Steal the Show
Sheamus had entered the arena ahead of me and was loosening up with a light warm-up.
He was a mid-carder of respectable standing — the kind of wrestler who cruised to easy wins over jobbers and low carders, but usually came up short against anyone ranked above them. Everyone watching must have assumed tonight's match was nothing more than a breather for me.
We turned that tension-free setup into an outfit.
"Sin, you're up."
At Russell's cue, the music hit, and I threw back the curtain and stepped out.
The crowd — who until that very moment had been singing along to the hymn section of my entrance theme — erupted into laughter the second they saw me. The attire I was wearing was the Heart Family's wrestling gear, the very costume they'd mocked as a gay costume back when I was feuding with Russell.
I paused halfway down the entrance ramp and let out a long, theatrical sigh. The audience clapped the way people clap for someone they pity. I sighed again, pretending to be mortified, then trudged up onto the ring apron just like that.
When the music cut out, the crowd showered me with roaring cheers. Every so often a chant of Gay costume! Gay costume! rose up, but it drowned in the noise. Thankfully, the fans were far more interested in razzing me for looking embarrassed than in anything crueler.
I deliberately waddled as I walked, and at one point I yanked at the fabric between my legs and let it snap back, drawing huge laughs from the arena.
And so the match began.
Face burning scarlet, I charged at Sheamus full of bluster — and had the lead stripped from me without the slightest resistance. I'd waddle in the middle of setting up a move for the offensive. I'd waddle after getting flipped over by an arm drag and crashing to the mat. I'd waddle after finally squirming free of his hammering blows.
Waddle, waddle.
The crowd roared with laughter at my ridiculous antics. Sheamus, closing in on me, locked on what looked like a headlock and whispered into my ear.
"Hey, tone down the comedy a little, will ya? I'm about to crack up myself...!"
"Just go ahead and laugh!"
"C-can I really?"
"Well, honestly, it's probably funnier for the fans if you don't."
"Then how the hell am I supposed to laugh?!"
Looking utterly exasperated, Sheamus pressed his attack. But I couldn't mount a single counter, because my lower half was genuinely uncomfortable.
Because, well, it actually was.
At this rate, I wasn't even sure I'd be able to hit my finisher properly at the end.
The offense kept rolling, and a fired-up Sheamus let out a roar. After eating his drop suplex I lay flat on the canvas, then staggered back to my feet.
The fans, who had been cackling this whole time, gradually went quiet. What they wanted, above all, was my victory — and watching things unfold like this, they'd started to panic: Wait... is Sin actually going to lose?
And that was exactly the moment.
The precise instant the crowd began to doubt the outcome of this match.
I sprang forward and drove a knee kick straight into Sheamus's face.
Smack!
Sheamus collapsed with a sharp crack, the crowd exploded into cheers, and I flopped on top of him like all the strength had left my body, going for the pin.
The audience counted along at the top of their lungs.
One! Two! Three!
Ding ding ding!
The ring bell announced the pinfall victory. I let out a sigh of relief and rolled out of the ring, then waddled my way back up the entrance ramp.
The fans around ringside howled and shouted after me.
"That gay costume is awesome!"
"Next time, come out in matching ones with Russell!"
"You're so sexy!"
What kind of reactions were these, exactly?
The moment I exited backstage, the promo aired.
In reality, I'd exchanged a nod with Sheamus as he came back through the curtain — but on the screen, my counterpart was waddling around and venting complaints nonstop.
Sin: "What even IS this outfit...?"
And into the frame strolled Russell — wearing my sunglasses, my bulletproof jacket, and my jeans, grinning ear to ear. My on-screen face contorted in disgust.
Sin: "What do you want?"
Russell: "How's it feel? Comfy, right?"
Sin: "...The legs were split wide open, you know."
Russell: "It's premium wrestling gear, my friend — it cradles every muscle nice and snug. Think of it as modern-day armor."
Sin: "So, Russell. What exactly possessed you to steal my clothes?"
