Not UFC, but WWE
Clang!
The cage door slammed shut.
Listening to the iron bars lock into place, Kim Do-chol rolled his shoulders loose.
Across from him stood the rookie.
…He really is huge.
Bigger in the flesh than he had looked on paper. Big enough that the ceiling seemed low. His shoulders looked like they could block half the cage, and the gloved fists were the size of a man’s head.
But that was all.
Kim Do-chol snorted.
He had seen big guys until he was sick of them. The bigger they were, the slower they moved; the heavier they were, the duller they felt. Land one clean shot and that whole mountain came down. If anything, the bigger they got, the better it felt to drop them.
And this one was a total greenhorn making his debut. Bound to be locked up tight with nerves. Kim Do-chol checked the kid’s eyes, looking for the shake.
But—
…Huh?
Those eyes were not shaking. No tension. No fear. None of the tremor a debut ought to carry.
If anything, they looked careful. Not careful about getting hurt—careful about hurting the other guy.
For a second Kim Do-chol felt a strange wrongness.
…What is this feeling?
He shook it off at once. Useless thoughts. A greenhorn was a greenhorn. He had seen plenty of rookies putting on a brave face, and he had wrecked every last one of them. Time for the Viper to teach this cage what real fear looked like.
…I go for the eyes first.
Kim Do-chol laid out the plan in his head. Clinch early. Slip into the ref’s blind spot and rake the eyes with his fingers. Once the vision blurs, the greenhorn panics. Then a shot to the groin, drag him to the ground, and take him apart slow. The same filthy script he had polished his whole life.
One debut scrub. Show him hell and climb out looking pretty.
—Fight!!
The second the referee’s hand dropped, Kim Do-chol moved. A lifetime of footwork carried him low into the pocket, straight into eye-rake range. The motion he had drilled hundreds of times rolled out of his body the way it always did.
Almost there. Just extend the fingers—
In that instant the rookie moved.
…No. He did not even see him move.
The world in front of him simply went white.
Flash—!!
Everything blew pure white for a single heartbeat. Then there was nothing.
Huh…?
Sound, light, pain—all of it gone. The cage, the crowd, the lights… everything that had been there a second ago snuffed out at once.
In the dark, Kim Do-chol remembered.
The day he first started fighting. The day they told him he had no talent. The day he understood you could not win clean. The day he first raked a man’s eyes and felt thrill instead of guilt. Every day he had been called the Viper, every day he had climbed by stepping on other people.
He had used every dirty trick. He had been called filth. He had still won. He had survived all the way here.
He had thought this was the last step.
…Huh.
What did I just do?
What was just done to me?
What just…
There, Kim Do-chol’s consciousness cut out completely.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw a ceiling.
A white ceiling. Fluorescent lights. The smell of disinfectant.
…Where is this.
Kim Do-chol blinked blankly. His head pounded like it might split. His mouth felt strangely empty.
He probed around with his tongue.
Several teeth were gone. The whole upper front row was missing. The unfamiliar feel of bare gum under his tongue tip was wrong.
“…Oh. You’re awake.”
His manager’s voice came from the side. Kim Do-chol turned his head slowly. The manager was looking at him with a wrecked expression.
“…What happened to me.”
His voice came out slurred and leaky. Missing teeth.
The manager was quiet for a long time. Then he forced the words out.
“…Hyung. It was one punch.”
“…What?”
“The fight call dropped… you shot in… and that rookie swung once.”
The manager swallowed.
“…That was it. Three seconds after the start… hyung, you flew all the way to the other side of the cage. Fight over on the spot. They hauled you straight to the hospital…”
Three seconds.
Kim Do-chol could not make sense of the number for a long while.
Three seconds.
He had not even gotten to use a single finger. Not the polished script, not even a single eye rake. Every filthy technique he had spent a lifetime drilling—none of it ever left the bag.
Everything he had poured his life into had become nothing in three seconds.
“…Is that even a person?”
Kim Do-chol muttered it without strength.
The manager had no answer.
Kim Do-chol stared blankly at the ceiling. The empty sockets of his front teeth throbbed.
He had been the Viper who spent a lifetime stepping on people to climb. A man who gouged eyes, snapped joints, and used any means necessary to crawl this far.
He had lost before. There had been nights he knelt to someone stronger, someone dirtier.
This was different.
It had not even been a fight. Without landing a single hand, without knowing what had happened—he had simply been swept aside.
Like a bug.
Without ever even knowing what had done it to him.
“…Hyung.”
The manager called carefully. Kim Do-chol did not answer. He just kept staring at the ceiling.
Decades.
Born without talent, surviving on pure venom. He could not win clean, so he won dirty; as long as he kept climbing, the pointing fingers did not matter. If he kept thrashing hard enough, he had thought he would eventually reach that place where the talented ones stood.
Today that illusion shattered into pieces.
That was not something thrashing could reach.
