The Top Heel Ascends
"So Sin finally earned his title shot."
"What a magnificent son of a bitch. The way he ran Harley ragged, insulted the crowd, denied his connection to Russell — all of it, absolutely perfect."
"And with the GCW Championship match set for next week, another massive crowd is bound to pour in."
"Sin takes the belt, right?"
"Of course he does."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Word just came down from the WWF main roster — the Wyatt Family is being called up to the main event. Naturally, they'll be dropping the belts on their way out."
"So that leaves Bobby and Sheamus as the only main-event caliber guys left?"
"Which means if Russell doesn't come back anytime soon, Sin will have to feud with every last one of them."
"Now that's a hell of a story."
"Sin knows exactly how to elevate his opponents. A champion who can do that? That's a rare treasure."
"I'll say it until I'm blue in the face — he is a phenomenal performer. GCW must be thrilled to have gotten their hands on a gem like this."
"Whew. Goodness."
I muttered under my breath, feeling the heat rise in my face at the flood of praise.
The wrestlers' lounge. Most of the roster had gathered there, listening to the newsletter radio broadcast after the show wrapped.
It had started with just me, Russell, and Sheena, but one by one the others joined in, until nearly the entire locker room had crowded around.
Granted, the words of critics like these needed to be taken with a grain of salt, but for the most part they were enormously helpful. The people who really understood the depths of pro wrestling analyzed every show from the audience's perspective, dissecting it ruthlessly and thoroughly.
Though these days it's mostly about me, so it's not exactly useful advice anymore……
On top of that, it was nothing but compliments, which made it a little embarrassing. I flashed an awkward smile at the attention of the other wrestlers.
And in that moment, Wyatt appeared beside me and plopped down.
"Take good care of us, Champion."
"……The champion is still you, senior."
"I mean, lead the place well."
"Of course. A year ago I lost to you in a landslide — this time, the roles have to be reversed."
"……Go easy on me."
It was, of course, a joke.
Wyatt lacked athletic gifts, but if he booked matches that put his strengths on full display, he could absolutely make crowds eat out of his hand.
And so time rolled on once more.
Late July. The day of the GCW Championship match.
[Booooooooooooo~~!!]
I had poured everything into preparing for my match with Wyatt, and now I made my entrance to a thunderous wall of boos.
Having learned my true colors from last week's ring segment, the audience jeered without holding anything back.
But I showed no reaction to any of it.
Sin's goal was, now and always, the GCW Championship belt. Nothing else existed in his line of sight.
That was true of me as a person, and true of the character written for me. I would take the belt and walk down from the ring — that was the whole plan.
And most of the audience surely expected me to win. Information had already leaked through the newsletter, and everyone watching my meteoric rise would have predicted exactly this outcome.
But pro wrestling was never a sport decided by mere wins and losses.
The audience hadn't come here for a scoreline. They had come to watch the drama between Wyatt and me.
I had ground down a husk of a man — and in doing so, awakened the persona sleeping inside him: Broken Wyatt.
The crowd fell under Wyatt's charisma. When he commanded them to follow him, they answered with an enormous roar of approval.
Then Sin and Russell had clashed with his gathered disciples again and again in tag team warfare.
But somewhere in all of that, one ambition had taken root in Sin's heart.
"The one you owe your fists to — isn't it this man, Wyatt, in the end?"
Broken Wyatt declared it with theatrical flourish, a grotesque smile curling across his face. Flanked by his minions, he laid out my psychology as if he had read it like an open book, playing to his particular strengths.
"And then you realized your partner was your ball and chain. Am I wrong?"
I said nothing.
The crowd roared their approval for Wyatt. They resonated deeply with the charisma pouring off him and every word out of his mouth.
"So you abandoned your injured partner and hurled yourself into the flames."
Wyatt, belt slung over his shoulder, pressed the psychological attack. I ignored him, loosening up my body and preparing for war.
Truly incredible.
I thought it to myself.
Flames — the word captured our championship story perfectly. Wyatt was a man burning in a raging fire, and I had come here to topple him.
And so the battle began.
It was a lonely fight — I had to keep one eye on Sheena and Eddie at ringside the whole time.
But I was overwhelming.
The moment the bell rang, I caught Wyatt flush with a dropkick from the high point, and from there I rode him relentlessly.
Usually I loved to toy with my opponents mid-match, showboating and playing to the crowd for laughs.
But not tonight.
I kept hammering Wyatt down, showing the audience just how much colder and deadlier my character had become.
Of course, all of it was built on a strict foundation of timing with Wyatt.
For a pro wrestler, Wyatt was on the slow side. His massive frame made for great visual storytelling, but he struggled to keep up with a fast tempo.
So I built breathing room between every move, spacing the action so Wyatt could always keep pace.
To the naked eye, it looked like a breathless, violent brawl — but that was only what it looked like.
Strikes like hammering blows and chops were easy for the man taking them to absorb.
But the moment came when a move had to actually slam him down.
CRASH!
I pressed the attack with the array of suplexes I was booked to have learned from Russell — always making sure to give him plenty of time to recover between them.
[Booooooooooooooooo!]
Every time I used one of Russell's moves, the crowd showered me with boos. All of that was calculated too.
Twenty minutes in.
Past the halfway mark, I could feel Wyatt's stamina draining fast.
"You okay?"
"Yeah……"
"I'll slow the pace down."
And that very slowing became part of the picture. We painted ourselves as two warriors grinding each other down, exhausted by the ferocity of the exchange.
On top of that, we added a beat where Wyatt's minions rushed the ring to buy him even more recovery time.
"Hey! Hey! What do you think you're doing up here?!"
