It’s somewhat well-known that I have a soft spot in my heart for wrestling. All the way back when I was a kid, I remember my dad (and his dad, for that matter) watching wrestling on Saturday and/or Sunday mornings, so to me there’s nothing abnormal about professional wrestling. I’ve watched it my entire life and look how normal I’ve turned out. Er, on second thought……..Anyway – I had read about Kaiju Monster Wrestling in The Boston Globe on Friday afternoon and just knew that I must attend this. Seriously – a combination of characters based on old Japenese horror movies, costumes, and wrestling? A tag-team match between Los Plantanos – two “brothers” dressed as the fruit Plantains – vs. the Hell Monkey and Super-Minion?? A wrestler named “Kung-Fu Chicken Noodle, dressed as can of Chicken Noodle Soup with a chopping knife??
Are you serious? You just cannot turn down an opportunity like that. So my friend Brian and I set out on our little journey to the College of Mass Art gymnasium down the street from Northeastern University on Huntington Avenue, figuring we’d have no problem getting in. Boy, were we wrong. There were at least 1500 people in line, waiting to get in, and big sign that said “SOLD OUT.” Now, most people would have simply walked away, but as Cypress Hill once said “we ain’t goin’ out like that.” So I did a little scouting and much to my pleasure found a secret door that had been unlocked. Let’s be real here, you can’t expect tight security at an art college gym, right? In we go. So we’re walking down hallways, through workshops, down and up stairwells, twisting and turning, when finally – HARK! – we hear loud music (Lita Ford, to be precise) and we know we’re close to the promised land. We turn a corner, and in all it’s majesty is a packed gym, full of people 6-8 years younger than us. We have reached the peak of the mountain. We ended up in some hallway with a bird’s eye view of the gym, through a window that had no glass! Like those two old dudes on the Muppets up in the balcony! We were SET!
As if the wrestling weren’t enough, a band actually opened up the show, playing in the ring. Dressed up in high school wrestling outfits. It was surreal and hilarious. The lead singer, while singing, went into the crowd and performed wrestling manuvers on unsuspecting crowd members. He climbed on top of the light stands. He rang the wrestling bell. He was hilarious.
After a half hour or so of that, the wrestling began. They brought in a whole lot of fake city buildings made out of cardboard and set up a “city” in the ring. What looked like a giant strawberry of some kind came into the ring and began destroying everything, and crowd was passionately booing him, until the “American Beetle” rushed in, waving an American flag and kicking ass! Suddenly, out of nowhere, a referee bursts out of one of the “city buildings” to bring calm to the match. The crowd was going postively insane. I can’t even describe how excellent this was. And as soon as we picked up our jaws off the floor after that first match, a Mass Art security guard burst into our secret perch and kicked us out of the building. Oh well. We got our, uh, money’s worth! (Final tally – $0). It was surreal and amazing. Next time, we’re buying tickets beforehand!