The Toast Bomb
[To surpass his uncle's shadow, Russell has installed a new weapon — the Shooting Star Press. Sin covers for the moments where the motion still looks a little rough, you see.]
[It's a move that means something on a story level. It made it crystal clear to the crowd that Russell has changed.]
[Sin has changed too. Showing a character's arc evolving through an actual move like this — that's genuinely sophisticated.]
[Exactly. A brilliant piece of presentation.]
[And all the other stuff they did was beautiful as well. You could really feel the two of them cooperating, each careful not to step on the other's style.]
[Though you could read that another way — it also means the teamwork feels a little thin. It's certainly no double-team move with the punch of the Dudley Boyz' 4-D, for example.]
[Can't be helped. Neither of them is a dedicated tag team specialist.]
[Right. They'll be split up the moment they've grown enough. Both have more than enough star quality — last week's in-ring segment alone proved that.]
[Oh, absolutely. Sin did most of that one half by himself, but still... Oh, man. Who else could call out Greg Hart to his face like that? Besides 'Sin', I mean!]
[That's right. Because he is 'Sin'.]
The radio was nothing but praise, enough to make my cheeks burn. Sensing my rhythm slowly coming back, I decided I'd heard enough and stood up.
I switched off the radio and turned to the three men sitting around me.
"Let's get back to it."
"Sure."
Sina nodded. Russell and Eddie, seated beside him, brushed themselves off and rose as well.
The training facility lay in darkness. Before long, these four men gathered here would have a match of their own — the semifinals of the tournament to decide the challengers who would face the tag team champions at the next pay-per-view.
Sina had come to us directly for help, so Russell and I were assisting the two of them in building a finisher. It was only fair — they'd helped us first.
The problem was, we weren't getting anywhere.
Nothing but absurd ideas kept coming out, so we'd taken a break to cool our heads and listen to the radio. I looked back and forth between Sina and Eddie.
"So? Anything come to mind?"
"Something that looks absolutely spectacular while hurting the opponent as little as possible."
"......"
Eddie said nothing. Sina was hopelessly, guilelessly naive.
A complete deadlock, then.
I gave a bitter laugh. But I was prepared to take this slow. Unlike Russell and me, these two were raw, green rookies, and we had to teach them how to properly pull their weight. That was the only way the benefits would circle back to me in the ring.
"Let's think it through from the top," I said, drawing on my producing experience from my past life. "First, let's look at your styles. What do you two think of yourselves?"
"...I asked a coach once. He told me I was nothing."
"Hmm."
Eddie nodded along in agreement, which somehow made it even sadder.
"Ah, okay then. Let's do a light exhibition match — feel each other out and show us your moves. Russell and I will watch, then give you our thoughts."
And so that's what we did. The truth was that Sina was a 'powerhouse' and Eddie a 'giant' — but it would be better to let them realize it for themselves. This was, after all, information I'd carried back from the future.
Even if I just told them outright, they'd never simply nod and accept it.
Besides, forcing labels onto their not-yet-formed styles could end up warping them. So we went one at a time.
First, Eddie and Russell climbed into the ring and squared off. They pulled their strikes, but they traded offense back and forth without pause, working like it was a real match.
Eddie fought Russell with slow, lumbering movements. The presence of a man standing over two meters tall was overwhelming. And moving slowly like that wasn't clumsiness — it was a technique only possible because he had learned his craft properly.
Big men, in reality, aren't slow. Put another way, Eddie was performing the role of a pro wrestler — playing to the crowd's love of the story of David and Goliath.
So he'd chosen to be Goliath.
That was what a giant was: a breed of wrestler who dominated matches with raw power and sheer size, who loved pressing his opponent flat into the mat. A style that radiated massive presence just by standing there. Similar to a powerhouse, but the cardinal virtues of a giant were overwhelming bulk and an unbreakable frame.
True to that, no matter how relentlessly Russell hammered away, Eddie never sold a thing. He merely wobbled, slightly. When Russell latched on looking for a counter, Eddie would simply hurl him off with brute strength.
But even a giant wrestler had a weakness, of course.
The knees.
In real life, big men very often broke down because their knees couldn't bear the load. Which made "the giant's weakness is his knees" a perfectly convincing story.
Russell started kicking at Eddie's leg, attacking the knee, and seized control of the match. Counter followed counter, things flowed and slipped away, and the two of them improvised a match on the spot.
So it really does come down to power.
Perhaps because he was still young, Eddie showed no sign of tiring no matter how long the match ran, faithfully playing his role. His technique was rough, but he covered for it with strength — hoisting the hundred-kilo-plus Russell up and tossing him again and again.
Next was Sina.
By this point I already had a rough picture of how their tag team was going to fight.
A powerhouse and a giant. Two men who settled everything with strength. The obvious, ideal direction was for them to overwhelm their opponents and fight like monsters.
Time to make them see it.
"Sina — you take the lead here."
"Got it!"
Sina answered with boundless energy, then hoisted my body up and slammed it down hard onto the mat, sideways. A body slam — or to be precise, a side walkway slam, lifting the opponent and driving them down onto their side.
Sina had equipped himself with simple moves that showed off his power. He picked up my ninety-kilo body as if it weighed nothing at all.