The referee bellowed at the top of his lungs. I glanced back to see Sheena trying to climb into the ring, the referee physically holding him back.
I charged at him instantly and cracked him with a punch, then wasted no time in scaling the top rope.
Since my regression, I had made a habit of avoiding high-impact bumps as much as possible — treating my body like a resource to be conserved. Committing to a brawler style had been part of the same calculus: minimize the wear on my body.
But when the moment truly mattered, I needed something that would seize every eye in the building.
Sheena staggered to his feet at ringside, Eddie rising behind him — and I launched myself at the pair with everything I had.
Both men caught me and went down together, and a searing pain bloomed through my abs. I swallowed hard for a beat.
Then I was back up.
The two thousand or so fans in attendance had long since risen from their seats, swept up by the escalating match. Cheers came pouring down.
Whatever feelings they held about me personally, this was the response a spectacular match deserved.
I climbed back onto the ring apron to find Wyatt waiting, fully recovered, coming right at me.
We traded blows as we sprinted toward the finish line. The two of us fought inside a blaze of fire made of the crowd itself.
And then — the end.
THWACK-!!
My sharp knee strike crumpled Wyatt where he stood. I covered him, hooking the far leg.
One. Two. Three.
DING DING DING!!
The instant the bell rang, I felt the pain that had consumed my whole body simply vanish.
It was my victory.
I had become the GCW Champion.
The head of the pack. The leader of the company.
The top heel.
My music hit. The fans on their feet roared their approval, rewarding a magnificent match in the only way they knew how.
On my knees in the center of the ring without even realizing it, I took the belt the referee offered into my hands.
"There you go, Sin. It's yours now."
He looked pretty fired up himself, having just witnessed a great match. I hugged the golden belt to my chest and stared down at it, dazed.
The dream had come true.
Objectively speaking, of course, the GCW Championship was worth far less than the WWF's World Championship. My true goal had always been the WWF World Championship — the Icon's crown.
And yet the moment I took this belt, I was genuinely as happy as if my dream had come true. It wasn't a lie. I really was.
Because it felt like the year of effort I had poured in had finally received its rightful evaluation.
Not because of my race — because of my ability.
I had built a magnificent physique, honed my technique, and delivered brilliant ideas. The crowds had bitten, they had loved me, and now they hated me.
But that wasn't all.
When I returned backstage with the belt after the ceremony, everyone waiting at Gorilla Position came out to greet me.
"Sin! Great work out there!"
"That was an incredible match!"
"Congratulations, Champion!"
I smiled at the staff's well-wishes, then spotted Baku approaching and opened my mouth.
"How was it?"
"You found your place."
Elevating the opponent, elevating yourself, elevating the company — that was the champion's true role.
In that sense, Baku was acknowledging that I was the rightful owner of this belt. He stepped closer and reached out for it.
"Will you grant me the honor of being the first to strap this around your waist?"
"It'd be my honor, having a senior who once ruled an entire era do it."
"Ya little punk~. At your age, all I knew how to do was chug beer like an idiot."
Chuckling, Baku stepped behind me and fastened the championship belt around my waist.
I felt its weight, its texture against me, and then went to exchange greetings with Harley as well.
"Good work out there."
"Thank you, Harley."
"The kids have something cooked up for you — go show your face."
Looking thoroughly satisfied, Harley gave my back a push. Amid the wave of congratulations, I headed for the locker room.
The moment I opened the door and stepped inside, something came flying at me as if they'd been waiting.
SPLASH!
The cold liquid snapped me wide awake. I wiped my face in shock — and then promptly felt utterly ridiculous.
So that's what this is.
The locker room came into view, overflowing with food of every kind with champagne at its center.
"All done, then? Champion!"
A half-drunk Sheamus grinned and cackled, brandishing the champagne bottle. The Wyatt Family, who had arrived first, were all enjoying their drinks as well.
Seeing me walk in, the wrestlers lit up and crowded around. Bobby, the locker room leader, handed me a glass and spoke.
"Congratulations, Champion."
"……Did I win an Olympic gold medal or something without knowing it?"
"Russell's send-off was a bit muted on account of his injury, so we figured we'd roll the celebration for Wyatt's call-up and your title coronation into one."
"The locker room vibe is amazing right now."
"So — you hate it?"
"No way I could."
I took a glass of champagne.
This much should be fine.
"Thank you. Really."
I said it honestly.
The truth was, I'd been caught off guard for a moment. A send-off party, of all things.
It was something I couldn't have even dreamed of in my past life. Back then, everyone was perpetually desperate to catch the front office's eye — which meant wrestlers clashed with each other constantly, clawing for every scrap of the spotlight for themselves.
But not here. Not now.
Why?
I turned the question over amid the laughing, shouting wrestlers, and it didn't take long to reach the answer.
It's an embarrassing one to admit, but……
Just then, someone cut in beside me without warning.
"It's all because of you."
It was Bobby.
"Sorry?"
He'd said the exact thing I'd been thinking to myself, and I tilted my head, asking him to go on.
"I've never seen the locker room this good. Not once in my life."
"You're saying that's all because of me?"
"It's possible because you led this place as its head. Everyone got more popular off their feuds with you — t-shirt sales went up severalfold. Watching you, guys started booking their matches with real focus and training like their lives depended on it, all wanting to become what you are."
"Is… is that so."
"Yeah. You're the one carrying this era. An Icon."
Words that shook my heart.
Objectively, I had reached the same conclusion myself — but hearing it straight from another wrestler's mouth stirred something strange in me.
"Take good care of us."
"The honor's all mine."
I answered with my mouth a little dry, and rolled my aching shoulders.
It had been a brutal fight.
But sure enough, the moment that golden belt settled onto my shoulder, the pain melted away in an instant.