By Oliver Court.
Melt My Eyez, See Your Future has been in my ears for every step of my walks through the dead streets this week, back and forth from a brand new house that feels so empty, minus the cat. When I arrive, Mariposa asks me everything she wants to know. I do the same. I leave when we run out of questions for each other, so I make sure to always bring answers with me.
Saturday night, right at the door, as I took out my earphones, she asked me what I’ve been listening to. I told her that, on the way over, the bar ‘cold world, cold world, we don’t even got a North Face’ hit right as I walked past all six-foot-three of the girl I’m in love with, rocking her own North Face in the snowdrifts. I told her about how it had to mean something. Mariposa called me a cliché and asked me how that could be. So I told her everything.
There’s this youtube video, I said, a highlight reel tribute to the wrestler Katsuyori Shibata, set to Denzel Curry-Cosmic. The video runs through classic Shibata matches and moments, leading up to his challenge for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship against the golden boy, the ace of his generation, Kazuchika Okada. This is where I first encountered Denzel, with a track from his previous album UNLOCKED, and now his new one, Melt My Eyez, drops just a week before the five-year anniversary of Okada vs Shibata. It can’t all just mean nothing.
Mariposa, her palms perched on her chin and her feet up in the air, wants to know more.
Shibata was an underdog. A scrapper. A black sheep. Years ago, he was part of a promised golden generation of New Japan Pro Wrestling. One of three young superstars who would lead the company back to the top. But Shibata left NJPW to pursue an MMA career – an unsuccessful foray which led him back in the end to wrestling and New Japan. He would not begin at the pinnacle, though. He had to prove himself again, go out every night, pushing the form to its very limit, to win back his peers, his company.
My next question for Mariposa was obvious: is it worth destroying your body to create something beautiful? She asked if it was healthy to narrativise my life like this, whether I was just lionising something gruesome. We agreed to come to no conclusion. She rolled her head over, onto my stomach, and asked me to keep going.
I talked her through the whole history, from the Four Pillars to Misawa’s death and the fall of NOAH, the rise of New Japan, the Okada/Tanahashi series that ignited my passion for it all. Mariposa asked me so many questions; it’s been a long time since anyone has done that. We lay there together, ignoring the sunset, with Craig Charles spinning P-Funk at low volume on the side table, and Mariposa listening to all my useless knowledge. This was all, surely, exactly what I wanted my life to be like. My dreams of early Brighton spring come true. But we both felt it. How it wasn’t right. And I knew I could explain to her why, even if it meant going back five years, to the headbutt, and to Nell.
April 9th 2017. Sakura Genesis. Kazuchika Okada vs Katsuyori Shibata. The culmination of a five year climb back to the top – Shibata’s first title match since his return. He wrestled this match as he had fought every other on the journey, putting his body on the line, a human torpedo firing headlong into pain. And the pain tells the story. If you don’t feel it, nothing you do will resonate.
I started tearing up, while Mariposa cuddled up to me, her head on my shoulder, her hand against my chest. It wasn’t right.
Shibata withstood everything, but in the end, he couldn’t withstand himself. That headbutt. That visual. With the single stream of blood trickling down between his nose and cheek. His eyes gazing up, the Son of God kneeling before the Oracle of Siwa. Punished for going just one step too far. Was it worth it?
The whole match is a truly beautiful thing. It is the pinnacle of the Okada-era New Japan style. It is the pinnacle of everything. It’s all been downhill since. That morning, April 9th, 2017, I banged my hand on the mattress and yelled in delight. And Nell not only put up with it, she wanted to be part of it. She wanted to see me happy. That’s the last thing she said to me, boarding the train out of Cathays.
And now here was Mariposa. We wanted to know everything about each other: hobbies, ambitions, where we grew up and how we felt about it all, why we are the way we are. It should have felt like a beacon in the darkness. But Mariposa wasn’t her. She isn’t her. Mariposa wants something else, and so do I.
I told Mariposa that Shibata left every part of himself in that match. He carried his body out of Sumo Hall, and broke down the moment he got backstage. I told her about the dehydration, the subdural hematoma, the paralysis on the right side of his body. You can see it as he leaves the arena. You can see his body falter during the match, after the headbutt.
Nothing has topped it since. My life has never been better than it was then, that morning five years ago, when all the fear and dread meant nothing next to the magic of Shibata vs. Okada; when Nell’s tenderness was so close to me, before it all drifted away, off into real life.
I told Mariposa everything. She did the same. That should have been beautiful. But every time I think about what could have been, I’m back out in the cold, walking through storms and snowdrifts—the only place I don’t feel scared of the future. A place where I can lie awake in the dark and picture a world where that headbutt, beautiful as it was, never happened.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Oli Court lives in Brighton, UK. His fiction and essays have been featured in The Cabinet of Heed, The Curator, and Portmanteau, among other publications. He has written pro wrestling reviews and columns for Voices of Wrestling. Twitter: @AnotherOli