He hadn't been blessed with Eddie's height or mass — and yet his strength was on another level entirely.
Why?
Because he was born with it.
God had taken flexibility away from Sina and, in its place, handed him overwhelming strength as his weapon. Sina's height was a perfectly ordinary 185 centimeters for a pro wrestler. He carried a muscular build, but he wasn't overweight for his frame.
And still he tossed wrestlers heavier than himself around like they were nothing. Fans went wild for it — it was like watching Hercules out of myth.
Honestly, there's no other way to describe it. This is a talent straight from heaven.
I thought so as I watched Sina keep exerting himself without a hint of fatigue. Unlike me, he fought at full throttle with zero efficiency, and it didn't tire him in the slightest.
He's like a big dog.
Strong, tireless.
His owner must have his hands full.
Entertaining that mildly disrespectful thought, I took one last power slam for him too.
The moment I hit the mat with a thud, Sina sprang straight up to his feet.
"So?!"
"...That was good."
"I practiced until I dropped. Falls, moves, mic-work, all of it."
"You've never done a single mic-work in your life."
"......"
Sina's face fell. It was only then that I realized — if this guy was a big dog, then the owner was me.
Climbing down from the ring with Sina, I accepted a sports drink from Russell and replenished my fluids. The four of us gathered at ringside and started talking again.
In any case, one thing was now certain: these two already had their own distinct styles, fully formed — they simply hadn't recognized them yet.
No reason to keep it hidden, then.
With that thought, I laid out everything I'd been mulling over for the two men and their guileless faces.
"Sina's a powerhouse and Eddie's a giant, so I think you'd both do best building around power moves."
"R-really?"
"Yeah. Nothing about it clashes with your gimmick — if anything, it'll look even more impressive."
Monstrous strength, faithful minions serving Broken Wyatt — the two of them were a perfect fit for that gimmick.
Sina, pondering, finally spoke up.
"What about a powerbomb?"
"A powerbomb...?"
Russell tilted his head.
"Yeah — each of us grabs one opponent and we hit the powerbomb at the same time. That'd look pretty cool, right?"
"Cool, sure, but calling it a tag team move feels like a stretch..."
"Sin, what do you think?"
"...Huh?"
"The simultaneous powerbomb."
"Hmm. Well."
I paused for a moment. Then, in an instant, I froze.
The move Sina had just described was one a certain tag team would be using roughly ten years from now.
AOP. The Authors of Pain. A duo of big men who conquered the WWF with overwhelming power and grew into a legendary tag team — and their signature move was exactly what Sina had described. The double powerbomb.
Except there's one difference.
Right before driving the powerbomb home, the two lifted wrestlers' backs are clinked together above their shoulders — like toasting with glasses. That was why the move earned its nickname: the Toast Bomb.
Sina came up with this?
The core idea was sound. Simply put, it was the kind of spectacular move anyone could imagine. Most people would push for something more creative, but honestly, this level of simplicity was exactly right. Simple is what makes it easy for the audience to grasp — where the pain comes from, and what exactly is so impressive about it.
Maybe I'd help him along a little.
"Sina — once you've both got a guy lifted in the powerbomb position, what else could you do from there?"
"W-well... how about clashing their backs together before you drop them?"
"That'd be awesome."
He answered exactly the way I'd steered him. Though it was also true that there wasn't much else you could realistically do from that position.
"Or what if you hit the powerbomb once, lift them back up, and slam them again?"
And this was what wouldn't work.
"...Your backs would give out."
"Then back to clashing and dropping—"
"Hold on."
Right then, Russell cut in.
"A finisher gets used at the end of the match. Would you really still have the strength left to pull off a move that big at that point?"
"What?"
"Slamming them straight down is one thing, but you'd have to hold them up and walk toward each other to clash their backs. That's going to be incredibly hard to pull off."
"In other words, you're saying it takes strength."
"...Yeah."
"Then it's not a problem at all."
"Wh-why not?"
"Because there isn't one. None."
I said it with absolute certainty. Russell looked somewhat puzzled, but didn't press further.
This move was made for those two. Unmistakably so.
Down at ringside, Wyatt giggled, letting out a strange, unsettling laugh. The Wyatt Family versus a hastily thrown-together tag team — the result had never been in doubt.
Having dominated the makeshift team from bell to bell, Sina and Eddie now lifted their fallen opponents to their feet to finish things off.
[Oh my — what is this?! The two members of the Wyatt Family are up to something suspicious!]
[Are they mocking them? They're dragging each man to opposite corners!]
The two of them hauled the wrestlers to opposite corners of the squared circle and hoisted them up into powerbomb position. A roar burst from the crowd.
But that wasn't the end of it.
Still holding their victims aloft, the two men began marching toward each other in a straight line, and at the middle of the ring they brought the lifted men's backs together with a resounding clink.
Then Sina turned left.
Eddie turned right.
Spin, and powerbomb.
CRACK!
The crowd shrieked with delight at the thunderous impact, and the pinfall was counted — victory declared.
[Wow — what an incredible move to end this match! I don't think a single tag team in GCW can stop those two!]
[And their next opponents are Sin-Cell! Folks, this is going to be one colossal match!]
As the commentary hyped the finals of the tag team tournament, the Wyatt Family celebrated their victory.