He went with the pants.
They were vinyl tights with elastic seams for flexibility. He’d had them stored in a rental box on loan near the airport. He had spent all Sunday trying to find the key and had resigned himself to requesting access from the management.
The manager recognized him from his time in the ring and begrudgingly broke into the box, lifting the roller door and flashing a light around the cobwebs and mold that had built up in the storage unit.
"Y’all said I could have anything I see as payment for my door, right?" he reminded.
Johnny the Kid nodded.
It was all useless to him now. All of this memorabilia was a relic of a time when he was neck-deep in drugs and roids. He separated the two purely for their effects on his mood. The roids gave him the motivation to bang iron, and the drugs gave him the relief from a chair to the head or a back-landing jackhammer.
It was a death loop, a predetermined routine that would tell him exactly where he was on the cycle based on his mood or physical response. His body became a timepiece. It was difficult to hop off. The difference between now and then was removing the bright lights and other special treatments at hotels, and restaurants, free upgrades for car rentals…
He found a box labeled attire and dusted off the tape line, digging his finger in to rip apart the joint. The smell was strong. He must have placed them inside while they were still soaked in sweat. He held up the jocks first, not knowing whether they would be an option for his return, and raised them to his eyeline. The manager was the first to comment.
"God damn," he said. "I remember you won the Radical Rumble in those. Jaysus."
They had shrunk, appearing half the size he remembered. Or maybe he was larger in the waistline. It had been seven years, and he didn’t spend much time on his physicality anymore.
He threw them over to the manager, who caught them with relish. Underneath were the pants, and they looked healthy enough for an in-ring performance. All that hindered him now was how he’d look.
—
In his room at the Holiday Inn off the airport highway, he sat on the bed holding the phone. He wanted to call the production manager, Bob Newens, and complain, but wrestled with the idea that such a move might get him removed from the bill. His reputation had preceded him. He walked over to the window adjacent to the bed and looked out toward the arena, illuminated in the distance, visible as the flights came in to land. The company had paid for his travel and accommodation, but not a meal allowance or access to a gym.
He was back, but he wasn’t truly ‘back’.
He was hungry, but most of all, he worried about his appearance. His hairline had receded and his pectorals had deformed. He felt small and overweight at the same time.
He was to appear on the taping of Smack Attack the following night at 6 PM Eastern. It was a live broadcast. Kevin, the president, was adamant Johnny the Kid return for a storyline that sounded like it had been hashed out in the last three days. A company brain fart. He wasn’t certain they really wanted him to compete again, and he wasn’t sure if this meant he’d be welcome back for an extended run, which is what he wanted. It’s what motivated him to take the flight and leave his job at the metal press.
He took his shirt off and looked over his physique. He tried pose after pose, imitating his old self. No matter what angle he used or how dim he adjusted the room light, he looked nothing like the three-time heavyweight champion of the world that he was.
He took off his pants and lay on the bed, bending and contorting his lower limbs to slip into the vinyl tights, his old logo running down the thighs in red on black. He remembered the trick: use olive oil or dishwashing soap. He had them up around his waist and looked in the mirror once more, greeted with the sight of his gut overflowing the elastic that covered his belt line. He was disgusted.
He spent the next eight hours on the floor lifting the foot of his bed in a bench press formation. Three repetitions of five pumps, repeated every twenty minutes.
—
The arena was as full as it had been eighteen years ago on his debut, just as it was seven years ago during his final match, the one where he spat in his opponent’s face and received what he was told would be a lifetime ban from the sport.
Dane Viscious gave his look an appraisal in the locker room and was frank in his assessment.
“Johnny, you gotta go street clothes,” he said.
“But I got none,” Johnny replied.
Dane reached into his gym bag and extracted a pair of three quarter jean shorts and a black T-shirt with the company logo. He tossed them over.
“It’s okay. You’re not expected to come out looking the way you did eight years ago. It takes time to get back into that shape. So don’t put that pressure on yourself, okay?” he said in good faith.
Johnny, with his head lowered, gave a nod and accepted his friend’s appraisal.
“It’s good to see you around these parts again, Johnny,” Dane said, giving his friend a pat on the back before leaving him to get changed.
—
The floor manager escorted Johnny up the backstage area toward the arena. Johnny had wrestled four hundred matches in a career cut short seven years earlier due to his behavior. It was not uncommon to be briefed on the outcome or expectations of a match minutes before entering the ring. As such, when he arrived at the edge of the stage, where the curtain draped across the catwalk, he was met by the president who had once banned him for life.
To his surprise, they shook hands.
“It’s been a long time, Johnny.”
A tear formed behind Johnny’s eyes and he felt his mouth crumble under the wave of emotion the moment brought. Kevin McJones wrapped his arms around his old champion and whispered in his ear.
“Welcome home, champ… Welcome home.”
