Struggle Summer 3: Last night a joshi saved my life

 This is normally the part where the entire blog is spent complaining about how terrible my summer was but given that 2020 made EVERYONE'S summer terrible, I'll keep it short. Between Co-Vid19 making it damn near impossible to go anywhere, the isolation that comes with this and politics literally making people devolve (or think that they're political analysts), it is very hard to deal with everything this year is giving us.

I guess this is the part where I can complain about myself. How am I handling this whole ordeal? Honestly, not well. At first, I was fine, working from home in my underwear and making my own coffee. But about week three is when things began to sour. Wanting to get out of the house but realizing that would be hard with everything closed or not able to go see friends began to wear on me. I tried to keep positive, posting weekly updates on facebook, while telling everyone that I couldn't wait to see them again. I became paranoid, thinking all my efforts to cheers others up did nothing but annoy people. This was probably made worse from trying to gain attention (or sympathy) on twitter, probably the LAST  place one should try to crave attention from and that didn't even work. YEESH!

Falling deeper and deeper into depression, I submerged myself into my video games, in particular "Fire Pro Wrestling Returns". I had the game for a couple of years but I had began unlocking secrets of the game. The interest in the game probably stemmed from a successor Fire Pro wrestling game being released over the past couple of years but having to settle, not having a PS4 to play it on because I'm not being made of money. The game renewed my interest in wrestling, other than AEW, which led to me watching actual matches. Watching larger than life matches helped me escape from the depression and craziness of the outside, even for just a little bit. The wrestling discovery that captivated me the most came from the most unexpected place, Japan.

I've known about wrestling in Japan and was impressed with it from the get go but this year, it was an escape compared to wrestling in U.S., well, at least compared to WWE. Japanese wrestling or Puroresu just feels like the wrestlers are putting their all not only into their wrestling but also into the storylines they are given and the identities that they play as they wrestle. 

(Legendary wrestler Tiger Mask. He's been portrayed by four wrestlers over the years)

Not one organization is doing it better than anyone else but from a twitter stance, all the attention is on Stardom, a female wrestling organization. Stardom seems to frontrunner in Japanese women's wrestling (or Joshi) and has developed quite the following in the states. I've watched some matches and yeah, I am very impressed with these women, most of looking like they weight as much as my foot can pull off what they can with so much heart. Not to take away from U.S. wrestling which, besides one particular organization, seems to improved greatly and should not be ignored, it's just that in these times, it was the Japanese wrestling that had intrigued me the most. 

(Stardom roster, not recent but most these wrestlers are still there)

Now, does it inspire me to go into wrestling? No, I'm getting too old to attempt anything like remotely this athletic. But watching so many matches helps me appreciate what these athletes do, putting their bodies on the line for our entertainment. It helped me escape everything going on. If I felt lonely or crushed, I just turned to these athletes who entertained me and millions during a pandemic to forget about the worlds problems, even if only for a little bit.

What? You come up with a better ending.

In memory of Hana Kimura 1997-2020