Dirty or clean, grinding another lifetime into the floor… it had been a completely different dimension from the start.
A wall that a man without talent could never cross no matter how hard he clawed.
Today Kim Do-chol saw that wall with his own two eyes. No—he flew before he ever got the chance to look.
“…I’m done.”
Kim Do-chol muttered in a cracked voice.
“…What?”
“Fighting. I’m quitting.”
The manager flinched.
“Hyung, what are you talking about. Just because you lost once…”
“It wasn’t just once.”
Kim Do-chol slowly shook his head. Air leaked through the gaps where teeth used to be.
“From the beginning… I was never someone who could reach a place like that. I crawled for decades… and only today I finally get it.”
His voice shook.
He was a man who had never once in his life spoken weak. Cursed, pointed at, he had always clenched his teeth and endured. For the first time, the corners of Kim Do-chol’s eyes turned red.
The manager did not know what to say.
He simply laid a quiet hand on those rough shoulders.
“…You worked hard, hyung.”
At those words, the man they called the Viper quietly shook his shoulders on the hospital bed.
For the first time in decades.
It was over.
Far too fast.
The feeling of my fist meeting something. Then Kim Do-chol’s body lifting, flying all the way to the far side of the cage and crashing down.
That was everything.
Seconds after the fight started, Kim Do-chol lay sprawled on the canvas and did not move. The referee rushed in and waved it off. Medical staff sprinted in with a stretcher. Kim Do-chol’s face was a mask of blood, and several white things were scattered near his mouth.
…Teeth.
They carried him out of the cage on the stretcher.
I just stood there, blank.
Then the arena exploded.
Waaaaaaaaah—!!
Thousands of voices detonated at once, loud enough to shake the roof. Stomping feet, whistles, cheers that bordered on screams.
I looked up at the big screen without thinking.
There it was—what I had just done, replaying in slow motion.
My fist burying itself in Kim Do-chol’s face as he shot in. His features warping, spit and blood and teeth spraying in every direction, that huge body lifting like paper. The same single punch looped again and again.
It felt like watching someone else do it.
But that had definitely been me.
The commentators were screaming with excitement, and the crowd started chanting my name.
“Insane!! One punch! One punch!!”
“Did you see that?! The Viper flew like paper!”
“That wasn’t CG!! It was real!!”
“Han Daewong! Han Daewong! Han Daewong!”
“That’s a rookie?! That’s a monster!!”
These were the same people who had been laughing at me as a greenhorn a moment ago.
Now every last one of them was on their feet screaming my name.
But I could not smile.
I kept seeing that flash of Kim Do-chol being carried out on the stretcher.
The fight started. Kim Do-chol shot in low. Hands that looked like they were going for the eyes. I threw a punch on pure instinct.
Rachel’s words flashed through my head.
—The harder you hit, the better. End it hot and clean.
Yeah. Hot and clean.
For that split second I really was about to throw with everything I had.
But.
In the instant before the punch left my hand, something brushed down my spine.
The beast’s sixth sense, burned into me from the years I was still a bear. The instinct that knew exactly where a prey’s windpipe was, exactly which spot to crush to end it in one blow.
It warned me.
—Hit him like that and his skull pops like a watermelon.
I just knew. If I threw that punch for real, Kim Do-chol’s skull would shatter. One clean connection and a man would die.
So I hesitated.
I pulled the sincerity out of it, took the power off, and hit him a little harder than I usually tap a vending machine. Just a light tap. That was all.
And with that tap—
Kim Do-chol went flying, spraying blood, teeth gone, carried out on a stretcher.
Even though I held back.
Even though I barely put anything into it, that was the result.
I looked down at my fist. Through the glove I could see the massive hand underneath.
If.
If I had really hit him hot and clean the way Rachel said—
Kim Do-chol would be on a coffin right now, not a stretcher.
A chill ran down my spine.
I had only just realized it.
This was not a place where I could go all out.
Underground it did not matter. As long as I did not kill anyone, nobody cared whether I held back or not.
The octagon was different.
If I fought for real here, I would not win—I would kill. I would tear the other man apart in front of everyone.
That could not happen.
Never.
…So what am I supposed to do?
The answer turned out to be simple.
I could not fight sincerely. I had to hold back. Ease off the power just enough that the other guy walked out alive. Sometimes take a hit on purpose, sometimes let myself get dragged around. Not a real, blazing fight—a show people would enjoy watching.
In other words.
Here inside this octagon cage,
I could not do UFC.
…I’ll have to do WWE.
In the middle of the roaring crowd.
Under the heat pouring down on me.
Everyone else risked their lives in real fights inside this cage.
I alone would have to act—so that nobody died.
Not pretending to be strong. Pretending to be weak.
Not how to win. How not to kill.
The strongest man in the world, forced to fight while holding back more than anyone else.
…I really had to wonder if this was right.
I raised one hand awkwardly toward the cheering crowd.
The roar got louder.
But somehow that cheer only sounded far away.