The Rolling Roll Call
From the following day, GCW's full-scale training began in earnest.
The training facility was vast — built like a warehouse where you could park an airplane. Every time body paint was slapped onto the bumper ring's mat, the sound rang out and echoed through the whole space.
The 47 hopefuls, all in their gym clothes, stood in front of the bumper rings warming up, just as they had the day before. I was in the middle of them doing some light stretching when Cena, who had been helping me, asked with a puzzled look.
"Hey, Joong, there's something I've been wondering about since before we even got here."
"What is it?"
"Why do they treat the tryout like it's actual training? Do you have any idea?"
"Because it's that dangerous. They want to teach things like move execution properly, the WWF way, from the very start."
I felt the muscles in my lower back — the ones that had been pressing into the floor all night — finally loosening and lengthening.
"There's a propaganda element to it, too. The WWF wants the world to know that it's an organization that puts safety above all else."
"Hohh..."
Cena's eyes sparkled with admiration.
It wasn't anything grandiose, really. It was simply unavoidable, because pro wrestling lacked the function of being a "recreational sport."
Take, for example, the common ball games.
Soccer, baseball, basketball, volleyball.
Combat sports.
Taekwondo, boxing, judo, Muay Thai.
Because these carry functions of self-defense or play, their training methods are widely practiced among ordinary people.
But pro wrestling?
Even with amateur wrestling as its base, there were parts that were entirely different.
Unless you set your sights on becoming a pro wrestler from early childhood and trained at a dedicated dojo, you simply never had the opportunity to grow up learning "pro wrestling."
Just as I was thinking that far, the trainers filed into the training hall.
"Plenty of energy for first thing in the morning, eh."
Baku, standing at the center, still looked half-drunk from the night before. At six-ten in the morning, that was arguably to be expected.
"Alright, let's get right to it. Everyone, five of you on each ring. Move."
Five hopefuls, one trainer.
And so the training began.
The very first exercise was rolling — all the way from one ring post to the opposite one.
...A memory, that.
I let out a wry smile and took my place at the very back of the nervous hopefuls.
They couldn't keep their direction.
Rolling in a straight line, over and over, while holding your bearing was, in truth, extremely difficult for a first-timer.
Just as expected, the hopefuls rolling ahead of me kept losing their balance or toppling over dazed, one after another.
As if to show off, Baku climbed onto the ring where I was and let out a sigh.
Then my turn came.
Everyone's eyes turned to me.
Even the hopefuls on the other rings seemed to take great interest in me — the guy who'd put on an actual bout of "pro wrestling" with Baku on day one.
Smiling thinly, I quietly fixed my gaze on the opposite ring post.
And right at that moment—
Baku called out to me, his face carved with mischief.
"Think you can pull it off?"
"It's just fundamentals, isn't it?"
That remark stirred a bit of stubbornness in me, and I immediately started rolling.
Baku's words were perfectly reasonable. Indie wrestlers with backyard origins like me usually lacked fundamentals.
No — we barely had any at all.
Watching pro wrestling on TV and imitating it was typically where 'backyard kids' like me got our start.
We obsessed over flashy moves instead of drilling the basics, and that habit contributed to pro wrestling's reputation as dangerous.
That was why the 'real ones' like Baku always said we carried bad habits.
But the me of now was different.
I rolled cleanly five times and reached the opposite ring post. Seeing it, Baku clapped and laughed.
"Kwahaha! Not bad at all!"
That was how it went.
I threw myself into the training with confidence.
Conditioning, breakfalls, rope running — and beyond them, countless fundamentals of the fundamentals.
Everyone else fumbled their strength control and tumbled off the ring, while I stood out unmistakably among them.
No — there was one more.
"Whew."
Morning training had ended, and most of the hopefuls lay collapsed in exhaustion — but off to the side, not too far away, I could see a man standing and drinking water.
A face I knew.
That guy...
Russell Hart.
The rightful heir of the 'Hart Family,' pro wrestling's most storied dynasty.
The moment I saw that face, I felt a smile forming on my lips before I could stop it.
