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"Joe and Kobashi" |
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There were three of us in that second row of twenty-five, standing as shoulder-to-shoulder as we could stand, clapping our hands. Folby sat down and pressed his forehead to the seat in front of him. Lindy brushed strands of hair out of her face, leaving disappearing white trails in her reddened cheeks. I tried to put it into words, because I always try to put it into words. The jaded bellies and beards began to move around us, their voices harshly from chanting "let's go" guy one "let's go" guy two, and somewhere between those strangers and friends I found myself laughing, and crying, and not able to bend my knees to sit down. When the show was finished we stood in a single-file line stretching out in three directions to meet him. I'd never seen him in person, or on television. I first discovered him when he was young and orange, backflipping off the top rope, his knee crashing into the mat every single time. He was on a tape of a tape. Of a tape. Between a man in a monkey suit humping the ring post and a death match in a grocery store. There, a man is hit in the face with a big fish. In the middle, where Kobashi was, there was wrestling. Wrestling. Folby didn't even have that. His discovery was online, through research, and file sharing programs. Moments and fights taken out of context. Two men. One orange, but sometimes black and blue. The other yellow. Or green. Lindy learned about him through Folby and I. She remembers King Kong Bundy and the Million Dollar Man. We opened our mouths, using our fingers, and it all just kind of fell out. Kenta Kobashi will be making his United States Ring of Honor debut at the 10/1 show in New York City. We thought about it afterward when the palms of our hands started to ache, wrapped around the little orange tickets we'd just paid twenty dollars for. You can get them at the fair. They let you ride the swings. I made jokes about obscure Japanese wrestlers to the guys in line before me and they laughed, and I was happy to have been given the opportunity to make these, once, though I can't remember what or who they were. I sit, often quietly, in the Virginias. Here I walked blocks at a time, passing the craziest and most beautiful people I've never known between flights of steps to subway trains. New York City. The Yankees, and Spike Lee, and 9-11. Woody Allen. Gershwin. A boy from the cultural Mecca of baptisms and big hills surrounded by the unbearable infinity of creative culture who couldn't possibly care less, because Oh My God Kenta Kobashi Dude I Know. Christopher Daniels walked by in his street clothes, a bag thrown over his shoulder. Curry Man, you know? Daniels. One of the best wrestlers I've ever seen. I've been a fan of his since I was seventeen. I got my picture taken with him. I can't remember what I did or said, though, because my lasting memory is of Peter Holby, my friend Folby, using hand signals to show he's "in cahoots." I've talked to him about his life. There has been a lot of pain. He has trouble sleeping. He wants things to be better and it fucking destroys him because he can't figure out how to make it so. And as he walked away from Daniels, firmly in cahoots, his head angled down and his smile reached from ear to ear. This is what they do, when you know. The first match of the night featured "Classic" Colt Cabana. He is as serious as his name suggests. He wears a headband, rocks out to Barry Manilow on his way to the ring, and bounces out of the corner like Daffy Duck to make us laugh. He is, as he proclaims, a "goofy ass cracker." Lindy, at just over five feet, sat just below the backs of heads and laughed at Cabana's grimaces of pain, because they were funny. Fake. It was her first live wrestling match, and the first she'd seen in years. A guy named "Claudio" wrestled in pleated pants. It was all so ridiculous. When you don't know the intent, wrestling is like this. Ridiculous. Fake. Goofy, ass, and crackers. She sat and smiled, enjoying herself enough. Three hours later, as chops sliced across Samoa Joe's chest to shock buzzed sprays of sweat and flesh into the air like a bullet ripping water, Lindy stood on her chair shouting "END HIM" in Japanese to Kobashi. This is what they do, when you know. I have been here since the dawn of time. It feels like it. I became desensitized to the image of a man's face torn and covered in blood before I entered Kindergarten. The "crimson mask," they call it. It happens over a dog collar. It happens because of a sombrero. A folding chair or a tennis racket. A roll of quarters tucked in the fist. A small sharp edge in the wrist tape quickly jerked across the forehead to create the illusion of the most dire of circumstance. It is true, but false. Important, but pointless. The mask of death smushed across Ricky Morton's face as Ric Flair pushed his face into concrete made me shout out and cry as a child. "Stop it, stop it!" I'd scream, if I were there, or if I were at home, Indian-style in front of the television. I noticed that Ric Flair sure did bleed a lot. In the same place. And I grew. I learned about the tape and the jerk. The pageantry and the spectacle. I gave it the same suspension of disbelief given to "Why does he run back at the guy when he's