Final Battle 2010

Dear Wrestling,

I have a weird brain. It's really great at trivia, terrible at languages (and in love with them, which is a Thing) and can't recognize faces at all. Not even my own, usually.

You know I'm dedicated to Steenerico--not as a ship, as paragons of excellence. I've watched Final Battle at least 4-5 times. Today I read this and sobbed, a lot, and thought a lot about the match itself. I realized, once again, that there are huge gaps in it--weird pieces that I seem remember only as gifs, chunks missing, and a general sense of not quite knowing the whole thing.

My family joke about me having a goldfish memory: tell me a spoiler. I won't remember it by the time I see the movie. Tell me what I'm getting for my birthday. I'll remember when I open it, but not until. I've always thought of that part as a benefit, because it has never extended to anything very big.

I think my brain is doing me the accidental, magnificent favor of not remembering Final Battle 2010 so that I can experience it fresh over and over again.

Now it's on youtube, which is a blessing for us fans. For ages it was nearly unfindable (I wonder who could be behind that, they said through gritted teeth), even on torrent sites. (Which, look, if you won't even give me the option of paying for something...)

I think, though, that there's something else at play here. I think that as art, as the finale to the greatest wrestling story ever told, it feels...so heightened as to be hallucinatory. Like a fever dream. Especially watching it so far out of time, as I've done, it feels almost like something I've imagined or dreamt. It's so perfect, in so many ways, it can't be real, right?

We never get art that good, let alone by people that good. It just doesn't happen. Somebody writes a great song, and then makes Janis Joplin cry. Dude makes amazing paintings and sculptures, and cheats on every person who ever loves him. So on.

But these two...obviously they have flaws, but not the kind where they insist that I'm a defect. Not the kind where they abuse people. Not the fatal kind. (And please, you gods of wrestling, never make me eat these words.) Kevin cares intensely about his family, and animals, Sami is doing his damnedest to help people in Syria, and to get us to give a damn...they are good men.

And then there's the art. I won't--I can't--speak to its perfection, except to say that I genuinely, deeply believe that they told a perfect story. I truly believe it's the greatest story ever told in wrestling.

And I would give almost anything for them to see that.

Hug us, hold us tight,

Autumn