“I propose to speak about fairy-stories, though I am aware that this is a rash adventure.”
So J.R.R. Tolkien opened his essay “On Fairy-Stories,” and calling wrestling a kind of fairy-story may be the very rashest of adventures, but I live for danger, so here we go. I could probably write more at length about the world of wrestling as a strange kind of secondary fantasy world, with its own rules of physics and morality, but imagining the professor’s horror at his ideas being applied to professional wrestling halts me in my tracks; so for now all I’m going to focus on is Tolkien’s sense of the eucatastrophe (literally a “good disaster”). He coined the term to describe those moments in a story where a sudden dramatic turn of events swerves the story away from a bad ending that seems inevitable and unavoidable, and into a happy ending instead: “a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur.” The possibility of a eucatastrophe is fundamental to a fairy-story; it’s the moment when the slipper fits, when the Beast transforms, when the kiss awakes the sleeper: when despair is transmuted abruptly into delight.
This essay is about the good disaster that was Kevin Owens winning the Universal title.
Monday Night Raw, Houston, August 29 2016: The four men who will be participating in the main event tonight sit in the ring with the Universal championship (Finn’s Universal championship) on a podium between them.
Corey Graves is setting the situation up when Seth Rollins seizes the floor to brag about how he, as the one who injured Finn, is clearly the most worthy successor to the title.
“Jerk,” I say bitterly, kicking the ottoman and flinging myself onto my parents’ overstuffed couch, which embraces me gently, lessening the impact. I’m in the United States visiting family, but tonight Dan and I have the place to ourselves, so I can give free vent to my annoyance.
Houston seems to mostly agree with me as Seth’s amazing heel laugh brays through the arena; when he recently came back from injury the audience had wanted to love him, but he’d spurned them to continue his role as the golden boy of the Authority and the McMahons. Now the live crowds seem to regard him with a roiling mix of annoyance and thwarted affection, and a low buzz of mixed emotions echoes back at him in Houston.
Seth yields the floor to Kevin Owens, who immediately goes into an elaborate pantomime of sincerity, talking about what an honor it will be just to share the ring with his fellow-wrestlers.
Practically glowing with faux-earnestness, he addresses everyone by breathlessly announcing, “I don’t know what’s going to happen tonight, but boy, is it exciting!” He’s obviously being viciously sarcastic, but I still enjoy every moment of him in my favorite mode for wrestlers: excited and enthusiastic. I don’t particularly care that it’s a sardonic act, I like the way even feigned delight lights up his face and false anticipation brightens his voice as he looks forward to the match.
Interestingly, Houston, responding to either the enthusiasm or the sarcasm—or perhaps the complex blend of the two—breaks into a joyous “Fight Owens Fight” chant before he even drops the act.
“Huh,” I say to Dan, who has arrived from the kitchen with a bowl of popcorn in time to watch Kevin drop the act and shift to insulting everybody and declaring that he’s going to win tonight, “that’s a really positive reaction to Kevin.” I conclude that I like Houston.
Kevin has already declared that he also likes Houston: he won his first main-roster WWE title there, after all, as he mentioned when he showed up for the evening dressed in an actual suit, a rare event for him:
“Even besides that, it’s not that surprising,” Dan says. “Look at the other three he’s up against.”
I frown at the screen, turning his words over in my mind as Big Cass takes the mic and hands out some insults, to the approval of the audience, who are very much behind him. I don’t quite get what Dan means until Corey asks if the fourth man, Roman Reigns, wants to respond. Roman rises slowly to his feet and Houston erupts into that response that is uniquely Roman’s: a thunderous low-pitched boo overlaid with a filigree of high-pitched cheering.
“Ah,” I say as I look at the four wrestlers and the dynamic between them.
It’s an intriguing setup: Houston is generally positive toward the purest babyface at the time, Cass, but no one really expects him to win. Then you’ve got Seth and Roman, the most obvious choices for champion, and the audience is deeply ambivalent about both of them, torn between hate and love. Either of them winning would be a catastrophe of sorts. That leaves Kevin, who is definitely a heel, without a doubt meant to be despised; in contrast with the fans’ conflicted reactions to Roman and Seth, his sharp and well-defined heelishness is practically endearing tonight. He’s easy to hate, it’s clear and simple to hate him, and as a result they actually kind of like him: one of the many weird alchemies of wrestling in action once more. But the crowd knows better than to hope for something so unpredictable as Kevin winning; his presence feels more like a taunt than a promise, a tantalizing tease of something new and exciting happening that is unlikely to materialize. That’s why his sarcasm is touching a chord in the audience: yes, like Kevin we all know more or less what’s going to happen tonight, and we know it might be good, but it probably won’t be terribly exciting.
