The Brawler's First Workout
After watching Burning Kong, Sin and I headed straight down to the dining hall.
GCW sat in a desolate stretch of land without so much as a decent convenience store nearby.
Putting it charitably, that meant it was the perfect place to manage your diet.
No temptations — exactly how it should be.
This time around, I intended to take care of my body with obsessive discipline. A muscular, hardened physique was a non-negotiable asset in this business.
Sin and I lined up behind the early arrivals and waited our turn. Dinner was buffet-style.
By the time the line had thinned out enough for me to grab a tray, Sin caught a whiff of the food and opened his mouth.
"Jun, how's the food here?"
"What do you mean?"
"You said you came last year, right? How was it?"
"...It was okay, I guess. Honestly, taste isn't really what matters, is it?"
"Haha, fair enough."
People like us had to prioritize nutritional content over flavor. How much protein, fiber, and vitamins we could take in — add a little variety on top of that, and we were satisfied.
And so, the menu we selected from the buffet looked like this:
Boiled eggs.
Beef steak.
Broccoli salad.
Sweet potato.
Protein shake.
In one corner of the dining hall, someone was grilling baguette slices in butter to mouthwatering perfection, but I forced myself to walk past without looking. It was honestly a little painful.
In my past life, I hadn't managed my diet — I'd barely exercised at all, really. Strictly speaking, I'd done only as much as everyone else did. But to reach the very top, you had to go beyond that.
Strangely enough, getting my youth back had filled me with courage. My appetite was quietly fading away.
Thinking of it that way as I ate, the food actually seemed passable.
Alright then.
As a pro wrestler who had to bare his abs in front of thousands, I would build the kind of body the job demanded.
Chewing on a thawed-out, half-warmed chicken breast, I steeled my resolve.
Sin, apparently finding the food acceptable too, was dutifully cleaning his plate. Before long, he nodded and looked over at me.
"Better than I expected, actually."
"Right?"
"Yeah. They did say GCW was top-class even if the facilities were old, and they weren't kidding. Making food this bland taste halfway decent is no small feat."
"...It's that bad, huh."
"What? Does it taste bad?"
"No, no. It's fine."
I shook my head quickly and started mashing up my broccoli.
Still, I'm lucky to be beside the Sin of the future — a man destined to be a star.
His presence helped me keep my focus. The thought that I couldn't afford to lose drove me to finish every last bite on my plate.
With dinner done, Sin and I headed straight for the gym attached to the dormitory building.
The moment he saw the place packed with dumbbells and machines of every kind, Sin's eyes went wide. He looked even more excited than he had eating dinner.
"This is incredible!"
"Yeah?"
"Look at this! The press machines are maintained perfectly!"
"They are, aren't they."
But none of that mattered. Or rather, it wasn't the priority.
"So what do we start with? I'll spot you, so let's go all out!"
"Warm-up first. Then I want to check my maxes."
"Sounds good to me."
Sin nodded and fetched a mat while I grabbed a few dumbbells of varying weights and came back.
Sin tilted his head.
"...? What are you doing?"
"Loosening up."
"With dumbbells?"
"Yep. And it works brilliantly."
I answered with a wry smile.
The truth was, this method didn't even exist yet in this era. It was a technique called the "Robert Check," devised by a man named Robert Hwang, who burst onto the bodybuilding scene like a comet in 2010 — an excellent exercise that used a dumbbell as a support to release the muscles while simultaneously building flexibility.
"Want to try it with me?"
"Huh? Oh, sure."
Sin followed along with a hint of suspicion. I lay down on the mat, pulled the heavy dumbbell against my body, and stretched myself out, taking deep breaths as I lifted and lowered it, pulling the muscle this way and that.
Sin lay down beside me and mimicked my movements, and within moments he let out a genuine gasp of admiration.
"Wow. I just learned something."
"It's nothing."
"No, really. Warming up with dumbbells — that's a genuinely revolutionary idea. I feel fantastic."
It was true — there was something deeply satisfying about feeling muscles that had long been asleep waking back up.