Russell: "Huh? Wasn't me."
Sin: "If not you, then who else could it be?!"
Russell: "N-no, seriously! I finished my shower, came out, and yours was the only stuff there — I had no choice!"
Sin: "Then who on earth...?"
Just as I stood there bewildered, a referee stepped into frame.
Referee: "Sin, Russell. Got a minute?"
Sin: "What is it?"
Referee: "I happened to catch a glimpse of the person who swapped your clothes."
Sin: "What? Well, who was it?"
The referee glanced around furtively, then whispered something to us. At those words, my expression twisted — for an entirely different reason this time.
And that was where the promo cut off.
As for the rest — you'd just have to look forward to next week.
The reason we'd put one of GCW's referees into our promo was simple.
We wanted to make even the official a piece of our script.
Furious, my on-screen self demanded a match — and just one week later, I found myself in a singles match against J. Angelo. Angelo and I placed the very referee who'd revealed the truth last week in the ring with us, and the match began.
And it was constructed, from start to finish, around comedy.
"Ugh?!"
Angelo shoved the referee into me, and I caught him in my arms — then stared in disbelief at the man scrambling away, as if he'd never seen a wrestler like me in his life.
The truth was, the idea of dragging the referee into the match had been mine to begin with.
Some five years from now, Japanese pro wrestling would produce a competitor with a style unlike anything the industry had seen before.
Toru Yano.
A villain impossible to hate — a man who refused to fight conventional matches and instead duped both his opponents and the referees to steal his wins. And the technique he relied on most was none other than the referee push.
On paper it sounded like nothing, but the principle was dead simple: exactly what it said — you shoved the referee into your opponent to block their attack.
Just like Angelo was doing right now.
We performed like actors in a Charlie Chaplin film. Pressed back by Angelo's mind games at first, I soon threw my hands up — screw it — and shoved the referee right back. With the poor, slight-built referee writhing in agony between us, the two of us spent a good while tossing and catching him like a hot potato, and the match carried on that way.
The crowd burst out laughing at a spectacle they'd never seen before.
Thank goodness Angelo's gimmick makes this kind of nonsense feel perfectly natural.
Shoving the referee away once more, I closed the distance on Angelo in a flash. He caught the referee and tossed him right back at me — but I'd already eaten up the gap between us and committed to the attack.
Except Angelo slipped low underneath me in that instant, circled behind, and drilled a low blow up between my legs.
Fancy name aside, it was, quite simply, a nut shot.
Not that it mattered — this was the kind of move that hurt even when delivered gently, so neither of us ever actually connected for real. Still, I held my breath, puffed my face up like a balloon, and sold the agony for all it was worth.
"GAAAAAAAH!!"
From that position, Angelo rolled me backward and went for a roll-up.
The referee counted.
One! Two! Three!
I kicked out right at the count of three — but by then, the bell had already rung to end the match.
Ding ding ding!
Angelo's victory.
I grabbed my head in disbelief, but Angelo was already sliding out of the ring, celebrating all the way up the ramp.
Just like Toru Yano, he'd stolen the win right out from under me.
Utterly dumbfounded, I kicked the steel steps on my way backstage to vent — and there was Angelo, waiting for me. I let my scowl melt away, broke into a wide grin, and slapped him a high-five.
"That was great, senpai."
"Man, this idea of yours is seriously good. How'd you even come up with it?"
"Oh, here and there."
Just as I was brushing the question off, the referee who'd worked our match came in, and we exchanged greetings with him too. Even though he was a ref, he'd gone through pro wrestling training himself — which was the only reason the technique had worked at all.
It was a good match, all things considered.
The bell-to-bell time was barely over a minute — remarkably short. And yet the content was packed, and it stayed perfectly faithful to its purpose: entertaining the people.
And it preserved my stamina, too, with this being my third match in as many weeks.
My personal philosophy had always been that there was no need to fight to the death in every single match. Quite the opposite — doing so only wore the audience down. Comedy, drama, action, violence... it was by varying the palette that a character's lifespan grew.
