[Content Warning for blood and descriptions of violence.]
It’s Nov. 9, 2019, and I’m watching a man’s psyche unravel.
It’s not clean; in fact, it’s about as messy as it can be. I’ve only been back into wrestling for two months at this point, inexplicably pulled back in 20 years after I stopped watching altogether. I can’t look away from the screen. An Unsanctioned, Lights Out Deathmatch. It’s less of a wrestling match and more like a horror movie, something plodding and deliberate. This is my first Pay Per View I’ve ever purchased.
When I was a 12-year-old kid (who watched Monday Night Raw with my door shut so my mom wouldn’t hear me awake past my bedtime) I would go on the nascent internet and look up PPV results, crossing my fingers that I’d like the outcome I’d read. It was the only way I could get the information. I’d watch Stone Cold Steve Austin drink beer, hold up his middle fingers, and literally and figuratively raise hell. I had no idea how that would actually shape me, the thread I’d follow. I’m realizing as I watch Jon Moxley, bleeding and sweating and telling me it’s time for some “fucking garbage wrestling,” that I think this disaster of a man has made me realize I’m trans. The swagger, the snarl, the confidence. I want to be that. It’s like looking at your id made manifest. It feels so right, it hurts.
Two months ago, I didn’t know who Kenny Omega or Jon Moxley were. Tonight, I’m having epiphanies as my hands cover my mouth and I watch a bloody car crash. Jon Moxley isn’t the only man in the match tonight, though. His dance partner this evening, the aforementioned Kenny Omega, is the one who’s falling apart at the seams. I’ve heard Kenny is a wrestling legend; he’s even been called the god of professional wrestling in some pretty big circles. Tonight though, he’s not a god or a legend; he’s something else.
Kenny’s been a mess for a while now — it’s like he’s lost his spark after leaving his previous wrestling home in Japan. He wanted to change the world. He started a new wrestling promotion with his friends. But then Kenny made the mistake of reminding Mox they had unfinished business: a match Mox pulled out of due to injury. So Kenny’s been menaced by Mox for months, a target in the crosshairs of someone determined enough and pissed off enough to go directly to the top of the food chain to prove a point. It almost seems like he’s being punished. It also seems like a kind of flirting. But I’m not here to watch Kenny tonight. My attention is focused on Mox. Or it is until Kenny’s facade is shattered and I see the sneering, half-feral grin twisted into his lips. Is this The Cleaner, Kenny’s villainous alter ego? I’m not sure what or who that is at this point.
Over the next six months, I will become acutely familiar.
Kenny Omega has that same manic smile on his face as he pulls a large shard of glass out of a delicate looking cloth bag; Mox, someone known for his expertise in all things bloody and violent, is on his hands and knees, exhausted. Kenny grabs him by his hair, yanks him back and threatens to dig the glass into his eye for a brief, terrifying moment. It’s a struggle between them, and Kenny, with that smirk still twisted onto his face, grabs Mox’s hand and decides to slice at the webbing of his fingers instead. Take what you can get, inflict as much pain as you can.
The glass isn’t just a weapon, it’s the weapon. It’s the knife you were stabbed with, it’s the gun that was used to murder Batman’s parents. It’s poetic justice, and maybe most importantly, it’s Kenny Omega’s shattered potential. Moxley had put him through a glass table months ago, on the inaugural episode of AEW Dynamite. Kenny had seemingly limped back to the scene of the crime and collected the remains; gleefully holding onto them for a moment just like this. The bag of glass still sits harmlessly at the side of the ring for a few moments. Kenny takes it again, stomps on it a few times and then pours the glass onto the mat. It twinkles maliciously in the bright lights, and I can hear it clink together as it falls. It makes me cringe. It’s revenge for six months of bloody and relentless attacks, but like most revenge, it doesn’t feel good. It just feels necessary. This isn’t the way a hero wins. Kenny Omega is attempting to beat a masochist at his own game. He’s unspooling, and I can’t stop watching, even as Mox crawls through the glass and eventually Kenny pours the shards into his mouth. A violent kiss. It’s one of the most romantic things i’ve ever seen. Because this is a deathmatch and it’s professional wrestling and it’s romantic, violent, bloody, joyful, horrifying, cathartic and queer.
It’s that last one that buzzes in my chest as I watch. Sharing pain can be just as intimate as sharing a kiss. Kenny’s close and desperately personal connection to his former tag team partner Kota Ibushi fuels so much of what he does. Kenny Omega is bi, and I’ve never seen a man who’s portrayed as queer be allowed to be so broken.
Mox’s past is also filled with emotionally intimate relationships with other men. I know this very well. He’s desperately fighting demons every time he takes a swing at someone or something. Halfway through the match, it becomes clear that Mox thinks he can get rid of his ghosts if he just beats Kenny.