thrown into the ropes" and "Why won't the referee turn around?" I learned to appreciate why it was there more than what was happening. The love of HE IS BLEEDING was replaced by I LOVE HIM, which was replaced by I LOVE WATCHING HIM BLADE. That's what they call it. The child turns into the boy turns into the jaded fan. He still loves it, but as a business more than a sport. He follows the news online. He learns the wrestlers' real names, joins their buddy lists on Myspace, and complains on opinion boards about how the "E" isn't "pushing" whoever whyever. His favorites become the heels, the bad guys, because they carry the match and tell the story of comeback and inevitable victory for the good guys. Hyper-irony. Belief in his own disbelief. About ten minutes into the match (the mean average I found between the 20 seconds it seemed like and the hours and hours it must have been) there grew a red handprint on Samoa Joe's chest. Minutes later it started to turn brown, then purple. It was bruising. Things started to move. To fly off. To seep, and to stain. A man was standing before Joe and lashing him with open-hands that would break my ribs or kill my dog, repeatedly, without restraint. Samoa Joe tightened his arms to his sides. He grimaced. He sucked in breaths. Then his back straightened. His teeth clenched. His eyes squinted. In Kenta Kobashi's chest was burned that same handprint. Reciprocation through anger, partially pride, totally respect. Screams, a spray of sweat and blood, burdened footsteps on a fragile canvas to stay upright. The men and women around me began to rise from their seats. It was shaking inside of me. We had been there chanting "KOBASHI, KOBASHI" together, cheering the exchanges and ooohing the slaps to the face. Stimulus and response. We were seven-hundred in a building meant for five, and though we had come from basically the same reasons we were clearly ourselves. A man in a Green Lantern baseball jersey keeping score at ringside. A guy holding the Red Sox hat that had been shot with a snot rocket as we chanted "FUCK THE RED SOX" the match before. Wrestlers, in the balcony, watching the matches. Me, with a big forehead, thinking back to that dawn of time when George Hackenschmidt carried around a title before my Great-grandfather. I know more about him than my Great-grandfather did. I have studied his life, his name, his legacy. I've done it for everyone. Every single one. There was a flash back to the men who'd inspired Hackenschmidt mixed and motivating every man and woman who came after, from legends to failures to the kid with one leg and the blind guy and the wrestling midget clown. They were a collective lump in the side of my brain saying "This is wrestling, and you love it." The broken necks and the fuck ups, the men who would give it all and the titty models there to be in Playboy. They are one. They are it, and they are this. I couldn't speak. I spoke, but I couldn't speak. It was "yes." It was yes burning through a thousand fucking miles of fire. I began to shake. I didn't know what to do. They do this to me when I know, but I have always known. There has always been a struggle to say "I am me" and "I love wrestling" together with pride, not because of the two themselves but because of what surrounds them. I have and will never defend wrestling's ignorance. There are bad writers, retarded performers in story and practice, and thousands of fans who crowd arenas to chant "WHAT" between sentences they haven't even listened to. They are as a whole the most asinine group of human repugnance collected in our world without the motivation of fear. I have always detested "the wrestling fan," be he smart or dumb, from that first guy at the Greensboro Coliseum who spilled beer on me when I was four to the board smark sitting across from me at dinner, pointing at my "I Love My Wiener" shirt and saying HEY THIS GUY LIKES HIS WIENER without any educational point of view or sense of irony. I do love my wiener. He's almost a year old now. I named him Koji Kanemoto. Because though I hate them I am them, purely and openly, without regret. These men who have outlined my memories began to stand around me. Seven-hundred in a five. People with lives and histories and spirits. Souls. And for this moment, crowded arm-to-arm in the lobby of a New York Hotel they became the most perfect and clearly illustrated extension of me and my heart that I have ever known. Every single person. We were all me. Kobashi and Joe chopped each other as hard as they could, back and forth, the sounds of flesh on blood and hearts pounding, and we gave them of ourselves, because they have given us ourselves. They stopped to put their hands on each of our shoulders and say, "I know, that's why I do this." Unspoken and barely understood. But more powerful than the foundation holding up the building we filled. Kenta Kobashi versus Samoa Joe, the one-time attraction match for an independently funded and run Northeastern wrestling promotion who have never filled the Superdome or the Egg, helped me know in one of these moments in my life of appreciation, respect, and pure, unadulterated love. Two guys in their underwear pretending to hit each other has done it again, like it has always found a way to do from time to time, since the dawn. I've sat through it all. Every moment of it, from before