The industry had families that had passed pro wrestling down as their trade for generations.
Chief among them were the Anoa'i Family of Samoa, the Guerrero and Viterero families of Mexico, and the Hart Family of Canada — the one the Russell I'd just met belonged to.
They were held in enormous esteem by people in the industry; from childhood, they learned proper pro wrestling in their family's own training camps before entering the business.
And that's exactly why... we should get along with him strangely well.
In my previous life, he had even appeared on WWF shows and drawn people's attention.
The problem was that afterward he lost the backstage political war, never grew into a major star, and got driven out.
In any case, right now he was taking this tryout at the same time as me.
We could be of considerable help to each other.
Afternoon training ended.
After dinner, Cena and I were drilling fundamentals in the training hall.
I was holding a bridge, working my core, when Cena, standing in front of me, suddenly spoke up.
"Joong, got a question."
"Anything — I'll — answer — it...!"
Keeping myself propped upside down, holding on with nothing but neck and lower back strength, was anything but easy. It really drove home how undertrained this era's body of mine still was.
"Why do you want to be a brawler?"
"...As it happens, I've — been — getting — pretty — certain about that lately!"
"Why?"
"Because — Russell Hart — is there...!"
Force gathered in my lower back.
"Russell Hart? Who's that?"
"A genius — of the — Hart Family!"
And a legendary technician, to boot.
Just like his uncle Greg Hart, who was active in the WWF right now, he too would grow into a tremendous technician in the years to come.
That gave me my idea.
Currently, my role model was the brawler-style icon, Rockcold Stevie Steen.
And the moment he began gaining genuine popularity with the masses had been his rivalry with Greg Hart.
...In that sense, I'd better get friendly with Russell Hart.
Why, you ask?
"In the — final stage — of the tryout — the hopefuls — actually — get rivalries!"
"With the other hopefuls?"
I released the bridge and sat up.
"Whew... Before that, everyone builds their characters and — well, roughly. First priority is creating the character that suits you best."
"Suits them? How so?"
"Well, first off, appearance."
I got up from my spot, wiping sweat with a towel as I spoke.
"You know Casket-Taker, right?"
"Ah, sure I do. He's the mortician gimmick who puts his defeated opponents in coffins."
"If that man were 170 centimeters tall, could he have pulled off that gimmick?"
"It would've lost a lot of its credibility."
"Right — credibility. That's what it's about."
I nodded.
Physical credibility.
And the credibility that comes from embodying a person's actual life story.
Viewed from that angle, Russell and I could make an excellent feud. The directions we'd each walked to get here were complete opposites.
Having decided as much, I turned to look at Russell Hart, who had claimed the bumper ring in the farthest corner.
He, leaning against the ring post catching his breath, was looking back at me too.
Not lacking in interest, it seems.
The old me would have been written off as just another run-of-the-mill brat crawling up from a backyard.
Coming back here was worth it.
Right now, I was a veteran who had churned through more than twenty years in the WWF, the greatest promotion on the planet.
...Most of that career spent taking the beating, sure — but experience is experience. It's real.
Climbing down from the ring, I brought Cena along to Russell Hart's bumper ring, and we climbed up onto it.
A white man with brown hair trimmed just so.
And an amateur wrestling singlet that connected all the way to a one-piece top.
That was Russell Hart.
"Your bridge was absolutely textbook."
"Your breakfalls were gorgeous, too."
We complimented each other first.
Our industry was, by and large, crawling with macho men. Call it a 'man's world,' if you like.
Here, establishing whether you and the other party held any goodwill toward each other at first meeting was critically important.
Men who don't cooperate with each other fight instead. What Russell and I had just confirmed was that we were capable of cooperating.
"I'm Junho Kim. My friends call me Juni for short."
"Juni. A good name."
Wow, damn — perfect pronunciation.
I glanced briefly at Cena, who was gazing at Russell as if in awe. The guy still called me "Joong" to this day.
"My name is Russell Hart. Ashamed to say it, but I'm of the Hart Family—"
"I know. It's an honor to greet a member of such a storied house."
