Harmonopoly 25: On Wrestling, Realness, and Crying for Bull Nakano
I am still not over it, you guys
If you are a regular reader of this newsletter, you know two things about me: I love wrestling, and I cry a lot. Like, a lot. Over the course of the last year, I have gone from being someone who never cries to being someone who bursts into tears at tweets about adoptable dogs. My therapist has assured me that this is normal for someone who is Going Through It like I am, and that I shouldn’t worry too much. So now I am just feeling stuff, all the time, whether I like it or not. And since I am not used to feeling things quite like this, I feel them INTENSELY. Thus, the tears.
One of the things I really love about wrestling is that it gives me a place to express my melodramatic weepy feelings in a healthy way. That’s because wrestling is not only fake: it’s the kind of overblown ultra-fakiness that becomes earnest and trustworthy through its own over-the-top absurdity. Lucha Underground was a show that had a LOT of problems, but it is also a show where there was a feud based on whether it was OK to believe that dragons are real. The heel in that feud did not believe in dragons, and he was exasperated that everyone in the Lucha Underground audience seemed to disagree with his stance. The babyface was, of course, a dragon. A dragon who was best friends with a spaceship. Both of these characters believed in themselves, and became heroes, and most importantly did not become real people; they remained dragons and spaceships, true to their nature, true to their fans.
Not everyone loves this kind of thing in wrestling. Some people think wrestling should be as realistic as possible, fun be damned, so we can maintain kayfabe without too much effort. I don’t agree with that at all! Of course it’s more fun if you pretend wrestling is real, but dragging verisimilitude and “protecting the business” into it means we have to root against the dragons in our midst, because there is no way to explain and include them in a reality-based setting. It takes wrestling out of our guts and puts it in our brains, and that’s not wrestling’s natural habitat. The joy of a mutual game of play-pretend isn’t something I find easy to explain to people who don’t watch wrestling; in one round of edits on my Catapult essay, I had to explain to my long-suffering editor that Mil Muertes only came back to life on the show, not in real life (as far as I know, anyway. Feel free to confirm otherwise). But if you love wrestling, you know what I’m talking about. I hope.
This is a long-winded way to say that when I go to wrestling shows, I give myself permission to feel my feelings and express them how I need to. It’s safe to cheer and scream and cry and invest in wrestling because it is a story, built to provoke those reactions in me. I also have very little choice in the matter. It happens whether I am ready for it or not; even though I love Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn, I was still unprepared for how elated I was to actually see them wrestle in front of me, and how sad I was to see them lose. I’ve wept with joy to see Charlie Morgan finally win the Pro Wrestling EVE championship after a bitter feud with Sammi Jayne, and I’ve shouted encouragement to my heroes throughout Mercedes Martinez’s reign of terror in RISE. I am so bought into these stories that it doesn’t matter if I know they’re fake: when I watch wrestling, it’s real to me.
All of this is to say that I did not know how I would react to meeting one of my heroes, Bull Nakano. Bull retired from wrestling decades back due to injuries, and she rarely makes trips to North America. I had long ago resigned myself to the possibility I might never meet her, much less see her in a wrestling ring. I may as well spoil the ending of this newsletter for you now: this is the second time I have left Ohio to meet Bull Nakano, and it is the second time I have failed to do so. (This story has a happy ending. Stick with me here.)
A few weeks ago I went to Toronto for The Summit, an independent women’s wrestling supershow. Bull was scheduled to be there, and so was I, but a confused Lyft driver delivered me to the venue too late for the meet and greet. I ended up jogging to my ringside seat minutes before the opening bell, dodging the camera people who were counting down the start of the livestream.
As I settled into my seat, I tried to stifle my sadness that I once again was not going to meet Bull. I was disappointed, sure, but I tried to console myself by telling myself that maybe it was for the best I did not manage to make it to the meet and greet. After all, there was no way Bull could have ever lived up to my mental picture of her. In my head, she’s a hero. She’s a living legend. She’s larger than life, bigger than anything a single person could ever embody. There’s no way paying $50 and getting an awkward selfie with the woman who played her could have lived up to what was in my head, even if she was wearing the right facepaint.
So I resolved to enjoy the show- and y’all, it was a great show! Seeing feral demon shard Rosemary win a belt at SMASH wrestling was an item on my bucket list, and I’ll admit I shed a tear when she stood with the belt and heard us all cheer for her. It was just awesome match after awesome match, and I let myself get swept away. The excitement in the crowd hit a fever pitch when Big Swole and Zoe Lucas took to the ring to fight over the long-contested Phoenix of RISE championship. They had an astounding contest, physical and dramatic, and we all cheered when Big Swole stood victorious over cheating heel Zoe.
But then the damnedest thing happened. Zoe Lucas would not hand her championship belt over to the refs. She clung to it, weeping, insisting that Big Swole wasn’t worthy of it. She swore that she’d never let go of it, that there was NOBODY ON EARTH that could take it from her--
And listen, if I’d hadn’t been absorbed by the story unfolding before me-- if I’d insisted that it all had to be realistic, if I’d been analyzing it as a narrative —I would have seen it coming. As soon as Zoe started screaming about how not a single person in that whole building could possibly take the belt from her, I should have known.
But then Bull Nakano’s theme hit.
I’m pretty sure that if you watch the VOD of the match, you can hear me scream when I realized what was going to happen. I jumped to my feet, craned my head towards the entrance, and choked back tears as Bull Nakano herself walked down the stairs. It’s been over twenty years since she last wrestled, but she still walks into a crowd like a regal God. She twirled a nunchuck in one hand as she strode towards Zoe, a faint smile on her face. I assume she did not react to my scream because she is used to people screaming at her- stadiums full, once upon a time. But I hope she heard me, and I hope she knew how much it meant to me to see her in that ring. I cried with happiness while she smacked Zoe around with her signature weapon, then handed Swole the belt she had earned. They stood in the ring together while the rest of the crowd appropriately cheered and applauded and I gasped and yelled through my own tears, unable to believe that I had seen the actual by-god Bull Nakano in a wrestling ring with my own two crying eyeballs.
The reason I want us all to agree that wrestling doesn’t have to be real is because, in real life, that moment didn’t happen. In real life, a former professional wrestler named Keiko Aoki agreed to appear at a show to support a new women’s wrestling company, and did a fun if fairly predictable run-in to cap off the first half of the show. I paid for my ticket so I got to see it happen. That’s all. It isn’t special and it isn’t even particularly interesting. It’s nothing to cry over or feel excited about. It’s just the business.
But if we allow wrestling to be real in the way it needs to be-- the dragons and spaceships and zombies way --I got to see one of my heroes come back to life after years inert. I got to share the air she breathed, I got to cheer while she meted her vengeful violence on someone deserving, I got to see something I never thought I would ever see in my entire life. Bull Nakano came back from the dead, and I got to witness the miracle. That’s the magic that happens when wrestling is allowed to be fake in the ways that make it real.
In conclusion, wrestling is real because it’s fake, and that’s awesome. And Bull Nakano rules.