But my body was still far from fully conditioned. I assessed myself objectively as I mapped out my training routine. Then we measured our weights.
In front of the lifting platform.
With the metallic clank-clank of plates being loaded, Sin stood up and stepped back.
"Let's start with squats."
I nodded, stepped up to the bar, and tested the weight with a light lift.
The truth was, in my past life I'd known next to nothing about strength training at this age. I did lift, but it was nothing more than hoisting whatever felt heavy and putting it back down.
But years of living as a professional wrestler had taught me how much it mattered. The big three — squat, bench press, and deadlift — were the very flower of weight training.
After staring at the barbell for a moment, curiosity got the better of me and I turned to Sin.
"What's your total?"
"Total? Or just one lift?"
"Total."
"Just broke 700 kilos recently."
"..."
A weight that made my jaw drop.
And it would only keep climbing. Someday, Sin would become a monster with a big-three total approaching 900 kilos.
How does a human being even eat and train to get like that?
No — he was probably just born that way.
When you sorted pro wrestlers into archetypes, Sin fell squarely into the "Powerhouse" category. He was that strong.
Powerhouse.
The type of performer who showed off raw strength and drew roaring cheers from the crowd for it.
Captain Logan, the Icon of the Golden Era, was a powerhouse too — proof that flexing your muscles was the easiest and fastest route to winning an audience over.
Of course, since it required natural talent as a prerequisite, true powerhouse-types were rare.
There was also a common misconception that building muscle automatically meant building strength. It was mostly true, but not entirely. In the middle of a grueling match, with your stamina draining away, it became difficult to call upon your full power. And an athlete who developed nothing but muscle mass generally had worse endurance than everyone else.
That was why powerhouses like Sin — who combined freak strength with freak stamina — were said to be gifts from God himself.
"Jun, what about you? What's your number?"
"I might scrape 500."
"...Isn't that normal-person territory?"
"Normal people can't hit 500. That's the level you get to when you actually train."
I shot back. Sin made a genuinely flustered face, then checked my lifts for me.
"Hnngh!"
Bench press: 130 kilos.
"Nghah!"
Deadlift: 220 kilos.
"Ugh-hhk!"
Squat: 150 kilos.
Grand total: exactly 500 kilos.
Not counting the weight of the bar. Given that I'd made it back to this world at all, I figured my ancestors were lifting the difference for me.
Still, thanks to the thorough warm-up, my numbers came out better than I'd expected. I exhaled the breath I'd been holding.
"Whew...!"
"Not bad at all!"
"That's where the problem starts, though."
I topped up my water while responding awkwardly to Sin's praise.
"Strength doesn't just pile on for free. Honestly, 150 is probably close to my ceiling as I am now."
"Whoa, you know your numbers in detail."
The memories of my past life had impressed this Shawn Cena.
Anyway — that was how it was. Becoming a powerhouse like Sin was simply beyond me.
Granted, pro wrestling technique was designed to use as little raw strength as possible. Even when you lifted an opponent, you didn't just hoist them — you caught them on the rebound as they leapt. That was what they meant by "timing the connection."
But the weight of a charging human being was no joke.
Hoisting monsters that run from 100 to nearly 200 kilos, while my stamina is spent... that's going to be rough.
But it wasn't hopeless. Even if I couldn't be a powerhouse, there were other styles I could—
Right at that moment, Sin and I heard a voice from behind us.
"You little punks, using my gym without asking permission?"
We turned to find Baku approaching, a can of Budweiser in hand.
"Aren't we allowed to use it?"
"Huh? PUHAHA! Look at this kid, strutting around like he owns the place."
"Well, I'd say that's because I'm about to become a GCW trainee, aren't I?"
Baku and the WWF crowd prized insolent, unapologetically masculine confidence above almost every other virtue. So I deliberately answered with a bit of swagger.
"You've got a sharp tongue, too. ...Fine. You can use it, that much is true."
Baku chugged his beer like he intended to swallow the can along with it.
"But tomorrow's going to be rough on you."
"I have to do it. If I want to make the cut."