"...Right."
Hm?
Just a little — but Russell's expression seemed to stiffen at my words.
As I tilted my head for a moment, I could feel Russell staring quietly at Cena beside me.
"Ah, this is Shawn Cena."
And so we introduced ourselves to one another.
Russell was a cool customer, polished like something out of a picture book. Hearing Cena's story, he watched the kid's breakfalls right there and gave him pointers.
He had pride in himself, yet he wasn't arrogant about it.
Even I had things to learn from him.
"When you take a breakfall, don't think of it as canceling out the pain."
"Th-then what should I think?"
Cena, who had just taken a back bump, stood up clutching his lower back.
"A breakfall is about reducing an impact strong enough to break you down to the level of mere pain."
He was right.
Because Cena wasn't braced for the pain, his body tensed up and he was throwing his falls clumsily.
"Setting aside your body's flexibility, even just shifting your mindset a little will make taking falls far easier for you."
"Okay, Cena. Stay loose, and stretch your arms out flat like you were taught."
"I'll try it again."
The bumper ring's mat resounded with a wham!
Before long, Cena, having peeled off his sweat-soaked shirt, began practicing breakfalls alone in silent determination.
I'll be able to brag someday, somewhere, that I taught Shawn Cena the fundamentals of wrestling.
Standing beside Russell Hart, I watched Cena drill away for a little while.
...Though from that day on, at the gym, it was me who got worked to death by training.
Three days after that.
The training continued.
But there was one difference from before: Russell Hart was now training right beside me.
And Cena was there too.
Both thanks to Baku.
"Hey, Muscle Boy. You're supposed to be a TP, so quit standing over there like a lamppost and get up here and train with us."
He'd called over Cena, who stood apart from everyone like the lonely heel-end of a loaf of bread, and put him through the training alongside us.
Cena had insisted he had no right to be there, but when Baku flexed his fist, he climbed up obediently.
And now, the present moment.
"KWAAAH!"
Cena went flying off the ring.
"Next!"
Russell Hart sprinted over. Baku grabbed him by the crotch and the back of the neck, hoisted him up while spinning him.
Then he brought him down back-first, right in front of himself.
A body slam.
Among all the 'grab-and-slam' techniques, this was the 'fundamental.' It was easy to take the bump for, and it showcased power beautifully.
But the problem was me.
Baku flashed a wide grin.
What's he making me do this time.
I ran the ropes toward him with a vague sense of foreboding. As I sprinted along, Baku bellowed at the top of his lungs.
"BACK BODY DROP!"
...Of course he picks the one that hurts.
He ordered a different variation of the bump from me and Hart every single time. And with me, he showed no mercy whatsoever.
As I closed in, Baku bent at the waist, taking a stance like a bull lowering its horns to charge.
I slipped my legs through the gap, and timed my leap to the exact moment Baku lifted — jumping hard, straight up.
It was as if the bull had gored me with its horns and was now flipping me clean over its back.
Launched into the air, I rotated a half turn. Then I slammed my back into the mat and landed.
The WHAM! rang out crisp and clear across the entire training hall.
I rolled and rose to my feet.
My back throbbed, but a pro wrestler's job is to express his pain only as performance.
"Good, you little runts. Real good."
Baku rolled the shoulder he'd used for the lift and laughed heartily.
"Your breakfalls have come a long way, too..."
His eyes turned toward Cena. Red-faced, Cena looked delighted in a way that didn't quite match his bulk.
"Let's move on to the next step."
"...Are we allowed to already?"
I looked around.
At the other bumper rings, everyone was still being drilled by their trainers on the basic body slam and its bump.
"Well, I'm the conductor here. Nobody gets to talk back to me. Even if somebody from headquarters shows up, one knuckle sandwich shuts 'em all right up."
"..."
"..."
Those of us who knew his strength could not, under any circumstances, laugh.
And then Baku, hoisting that colossal boulder of a fist, came walking toward me.
Then he thumped my chest.
"Let's move on to strikes."
...Today's going to leave some bruises, isn't it.