Too bad it’s never that easy.
Somewhere along the way, Mox brought a screwdriver into the ring. Another tool of destruction. It’s stuck in the turnbuckle, but he’s spilled out of the ring and onto the entrance ramp. His mouth is bloody, but he’s still determined. He just needs a respite.
He’s so tired.
Kenny finds the screwdriver and unearths it from its home. He looks like a kid who’s found a piece of candy. He’s delighted. The Kenny Omega that was is gone — this is someone different. He tucks it in his hand, bloody wrist tape falling away, ragged and broken — and stalks Mox as he tries to escape. Tries to get a moment to just breathe. The light from the entranceway casts Kenny in an eerie red glow. It’s shot less like a wrestling match than it is a film as Kenny’s steps drag on.
Watching this match changes the way I watch every match after it.
Things escalate to a dizzying degree after this.
Kenny carves the tip of the screwdriver across Mox’s forehead when he catches him. He was already bleeding. What’s a little bit more?
I don’t know how this is going to end, but “not well” is a phrase that comes to mind. Things move so fast after this. There is a tangled nest of barbed wire, the concerned faces of friends as Kenny begs the closest people to him to bring him what he needs. Because he does need this. He needs it more than air. He needs to know he’s the best, to know he didn’t leave everything behind for nothing. I see the cracks in Kenny tonight, but I don’t feel them until much, much later.
The only time my eyes dart away from the screen is when both men are shivering, caught in that same mess of barbs. They are pulled out, but they don’t stop. They are bloody and tired, and somehow they fight back to the ring. Mox tosses Kenny inside, and then he goes searching again, under the ring, exhausted but still snarling. He finds what he was looking for, a knife, and cuts the ties that hold the mat onto the simple pine boards underneath. He peels it all away, the canvas, the padding underneath. I’ve never seen the guts of a wrestling ring before, and something about how the match has unraveled sets me on edge. This doesn’t feel like this is supposed to be happening. Any artifice has fallen away. Mox wants to prove a point, and he’s using Kenny to do it.
Kenny needs to prove a point too, but it’s not to everyone watching. It’s to himself.
Kenny struggles to stand as Mox grabs him. He fights out of it and tosses Mox behind him. The broadness of his back and shoulders meets the wood in impact, and the sound it makes is awful.
I’m hunched forward while I watch, nervous, excited, enthralled. The end is close, and I still don’t know which way it will go. The tension feels like electricity. I want Mox to win. Kenny’s laid him out, but he cannot get the count of 3. He looks to the top rope, and then he climbs. After bathing in so much darkness, he takes a move from his former partner, the light of his life whom he walked away from to come here. He tries the Phoenix Splash, but he crashes and burns. Mox moves, and he hits the wood with a sickening thud. He scrambles to capitalize, and he does.
1, 2, 3
It’s over.
It’s over…
Mox collapses on the canvas he ripped up.
After a few moments, he gets to his feet, but there is no belt to grab, there is nothing to raise above his head as he stumbles back into the corner. This was for pride, for closure, for burying demons. Fighting the best in the world and winning. He stares down the camera and smiles. After everything he’s done and everything he’s been through. I see him, still high on adrenaline myself, climb the turnbuckle and raise two middle fingers to the sky. It’s so familiar, and it all snaps into place.
Kenny is still lying in a heap on the other side of the ring. This loss will affect him for months to come. It will degrade his sense of self. I’ll learn more about Kenny Omega soon. His past, his broken heart, The Cleaner and the Bullet Club. The way he balances softness with the jagged edges inside him, wraps his trauma up in a leather jacket and adorns it with aviators. Kenny is so many things and I don’t see it now, but he’s going to become very important to me.
I can’t sleep after I finally turn the TV off. It’s almost midnight, and some phantom feeling is stuck inside of me. I wonder if I’ll ever see something like that again. If that’s really the end of it or if Mox and Kenny are somehow destined to do this for a long time. The answer comes a year later, when both men cross paths again. Mox, as champion, has carried the company on his back through one of the toughest times I can ever remember. He’s proud, honorable, takes on all comers and beats them handily.
Kenny…
His past has eaten him alive.
He’s a hollowed-out shell. His year of not living up to expectations has ground him down. He’s handed someone else the keys to his life and alienated the people closest to him. He steals the championship from Mox like a coward and for weeks after, taunts him relentlessly. He’s wearing his aviators again, but it’s so obvious no one is home behind them.
He makes the challenge this time.
An exploding barbed wire deathmatch.
It’s happening Sunday, and I have no idea what that even looks like.
I’m terrified, thrilled and excited. But, like Kenny and Mox… I’m excited to let that phantom feeling I’ve been holding inside me go free.
Charlie Davis is the world’s premier Shatterstarologist, writer and co-host of The Match Club.