Which was exactly why this feud had been booked to lean on comedy.
"Good match. Fun out there, the crowd was hot — really excellent stuff."
"Thank you. That was a method I'd been dying to try out against you two, senpai."
Smiling, I turned my head toward the monitoring TV.
It was time for the promo that would shore up the plausibility of our story.
J. Angelo strolled back backstage after his match, beaming — carrying himself like a man who'd just captured the World Championship. An interviewer closed in on him as if she'd been lying in wait.
Sean-D: "Excuse me, Angelo! You just scored a victory over Sin, who's been absolutely on fire lately. How does it feel?"
Angelo: "FANTASTIC!"
Sean-D: "You led that match in a rather unusual way — something we've never seen from you before. Is there a reason behind it?"
Angelo: "Victory, of course!"
But the voice that answered wasn't Angelo's. As the interviewer turned around, the camera panned sideways to reveal Montez, who had materialized out of nowhere — dressed, astonishingly, as the master thief himself, Arsène Lupin.
Montez: "There's no denying the Sin-Cell tag team is rising royalty, Sean-D. But strength that great comes with one very clear weakness."
Sean-D: "A-and what would that be?"
Montez: "Fights like this. They crumble in fights like this."
Sean-D: "Fights like this? Next week, you're scheduled to face Russell — so may we assume you've prepared some special means for that occasion as well?"
Montez: "But of cour—!"
Angelo: "Whoa whoa whoa! Monty! Monty! You can't spill that right here!"
Montez: "Ah, quite right. Ahem... I beg your pardon, m'lady."
Montez spoke with the graceful poise of a nineteenth-century aristocrat, and with that, the two of them swept out of frame.
Sean-D: "..."
The interviewer stood there in a daze for a moment before spotting someone else and turning around. The camera swung with her, catching me in the far distance, just now returning backstage. Russell stepped in front of me.
Sean-D: "Oh! Over there!"
The interviewer led the camera crew toward us. I turned to face the lens with an expression of pure displeasure.
Sin: "...What?"
Sean-D: "Sin, you suffered a heartbreaking loss to Angelo today. How are you feeling right now?"
Sin: "Are you kidding me right now? How the hell do you think I feel?"
Sean-D: "Uh, um..."
Russell: "Whoa, whoa — don't take it out on her! Sorry about that, Sean-D. My friend here's gotten a little worked up."
Sean-D: "No, it's quite all right, Russell."
The interviewer, Sean-D, smiled at Russell's soft, gentlemanly manner. But I was in no mood to cool down, and I hurled a water bottle across the frame.
BANG! Sean-D let out a wildly over-the-top scream. Russell sighed, turned to me, and began his Damage Control routine.
Russell: "Don't worry, Sin. Next week, I'll get your revenge. I promise."
Sin: "They're obviously going to pull some other dirty trick — how are you supposed to stop them?!"
Russell: "When it comes to dirty tricks, you're the best there is."
Sin: "..."
Russell: "You're the dirtiest bastard I know. A true master of deceiving people, mocking them, and dragging their names through the mud!"
Sin: "I-is that so?"
The moment I accepted the insult as a compliment, the entire audience howled with laughter.
Russell: "Exactly! So don't you worry. No matter what kind of scheme Montez brings next week, I won't budge an inch. After all — nothing could be worse than what YOU pulled!"
Sin: "Then I'll trust you, Russell."
Russell: "That's right, Sin. Whatever those two try... I'll be just fine."
Russell flashed an easy grin and gave my shoulder a light pat — a pat that felt, just faintly, sincere.
What kind of cowardly trick would Street Times stoop to next week to steal another victory?
And could Russell — a man who'd honed his improvisational instincts by weathering every dirty play Sin had ever thrown at him — actually slip free of their scheme this time?
The answers to those two questions were no different from any other week.
Once again, it came down to the same old line: Tune in next week.