I was born until long after the day I die. "You did it right," I wanted to say. "You're inside of us all." Joe was lifted and dropped on his head. He smiled at me and said, "Yeah, I know." I patted him on the kickpad when he came flying into the front row. I like to think that's when we had our moment, even if he was me and his foot, and he was in pain on the ground. When Kobashi came to retrieve him from the front row, I backed up and sat down. I didn't pat him anywhere. I didn't realize I'd done it until Folby told me about it in the triple-file line. I wasn't sure why I hadn't. I was enjoying myself, and when the wrestler you like is standing in front of you you try to high-five him or at least pat him on the shoulder, to show him that you're in cahoots. I was almost afraid. Reverent? Oh My God Kenta Kobashi Dude I Know. Each word starting with a capital letter. The little orange ticket turned into diamond between my fingers. The ticket bought you an 8 x 10 and an autograph. We stood, and waited. Daniels walked by, aligned with Folby. Claudio walked by. The others. Before I could quip that Jay Lethal's submission moves are "more like Gay Lethal" he was there, Kobashi, taking photographs for Japanese photographers and sitting, a towel wrapped around his neck, for us. That's the thing about professional wrestling. In boxing, the boxers compete for the title for themselves. They train to win bouts to make money. In mixed-martial arts, the MMA fighters fight it out as hard as they can for pride, victory, respect. Money, even. And though wrestlers obviously make money, what they do is not technically a REAL sport. People say that it's a bad thing. The worst thing you can do. Shitty wrestlers on made-for-TV specials sneer and say YOU THINK WRESTLING IS FAKE, GET IN THE RING AND I'LL SHOW YOU HOW FAKE IT IS. But it is, still. The wrestlers don't compete with each other legitimately for titles for themselves. They make their money whether they win or lose. Their pride, victory, and respect amongst themselves is earned on paper before the show. Do you know what the beautiful thing is? They aren't doing it for themselves. They're doing it for us. Folby met Kobashi first and got his 8 x 10 signed. I don't remember it because I was handing off my ticket and picking out which picture I wanted. I picked the one of Kobashi peeking out from beneath a bathrobe. It makes sense, I promise. I remember looking at the back of Peter's red shirt and seeing his feet as the walked a semicircle away from Kobashi to alongside the line, to wait for us. I handed my 8 x 10 to Kenta Kobashi. He looked up at me and smiled. "Thank you, seriously, for everything." It's all I said to him. He shook my hand and signed my picture. I stood there staring at his elbow, for some reason. "Kobashi-San," Lindy started, because she is trying to be Japanese. He said "ai" softly, because everyone can say Kobashi-San. Mr. Miagi could've called him Kobashi-San in 1985. But what happened next is one of the most marvelous things I will remember. She continued in Japanese, slow but correct, to tell him that because of watching him wrestle, she likes wrestling. She told him that I thought he was the best in the world. Did I think he was the best in the world? Not before the show. I thought he was ONE of the best. It's that argument everyone who likes wrestling and uses a computer eventually gets into. What makes a wrestler "good?" "Good" is subjective. Wrestling is a three-ring circus! If you don't like the clowns you can stay for the elephants! Hooray! Ric Flair is better than Hulk Hogan because of his "workrate." No way, Hulk Hogan is better than Ric Flair because he made more money! My favorite wrestler is Jumbo Tsuruta. My favorite wrestler is John Cena. The seven-hundred in five. Different spirits, different shirts, on and on. Did I think he was the best in the world then? No. Because he was the world, then. Kenta Kobashi, the man who has thrown lariats with his arm torn in shambles and moonsaulted even though his knee was just going to hit and crack again, ducked his head a little, said "arigato," and blushed. This God of Puroresu. This unstoppable force of strength and spirit. He blushed, because a girl from Ohio figured out how to tell him she loved him in the way he's supposed to be loved in his own language. Kobashi's rep complimented her on her Very Good Japanese, and we walked away. The guy behind us picked out his 8 x 10 and handed it to Kobashi but I don't know who he was and I don't know which picture he picked, because I didn't look back. Because how could I? As we walked down a crowded New York City street in the middle of that Saturday night I thought about Joe. He didn't come down like the others. He didn't sign autographs like Kobashi and he didn't stand in the lobby with James Gibson, or Jay Lethal, or Claudio. He sat in a folding chair, upstairs. I didn't meet him. I didn't say anything to him. I didn't get to see the purple streaks scarred into his breast by Kobashi's hand. I don't know if he heard my voice during the "JOE JOE JOE" chants or felt my hand patting him on the kickpad. This is what they do, when you know. I thought about Joe for the rest of that night as we pushed our way through the lobby, and into the street, and beyond New York City. |
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