Roman Reigns comes to his feet and eyes all of his opponents, then whirls to clout Kevin out of the ring as the crowd screams. He throws Cass out, levels Seth, and is left standing tall in the middle of the ring with the Universal championship, looking contemptuous and disdainful: Is this the best competition WWE has for me?
Considering the match tonight is an elimination match, it seems logical to assume this is symbolic: everyone thrown out one by one until only Roman is left with the title. A little heavy-handed foreshadowing, perhaps.
“Meh,” I grouse with some affectionate resignation as Kevin retreats up the ramp, yelling insults at Roman. It should be a fun match anyway, and either Seth or Roman as champ has some interesting story possibilities. Maybe Kevin will go on to another program with Sami? I have a vague hope that his alliance with Jericho could lead to feuding with Sami and Neville as a tag team. So there are things to look forward to no matter what. (But… meh).
As it turns out, the foreshadowing isn’t Roman’s, but Kevin’s:
The match is about to begin. As Roman’s music hits, I look in my drafts folder, shaking my head at myself. In an excess of enthusiasm, I’ve made a gifset for Tumblr: different shots of Kevin with the words “Champion of the Universe” overlaid on them. I don’t usually make gifsets ahead of time, because it’s too painful to move them from drafts to the trash when they don’t pan out, but in this case I couldn’t resist. It doesn’t seem possible that the crowd isn’t going to end up split and angry at the predicable triumph of either Reigns or Rollins, but… maybe? The gif is my small talisman, my tiny hope.
Kevin begins the match by rolling out of the ring immediately to taunt Mick Foley and Steph McMahon, who are standing next to the Universal title. “That’s my title,” he barks as the other three wrestlers square off and the crowd remembers why they’re not supposed to like him and breaks into disappointed boos. But eventually he gets back into the ring and the match moves forward, near-fall after near-fall, each wrestler kicking out in turn over and over. Eventually Cass gets eliminated by Kevin after a frog splash:
(Meaning, not-entirely-incidentally, that Kevin ends up with the only unassisted elimination of the match).
With the only full-on babyface out of the match, the crowd noise buzzes higher and higher with each near-fall, building toward what Houston is pretty sure is going to either be a Reigns or Rollins win, the predictable catastrophic victory. Kevin gets covered by first Roman, then Seth, and each time I gasp in horror until he kicks out, then sigh in relief. But I know it’s only a matter of time. I glance at my draft gifset, the optimistic words glowing on my screen. I’m never going to be able to post it, am I? I wince as Roman punches Kevin, who falls to land heavily on the floor outside the ring, and then goes to spear Seth on the other side of the ring.
And then everything stops being predictable at all.
Commentary’s voices spiral up into disbelief and shock as Triple H–absent from TV for months until now–suddenly appears. He pedigrees Roman, to the crowd’s horror and delight, then picks Roman up and rolls him into the ring. The crowd noise takes on a disappointed edge as he then grabs a dazed Seth and instructs him to cover Roman–the audience wants to love Seth at some level, but they’re also tired of him being helped by the Authority. This is a surprise, yes, but we’ve only traded one catastrophe for a different one, Roman for Seth. Triple H even gives Seth an extra shove on the butt to get him into the cover, and the audience fumes as Seth basically stumbles into eliminating Roman Reigns.
Seth props himself against the turnbuckle, groggy but grinning at being handed yet another opportunity as Triple H goes to grab Kevin off the floor and roll him into the ring as well. “Noooo,” I say in misery as Kevin sprawls on the far side of the ring, barely able to move. I don’t want to watch Seth win at Kevin’s expense, I don’t want to see Kevin defeated and sad. As Triple H walks slowly across the ring, looking intently at Seth, I briefly consider turning off the show, deleting my stupid Pollyanna gif, and going to bed.
Triple H starts to take off his jacket, still looking down at Seth. And suddenly I am on my feet, hands over my mouth.
“Oh my God,” I say. “Oh my God.”
Here’s something I won’t mention often, but I am two months older than Paul Levesque, than Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Triple H, Hunter, the Game, the Cerebral Assassin, the King of Kings. He grew up in Nashua, New Hampshire; I grew up just a two-hour drive away in a similar small city in Maine. Sometimes I joke with Dan (who is a week younger than the King of Kings) about how we might have gone to senior prom the same year as the Game. I find it amusing to think that I come from such a similar place and era as someone so outsize and implausible. And as he takes off his jacket and looks at Seth, I know in a flash of intuition that what he is acting out is a stock trope from our impossibly overlapping childhood: Your Father is Home, and He is Very Disappointed in You.
