London, England

Summer 2001

The door to the back of the arena shut behind Glen, and the 51-year-old wrestler began to walk through the parking lot to his car. His black and gold wrestling bag was slung over his shoulder after concluding another night of cheating his way to victory.

While still champion of 21^st Century Wrestling, the emptiness of his soul was hard to ignore. The victories meant nothing to him now; he didn’t need any more money, and he didn’t even need any more glory.

He spent every night at his London apartment drinking glasses of whiskey and thinking about Charlene and Golden, the wife and daughter he hadn’t seen in nearly a decade.

Glen’s footsteps thudded against the pavement in the dark parking lot, and as he approached his car, he saw the shadowed figure standing beside it.

The veteran wrestler stopped and dropped his wrestling bag onto the ground beside him, now ready for anything. Stepping into the illumination of a streetlight, Glen could now see who it was. It was his current wrestling rival, Boswic.

The sturdily built wrestler from Chicago with dark hair and a goatee showed Glen no emotion.

“What do you want, Boswic?” Glen asked. “We’re supposed to keep this stuff back in the arena, in front of the cameras.”

“What do I want?” the younger wrestler replied. “I want you to know the history behind why I’m going to finally dethrone you and send you to retirement at our next match.”

Again.

It was happening again. Another young wrestler bringing up ghosts of dishonor from Glen’s past.

“I don’t need to hear it,” said Glen, who picked his gym bag up from the ground and walked to his car door.

Boswic stepped in front of him and put his hand on his chest, which caused the veteran wrestler to stop and look down at it momentarily. And despite being confronted by a rival in a dark parking lot, Glen didn’t feel threatened.

“Yes, you do,” Boswic stated. “When I was just a boy, I idolized you, and when you turned on the fans, I defended you to anyone I knew. I told them that you were still a good guy, but just going through a rough patch.”

Glen didn’t respond.

“And ten years ago, when I was still a teenager, I waited for you outside an arena to get your autograph, and to tell you that there was still good inside of you. You know what happened when I finally got your attention?”

The old dog from Tennessee didn’t even need to answer. Even though he didn’t remember the encounter, he was pretty sure he knew how he would react back then.

Boswic waited a moment to give Glen a chance to respond but then continued.

“I told you to remember the good times of your career. Remember that the fans loved you, and they wanted to love you again. I told you that I still believed in you, and that I’d always root for you.”

Glen looked down and shook his head.

“And then you turned to me, and you said ‘Kid, the only thing I care about now is winning.’ You told me ‘I don’t give a shit about you or the fans.”

A moment of silence hung in the air before Boswic made one last comment.

“The sting and utter disappointment of that experience never left me, and I told myself one day I would get into the ring with you and send you into retirement no matter what.”

Just when Glen was about to respond, Boswic turned and walked off into the darkness of the parking lot.

Glen reached for the car door but stopped when the realization of what had happened hit him. The darkness that had overtaken his career hadn’t just affected him; it had poisoned the next generation of fans and wrestlers.

He had squandered the impact he could have on the world, and now he saw that the ripple of his heel turn had twisted the souls of good people.

They were willing to step into the that darkness with him.

If there was a kernel of goodness left in Glen, it had just come back to life. Glen had to reverse that butterfly effect, and fix what he had wrought.