counting my days as an active wrestler before the regression, I'd worked as a practice partner for countless superstars over the years.
And I could say this with certainty: when it came to pure stability while applying a hold, Greg was in a league of his own.
Yet at the same time, every single movement was big and theatrical, possessed of a performance charm all its own. Greg Hart's matches had always radiated violence and strength.
And yet here was this fluidity? This softness?
How on earth……?
I'd been chewing on the question when an arm drag sent me thudding onto the canvas — and in that impact, the answer came to me.
The aesthetics of the instant.
At its core, it followed the same principle Greg himself had explained to me just moments earlier.
A technique in which the wrestler performed the movement at maximum speed only at the moment of execution, slamming the impact home like a whip crack.
It sounded like nothing, but the effect was pure cinematic direction. And taking the bump was far easier too.
Because right before the move, Greg inserted a subtle, almost imperceptible delay — a signal sent straight to his opponent's body.
Got it.
Having unraveled the secret, I began adding that same slight delay before my own moves, just as Greg did.
Midway through tying up Greg's arm as he charged in, rotating through the turn and throwing him hard — for one single instant, I froze every movement.
Then, in the very next breath, I poured all my strength into the throw. A crisp, clean arm drag.
Greg rebounded off the mat and back to his feet — then stopped dead where he stood.
"……"
"Are you okay?"
"It's not that. Just make it shorter."
Greg laughed as if the whole thing were absurd.
"The delay has to be short enough that your opponent never registers it. Otherwise it looks fake."
"Hmm, but why did the bump feel so easy to take, then?"
"That's the domain of the subconscious."
Greg stepped in close, took my arm, and sent me into the ropes.
Another arm drag.
I took the bump hard, rolled back to my feet, and felt something had changed.
Wait — the delay's gone?
"Cutting it close, wasn't it?"
"It was."
"And that's exactly why this matters. A bump, if you think about it, comes late."
"I think I understand what you mean."
To put it simply: you don't send the signal to your opponent's mind. You send it to their body.
"Of course, to work this way, your opponent has to be good enough to take the bump on instinct the instant they feel themselves flying."
Having said that much, Greg studied me for a moment with an intrigued look in his eyes.
"Where did you learn this?"
"Indy circuit, sir."
"That's impossible. Not that I have anything against the indies, but…… hmm. Is this what they call talent?"
Saying so, Greg walked over and put a hand on my shoulder.
"So tell me — if you were the one up here, what would you say to the boys down there on the floor?"
"I'm sorry?"
"You don't honestly think those green kids are going to understand what we just talked about, do you?"
"Well… when you put it that way, no."
I thought for a moment, then answered, stomping my foot against the canvas with a heavy thud, thud.
"If you don't want to die, take bumps until the ring itself breaks. That's what I'd hammer home, anyway."
"That'll do nicely."
Greg gave a nod, then turned to the students (?) and spoke up.
"You all know this already, but the single most important thing in this business is the bump."
It wasn't as immediately useful as what I'd learned today, but there was no such thing as stressing the bump too much.
The delay.
Was this the secret weapon that had made Greg Hart the greatest in-ring performer of all time?
And so, having spent the afternoon wrangling the "rookies" in the training ring, Greg Hart finished his shower and returned to the office.
Everyone else had already clocked out.
Which meant, in other words, that everyone had shed their work clothes and cracked open the vodka.
Halley, who was in the room, looked up as Greg came through the door.
"All done?"
"Yes. Good kids, every one of them."
"Spare me the fluff. Not between us."
"Then I'll speak plainly."
Smiling, Greg walked over and sat down right beside Halley.
Drinking in the office.
That alone said everything about how thick the trust between them ran.
It was a quirk unique to GCW, a promotion whose whole identity was a "feeder territory" — built to raise wrestlers up and send them on to the big leagues.
"They've all still got a long way to go."
"You think so too?"
"Especially that Wyatt kid. No good at all. He needs to lose more weight, but if he does, that whole image of his falls apart."
"Can't be helped."
"Personally, if I were carrying over 200 kilograms, I'd still put on a flawless match."
"……Right. Of course you would."
Halley snorted a laugh.
Some things never changed.
Confidence so abundant it bordered on arrogance.
He would bend before he would ever break.
That was Greg Hart.
Which was why what came next was such a rare thing.
"That Sin kid. He's genuinely something."
Greg Hart acknowledging someone.
"……?"
"I want him to be my retirement opponent."
"What?"
And not just that — praise of the highest order.
By tradition, a retiring pro wrestler lost his final match.
Because pro wrestling goes on even when one wrestler is gone.
And so, for the sake of passing the torch, a veteran's retirement match had to end in defeat — always.
In most cases, the company chose the wrestler who would be elevated in that final, scripted loss.
But a veteran, in his own way, always hoped for a successor worthy of carrying his legacy.
"Didn't you just meet him today?"
"Well, a genius recognizes his own kind of genius."
Arrogant words — but coming from Greg Hart, they carried real weight.
"He's that good?"
"Yes. Honestly, he's far better than the assorted rabble crowding the main roster right now. I want to run a program with him one way or another, the moment he comes up."
"……You're the only man alive who'd say that about WWF talent."
"It's simply the truth."
Greg stated it flatly.
The WWF of today was in its twilight.
The moment when a darkening sky chills the air — when everyone quietly begins preparing to fade beyond the horizon.
And he himself was one of the countless stars destined to fade away with it.