"Listen, kid. No matter how well you do, I'm not putting your friend through with you."
"Th-that's fine by me. I'm just here for the experience..."
"Oh, it's all fine, is it? It'd be real damn funny if you can't take a bump. Because if you can't take a bump, you're a corpse on the spot."
"...And if I can take a bump properly, will you give me one more chance?"
"I don't like that."
Baku smiled cruelly.
"This one's got good strength too, though. Raise him right and he'll be worth something."
"How much does he lift?"
"S-seven hundred. Just over 700."
Sin stammered. At those words, Baku's face lit up.
"Seven hundred, you say?"
"Yes, sir! That's right!"
"Then dance for me."
"...?"
What fresh breed of hazing was this?
"You too, shorty."
"Wh-why would I..."
"Do as you're told."
And so Sin and I got up on the spot and began to dance(?) together.
Well — it was really less dancing than awkwardly wiggling our bodies around.
Watching us, Baku shook his head for some reason.
"Nope. Not happening."
"Excuse me?"
"..."
"Your flexibility is zero."
Baku pointed at Sin. It was an accurate diagnosis. I gave a wry smile and spoke up in his place.
"That's true — without flexibility, executing techniques with precision gets difficult."
"Oho, you know your stuff."
Baku sounded impressed.
"That's right. Tell me, kid — could you pull off the moves guys like Eddie Viterero and Gert Angel use?"
Baku was naming current stars classified as "Technicians" — performers with exceptional in-ring execution.
"Times have changed. The fans don't want corny powerhouses like Captain Logan anymore."
"...I don't know about that."
"Didn't expect that out of your mouth. What, weren't you training as a technician wrestler too, shorty?"
"I just do what everyone else does."
I smiled faintly.
I knew the future, and I couldn't agree with Baku. It was true that the fans of this era went wild for technician wrestlers. But the one who would eventually stand at the very top was this stiff, blocky Sin of all people. So his statement wasn't entirely wrong — but it wasn't entirely right either.
Because I knew how the story ended, I couldn't simply nod along.
"Well, either way — I'll take it to mean you want me to keep an eye on Sin."
"...And you?"
"I'm pretty good, aren't I?"
"PUHAHAHA! Cocky little bastard!"
Baku roared with laughter, then spun on his heel and walked out.
With Sin's help, I kept training after that. During the free time, Sin worked out alongside me. We were both drenched in sweat from head to toe.
There's no denying it — I'm still a little short of the mark.
A young body was a tremendous advantage. But the young me of the past had never known how to use that advantage. Which also meant I had plenty of room left to grow.
By the time we finished assessing everything and stepped out of the gym, it was already late at night.
A rewarding "first day."
As I walked along thinking that, Sin, who had been tilting his head beside me, cautiously threw out a question.
"Hey, Jun."
"Yeah?"
"What's a powerhouse?"
"...A type of wrestler classification."
I gave him a rundown of the conversation we'd had with Baku, explaining one by one the various wrestler archetypes — powerhouse, technician, big man, high-flyer, showman, old school, stuntman, and the rest.
Sin listened with genuine interest and nodded along.
"So there are classifications like that."
"Well, it's not all that rigid in practice. But if you want to sell a particular 'gimmick,' consistency in how you work your matches is key."
Say, for instance, that a giant over two meters tall started leaping off the ring posts, flying around performing aerial maneuvers. People might marvel and gasp, but there were two problems. One was that it risked chewing through that wrestler's career.
"And the other is that it threatens to erode the WWF's world."
"Its world?"
"The unspoken rules that exist so 'sport' can happen inside the WWF. No matter how capable you are, there's a loose convention that big men avoid aerial wrestling."
Otherwise, the smaller, quicker wrestlers would lose their niche entirely.
"So then, Jun — which type are you?"
"Ah, come to think of it, I never told you which one I picked."
"Which is it?"
Sin asked, clearly intrigued. In answer, I raised my fist into the air and said:
"Brawler."
Brawler.
The word meant a street fighter — a brawler who settled things with his fists.
And that was what I had chosen.