This past Saturday at the Forum in Los Angeles, Swerve Strickland and “Hangman” Adam Page tried to kill each other. These two men produced a violent, sadistic, visceral performance that few, if any, bouts in AEW history can match for emotional intensity. Everything about this shouldn’t have happened, but it needed to. The story built by these two immense talents demanded it, sparked weeks ago by a challenge from an evil and ambitious sonofabitch to our noble yet wayward hero. Defeated once already, Hangman now pursued a path of vengeance for intimate grievances no father or husband could idly abide. But as this match proved and the old proverb warns: when seeking revenge, dig two graves.
Before the bell rang, the tone was set. Swerve, accompanied by a Prince Nana & The Nanettes dance routine, entered the arena with arrogant apathy. He proceeded to do his usual “Whose house?” call-and-response routine, as if the peril of the moment meant nothing to him. Before he could finish, Hangman charged the ring blood-drunk, absent the stoic pageantry of his trademark cowboy entrance. In less than a minute, a blitz of offense that would have finished any other match left Swerve shell-shocked… But this match was Texas Death, and it all served merely as an overture for the violence to come.
From sickening bumps on concrete, with glass, on barbed wire, to the poetic and tragic conclusion with Hangman choked out by a chain, “hoisted by his own petard” as it were… Every single moment was earned, was executed to the highest level, and delivered in a way no other artistic medium can strive to achieve. And even though I may never watch it again, this match will live vividly and fully in my memory, for one reason.
Like the combatants themselves, I discovered a latent darkness within me I didn’t know – or perhaps had forgotten – ever existed.
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I was 17 the first time a work of art made me cry. Standing within arm’s reach of Raphael’s Portrait of Baldassare, the crown jewel of traveling treasures observed by my high school class at “Louvre Atlanta”, I quickly rubbed my eyes as the tears welled so none of my friends would notice and mock me. In the moment I didn’t understand why I had been overcome with emotion but as I stepped away from the portrait I carried its vivid image, seared into the forefront of my mind. I dwelled on it the remainder of the afternoon, on the bus ride home, and could barely eat dinner that evening. As the quiet of night swept away distractions, I was finally able to delve inward and discover what affected me so deeply.
I had been humbled.
I stood before a work by one of the great masters and realized no amount of practice, no cultivated skill, no hours of focus or bouts of inspiration would ever produce from me anything close to that perfection. Throughout my youth it became subconsciously obvious I would never be a big league slugger or badass fighter pilot, but the gradual dawning of such awareness made those realities acceptable to my adolescent mind. That afternoon in the gallery, however, the doorway to immortality had been slammed shut in my face for good. Never would I create something forever remembered. Once the last thought of my name has passed, everything I have ever done will be lost to time.
No, my hand will never hold a key to that door, a key forged of genius and shaped by sacrifice.
More so than genius, which is granted by chance or divinity, my despair was borne from the knowledge that I lack the capacity to sacrifice what such achievement requires.
If to be remembered forever is the ultimate prize of artistic endeavor, then such reward must come at great cost in the present. Early death from exhaustion claimed Raphael. For Rembrandt (who was deeply inspired by Baldassare) financial ruin constantly lurked around the corner. Neglected illness plagued Mozart at the height of his composition. The burdens of Fitzgerald could never be escaped inside a bottle.
In pro wrestling – a medium that deals in the foundational, most primitive forms of drama – immortality comes at a cost intrinsic and vital to the artwork itself. To be remembered is to leave a piece of yourself in the ring… an offering of flesh, blood, and sometimes future years laid before the Altar of Memory. To be remembered is to touch the hidden pieces of a person – the primitive parts – those grotesque, frightening aspects buried and shunned by a thousand generations. To be remembered demands violence, with an invitation for your audience to join in...
All pro wrestlers tangle in a ballet of violence; most with clumsy steps, telling shallow tales of morality, victory, and defeat that are easily forgotten. Few utilize (or are incapable of utilizing) the entirety of their stage, centered in a theater built upon acceptance of the Hobbesian basic condition of nature: perpetual conflict by way of competition, diffidence, and the need for glory. Rarest of all are those who take the stage as beloved generals, inspiring their audience to charge forward into hell with them.
What must a wrestler do, then, to become immortal? What can a wrestler do that almost all of their peers, all of their predecessors, all of us cheering along, cannot? For a packed arena in Los Angeles, for hundreds of thousands watching at home, and for myself most certainly, an answer was given by “Hangman” Adam Page and Swerve Strickland. To be remembered is to leave a piece of yourself in the ring, and for them, that piece was the notion of basic humanity.
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The accoutrements of this match, from a staple-gun which tacked a finger-painting on Swerve’s face to a rogue strand of barbed-wire fish-hooking Hangman, will serve its reputation gloriously. Their graceful precision with perilous moves – Swerve’s piledriver delivered onto the narrow railing; Hangman’s Orihara moonsault with payload of barbs and steel – ensure it will hold up under technical scrutiny. But two moments elevate these 30 minutes to a higher form of transformational art.
Just after the opening barrage, Hangman slithers under his keeling foe and drinks the blood dripping off his skull. It was savage, animalistic, and disgusting. Anyone civilized would recoil in terror at the sight of something this vile.
The cowboy sprang to his feet and spit another man’s blood, the very substance of life, into a triumphant mist above him. That mist of blood dissipated and gave way to a primal roar that washed over the arena. More than 12,000 people, with common lives of jobs and school and date nights and hospital visits and errands and chores and hobbies and all the other things we do to fill the days in modern civilization, let out a barbaric war-cry. With human blood running down his chin, Adam Page stood on a turnbuckle and leered out at masses who, if only for the briefest moment, would have joined him in the most heinous and unconscionable acts of punishment.
Like so many others, I felt untamed.
Then, not long after, the blood-loss and pain suffered by Strickland were subsumed by adrenaline and pure hatred. He stripped his opponent of a weapon and turned it on himself, laughing at its futility, as if to remind us the things we think will keep us safe are never guaranteed against true evil. That same crowd that was drunk on blood-lust a minute earlier now issued forth an anxious, shocked murmur.
Like so many others, I was afraid.
I was afraid of what was to come in the match, but even more so I was afraid of the realization that if one goes to inhumane, unfathomable, unforgivable lengths, it still may not be enough to conquer unabashed, self-assured, unrelenting evil. These two masters, in such a short time as amounts to the blink of an eye measured against a full span of life, awakened my dormant barbarism and in their next breath reminded me why it should stay buried. Now double the age of when I bowed to Raphael, late Saturday night I was humbled once more. But this was a new sensation stirring inside, one I understood immediately: this is who we had been long ago and who we must never become again.
Long after Hangman Page and Swerve Strickland retire from pro wrestling, they will carry the scars of their fight in the Forum.
Thankfully, so will I.