"My era with Michaels is already a distant memory, half-forgotten. After us, I thought Rockcold and The Pock would carry the flame just fine, but……"
Greg exhaled a long sigh.
"The Pock went off to shoot his Scorpion movie and crossed over into Hollywood, and Rockcold's dealing with the aftereffects of a neck injury — this year's Wrestle Imperium will likely be his last."
"……It's that serious?"
"Yes. His doctors told him that one more bad impact to the neck could kill him — cervical damage."
"Hmm."
"I'll be retiring before long myself, and the company's in a frenzy trying to find the next Icon."
"……And that's Sin?"
"Who knows. Could he really?"
"Mmm."
The two men fell silent.
Neither said it aloud, but there was one great, insurmountable problem standing in Sin's way.
Race.
Pro wrestling is a show.
Which meant this was a matter apart from simple racism.
No matter how the times changed, people could not help but empathize more deeply with someone of their own race.
And this was America — a country built around white audiences.
"As a heel, maybe."
"But how many heel Icons have there been besides Nick Flair?"
"Even for him, it's a gray area — after decades in the business, the respect he's earned makes 'heel' barely fit him anymore."
"Fair enough."
"And setting aside the whole fan-favorite question, the real problem is getting that kid past Bart."
"Bart? You mean Maxen?"
"Yes. Bart Maxen, chairman of the WWF."
Sixty-five years old, white, New York born and bred.
As the image of the man surfaced in his mind, Greg ran a few calculations behind his eyes.
Then he declared, flat and final:
"If Bart got his hands on Sin, he'd gut the gimmick entirely, use him as a jobber for a couple of years, and throw him away."
"You really think so……?"
"I do. That man's a New York parvenu and a fossil of the old guard. The very concept of racism wouldn't even occur to him."
"……I suppose you're right."
Convinced, Halley let out a long, long sigh.
"He'd hand him some kung fu character. A ninja, maybe, or a samurai."
"Goddammit."
He wasn't wrong.
Bartholomew Kane Maxen.
The heir who'd taken the WWF from his father and grown it into a national empire in twenty years — a genius businessman.
And at the same time, a psychopath who'd seized the industry through cowardly, dirty methods without a flicker of hesitation.
It had also been Bart Maxen who, pitting Rockcold against his enemies, elevated him into an Icon.
A chairman of a massive NYSE-listed corporation, humiliated time and again on television — all to make a star.
"He's an unfathomable man. Genuinely pure, in his way. That man loves pro wrestling more than anyone alive."
"True enough. A man who loves pro wrestling that much would do exactly as you say."
Halley took a long pull of his vodka.
What he loved was the pro wrestling of the eighties.
In Bart Maxen's world, other races existed only to lose — to the great Americans, and to the white race.
And to be fair, that had sold in the eighties.
With the Vietnam defeat still fresh and antiwar sentiment thick among the hippies, Bart Maxen's storylines had struck a colossal chord.
"It's just business, Greg. I'd be willing to script anything, if the money were right."
"But Bart Maxen's storylines are, at bottom……"
"Right — not business. Self-gratification. And that's exactly the problem."
Their codes had drifted subtly out of alignment.
These days, only a vanishing few actually believed in the 'Make America Great!' line Bart Maxen kept selling.
Modern audiences showed deep respect even for the foreign wrestlers who'd competed in the past.
"But call them up under Bart, and they'll just sit out there waving an Iraqi flag for cheap heat."
"I can picture it now. Sin, waving a Chinese flag to kung fu music."
"No question about it."
Halley, having heard all this, looked at Greg with something like disbelief and asked again.
"Is that what you came here to say? That the kid we're raising right now is going to crash and burn the moment he hits the main roster?"
"The real matter starts now."
"Which is?"
"When this tag team program wraps up — would it be all right if I took him with me?"
"What?"
Everyone around them went wide-eyed.
They'd been sipping their drinks, idly listening to Greg and Halley trade shop talk — and the suddenness of it snapped them sober in an instant.
Before their eyes, Greg pressed on with a confident smile.
"Truth is, the reason I came here in the first place was to see that kid."
"Not Russell?"
"Ah, well — that too."
"Ha……"
"Leaving talent and ability like his to rot here would be a criminal waste. Let me take him to the main roster, guide him properly, and make him a star."
"No — no, hold on a second……"
Caught so completely off guard, Halley's brain simply stopped for a moment.
But Greg was serious.
He had genuinely fallen for the kid.
If he could raise Sin into something great and then walk away, he didn't think he'd have a single regret left.
"If you just let him go, doesn't Russell get left hanging? For your nephew's sake, wouldn't it be smarter to keep him here?"
"If Russell stays just another midcard guy after Sin's gone, then that's all the talent he has."
"Goddammit, Greg."
If this was the reaction he got even after saying all that, it meant Greg's mind was made up.
And it was such a golden opportunity for Sin that Halley found himself unable to say no.
The WWF main roster was crawling with politicians. Having a veteran like Greg in his corner would be the best possible situation a young wrestler could ask for.
For the kid's sake, this was the moment to let him go graciously.
And yet it hurt.
GCW's level was climbing by the day. And Sin's fingerprints were on every inch of that ascent.
The program with Russell, the tag team run, the march to the championship — a long, beautiful storyline that could carry them a full year, or so he'd thought!
Unable to answer, Halley only drank his vodka. Seeing this, Greg gave an awkward laugh, decided that perhaps this had all been too sudden after all, and rose from his seat.
"……Well. The first person I need to ask is the man himself."
After all, the fine details could wait until later.