A series of claps and intimate applause erupted in the immediate vicinity as the up-and-coming superstars watched the old champ embraced by the boss, allowing their own appreciation of his legacy to be put on display. One by one, they walked over and smiled as they patted him on the back. As the tears subsided, Johnny heard the familiar first bars of his old theme song.
The roar of the crowd.
“What am I doing? Who am I facing?” he asked McJones quickly.
“You’re facing the new champ!” he yelled over the music. “Old champ versus new champ. We’re just setting up the match now. Just go out there and let the crowd know you’re back. No wrestling, just hype!” He smiled.
Johnny smiled back.
“I can do that!”
Johnny turned to the curtain and pulled it back.
A tap on his shoulder made him turn back once more to McJones, who was mouthing something important, but Johnny couldn’t hear. He nodded in acknowledgment, more out of politeness than understanding.
“Heel!” McJones was yelling. “You’re a heel!”
Johnny walked out to face the crowd as they roared in approval. He tugged at the collar of his shirt, emboldened by the praise. He pulled at the seams of the shirt and ripped the garment in two, exposing his naked upper chest. He flexed for the cameras. The cheers turned to chatter, then laughter. He didn’t care. He didn’t really hear them either.
He made his way to the ring, where a sunglass wearing man of enormous stature was smiling. Not in appreciation, but in ridicule. He had a microphone in hand.
“You gotta be kidding me, right?!” he shouted through the speakers of the twenty five thousand seat arena.
“Johnny the Kid?!” he laughed. “That’s who you’ve brought to face me?!”
He laughed louder.
“Look at his man boobs!” he yelled into the mic.
The crowd was with him. They were snickering, many outright laughing. Audible. Johnny hadn’t even made it into the ring yet. His chest felt cold. His nipples felt exposed. His face grew hot. He was embarrassed and despite over four hundred matches under his belt, because he was not the man he used to be, now thousands of people could see it. The illusion or attempt at it had failed. The loop cycle would not be continued. They had rugged him eight years ago and now they had brought him back to rub salt in the wound.
He looked at the champ with Razor emblazoned on his trunks, the gold belt slung over his shoulder.
Johnny the Kid climbed the side stairs into the ring, unafraid to take a stand against his tormentor. He had lived in and out of couches up and down the Rust Belt. He’d worked as a farmhand, a landscaper. He’d cut grass at schools and for hospital courtyards. His knees were sore. His elbows ached. He had no cartilage and was deaf in one ear from a trundle table to the head. He was in no mood to be ridiculed.
His entire career had been a predetermination. Nothing was organic. He had no control. He existed in this place and had a legacy built on the expectations and instruction of one man. You were either lucky enough to be liked by the man or you were a heel.
Johnny the kid’s selling days were over. He would do this one for real.
With a closed fist, he walked up to the champ, who was ready for a return volley of insults.
“You got something to say, Gramps?” Razor yelled into the mic. “Give this man a mic, let him tell everyone!”
Johnny the Kid shook his head. He didn’t need a mic.
Razor removed his sunglasses and gave an insulting smirk, lined up perfectly.
Johnny raised his fist and swung in the same motion, driving it deep into the champ’s nose, pushing the bone structure into his skull and leaving a pool of blood mid-air as the new champion hit the mat, unconscious.
The collective howl of the crowd gave way to deafening silence. The new champ wasn’t moving. A dark red stain spread across the canvas.
Johnny the Kid looked out at the crowd and raised his fists in victory. He knelt down to pick up the microphone and brought it to his mouth. He had waited eight long years to address the fans again. Now was his moment.
“I’m back!” he yelled.
But the mic was off. The house lights came on and Johnny saw the rush of paramedics racing from the bleachers toward the ring with a stretcher between them. A voiceover announced the interruption.
“Ladies and gentlemen, World Wrestling Series is currently experiencing technical difficulties. Please stay in your seats and we will have the show back up and running in no time. Stay tuned.”
Elevator music began to play throughout the arena.
Johnny the Kid watched as a sea of phones pointed at him, capturing his reaction to the interruption.
He stood in the ring, watching as paramedics began CPR on the unconscious champ, not knowing whether to remain in the ring and continue the sell, or leave quietly back to a life of anonymity. He wondered if a journey to the green room was still an option for him.
—
He was avoided in the locker room. No one would come near him. He looked out amongst the contenders who kept their eyes low for Dane, or Meathook, or the afterburner… Anyone from the old days who could boost his spirits but none were around. He awaited the arrival of security to escort him from the building like they did all those years ago. The last time he broke free of a predetermined outcome.
“Johnny the kid is back!” McJones yelled as he entered the locker room with a barrage of executives.
“That was beautiful!” he proclaimed. “Way to turn heel,”
The kid observed the many faces who orchestrated their necks in a swivel to avoid his gaze, all of a sudden turning to embrace the one who had been ordained.