Kayfabe, hallways, and liminal spaces
Note: I’m slowly editing and adapting blog posts I’ve written elsewhere to this new blog, so it’s going to be things that aren’t necessarily timely. I hope you’ll enjoy them anyway!
This piece was originally published elsewhere on August 14th, 2017, shortly after the G1 Climax 27 Finals.
You know the concept of a liminal space? It’s like the physical version of a place between asleep and awake, a transitional place that is not meant to be occupied for long periods of time, or a place where your brain feels a little disoriented; stuff just feels off. Some good examples are playgrounds at night, lonely stretches of highway, hotel corridors, rest areas, schools during the summer. It’s a place that feels like maybe the fabric of reality is a little thinner than normal.
A thing that’s cool about wrestling is that kayfabe (when done well) is a kind of liminal space, or an uncanny valley. The whole thing is that you’re supposed to wonder what’s real, and how real it is. Even the pain lives in a liminal space: one of the reasons Kazuchika Okada is so good is his incredible ability to sell. Every fuckin’ time I see him get hurt, I believe it. And of course he’s not as hurt as he’s portraying, but he is hurt, because getting dropped on your neck hurts no matter how safely it’s done. So even when you understand what kayfabe is, your brain can’t help but ask “but what percentage of this is real?” You have to know pain so intimately to make it that real for people watching.
One of the things that has always made the Golden Lovers so compelling is that they are really good at hacking apart and gleefully stepping all over the line between real and kayfabe. As with pretty much everything they do, they have done The Most with their story. They made that disorienting liminal space into a whole little universe. (If you’re not familiar with the Golden☆Lovers, see this Twitter thread I did for a brief summary of the tale of Kenny Omega and Kota Ibushi; the greatest wrestling love story [n]ever told. Or you can see this post for a very long summary of it.)
So… they literally haven’t been seen in the same place for years, but we know they talk, but do they really? Is it dedication to kayfabe or is it that they actually don’t hang out anymore? When they were together as a tag team, they were also together all the time outside of work. So clearly they were friends at least, but kayfabe lovers, and them being together all the time also fed that sense of… but is it fake, you guys? Is it?
And the nature of, like, gays in public and also the murkiness that can exist in interpersonal relationships just made it even worse. Social media is another kayfabe liminal space, and unsurprisingly, Kenny is The Most on social media too–but public personalities have varying levels of how personal their social media is, or how professional, so you don’t really know for sure, as much as dudebros on the internet claim to know all the time with certainty what is a work and what is a shoot.
On top of all that, these assholes have this dynamic (again, who knows what percentage of it is genuine) of bringing out the best-worst in each other; both of them always noting that they’d probably die or end their careers if they ever faced each other again. Their 2012 match at Budokan was at the time considered by many to be the best match of all time. But Kenny also to this day says that match contained the worst bump he ever took, and Kota was permanently banned from Budokan because of an infamous moonsault off a balcony.
So that dynamic, of simultaneously bringing out the best and worst in one another, could easily apply to Doing The Most, too. It’s meta as hell.
That’s why it’s really clever and on-brand for them that this Tense Encounter happened not in the ring, not in an interview or something, but in Kayfabe Twilight; in that space between dream and awake. Not even in the backstage interview, which is kayfabe, but just backstage. A hallway is a very good example of a liminal space; it’s a transitional space not meant to be inhabited or owned. So what better place and time for a Golden Lovers reunion than somewhere with unknown kayfabe value? Like with watching Okada, I know intellectually that this is agreed-upon, and probably planned to the tiniest detail, ’cause they seem like that type of Extra. But it’s like I said above: even when you understand what kayfabe is, your brain can’t help but ask “but what percentage of this is real?”
And like I said above: you have to know pain so intimately to make it that real for people watching.