“Oh my God,” I say again, dumbstruck. Suddenly I know exactly how the remainder of this drama is going to play out; I can see it unfolding in front of me in perfect detail. Kevin is going to– Kevin is going to be–
When Triple H pedigrees Seth, I literally fall to my knees as well, thudding to the carpet in utter amazement as the crowd shrieks in shock and a dawning delight. Triple H–who has abruptly gone from being a tool of the plot to a true deus ex machina, a god of wrestling descending into the story to turn everything around and send it spinning off in a new direction–turns to look at Kevin, who has propped himself against the turnbuckle, staring in disbelief, and I shuffle forward a couple of steps on my knees without any conscious thought, one hand reaching out as if somehow, through sheer force of will, I could crawl into the screen and be there in Houston.
Kevin will appear on the Talk is Jericho podcast shortly after his win, and he’ll mention that there are people who believed that the end of the match was unknown to him, that he had no idea he was going to win that night. “I guess I was so convincing,” he laughs, but it’s true–there are a wealth of little details in his performance that makes it feel especially real. Here’s one of my favorites: the moment when Triple H turns to look at him, to telegraph that he has been chosen to pin Seth and receive the Universal title.
Noted badass and supremely confident asshole Kevin Owens’s very first response is not to jump forward and seize the moment, not to swagger up and grin at the crowd, but to stare wildly around to find who Triple H is looking at, as if expecting that maybe Cesaro has materialized on the apron, buff and suave and ready to become champion. His reaction doesn’t make any sense unless that’s the real Kevin Steen we’re seeing in that moment, shocked and startled (or it could mean Kevin Owens is a more complex character than a berserker prizefighter, but what are the odds of that? Less than the odds of not informing your wrestlers how a match would end, apparently.)
Eventually, Kevin scrabbles forward, still keeping one eye on Triple H as if expecting him to kick him and laugh, reveal this was all a joke. He’s still staring at him as the referee makes the count.
Triple H leaves the ring and returns with the title, hands it to Kevin and raises his hand in victory. The roar in Houston is deafening, so loud it’s almost hard to tell if it’s positive or negative, just an endless astonished scream. Triple H clasps Kevin’s hand and then pulls him into a rough hug, and I see Kevin say “Thank you so much” against his shoulder. Then, realizing that his voice might not be heard over the wild noise, he rears back and says carefully, making sure Triple H can see his face: “Thank you.”
I make an awkward pained noise and cover my mouth with my hand, blinking hard. Later I’ll read people complaining about how it cheapened the win to have Triple H just hand him the title, how it demeaned Kevin to not let him win it fairly, and I will be filled with indignation and make a post on Tumblr where I argue (I hate arguing, but I’m so angry at the obvious wrongness of this that I can’t help myself) that it was the perfect way for Kevin to win his first very top title:
To win this way–to be openly favored and trusted by the most important authority figure in his world–allows him to express his awe and wonder, his shock and amazement and deep, shaking gratitude, all the things he truly feels. That “thank you” works at the kayfabe level, but it’s also very, very real: thank you for speaking up for me, thank you for trusting me, thank you for believing in me. It’s a beautiful melding of the real and the fictional, and gives Kevin free reign to drop the monster facade for a moment and simply gaze in astonishment at this turn of events, when all of his hard work and sacrifices pay off–not by beating someone in a fight, don’t be ridiculous! But by having a legendary wrestler literally lift him up and give him the title, showing his faith in Kevin’s will and dedication. It’s a perfect moment, and I don’t think Kevin Steen would want it any other way.
A few days later, on Talk is Jericho, Kevin will describe his reaction to the win in words so similar to my own that I will practically levitate a foot in the air, hearing them; suffused with utter amazement, I will reblog my own post and paste his words beneath it, for which I hope my friends eventually forgave me:
Kevin: Triple H always believed in me. Last Monday night, Triple H literally handed me the title. That was a moment. That was incredible to me. I got to say thank you in the ring. It wasn’t “thank you for giving me the title,” it was “thank you for everything.”
Jericho: “Thanks for believing in me.”
Kevin: Yeah!
But that’s in the future. Right now, Kevin is brandishing his title and screaming in delight, and as he does the crowd noise coalesces into discrete words. Usually chants take a while to build, and you can hear them gradually come together, but by some trick of the acoustics this time it feels like there’s almost no build, like all of a sudden nearly everyone in the Houston arena is shouting in unison, over and over: You deserve it! Not a bit of sarcasm in it, just a full-throated tribute: You deserve it!
It’s an incongruous chant that technically makes no sense as a response to watching someone get handed a title like that, but it’s also, I believe, a deliberate result of the booking of the match. With Cass out, most of the audience either didn’t want Roman to win or didn’t want Seth to win, and now this bizarre unpredictable thing has happened and whichever person they didn’t want to win has been defeated, and there’s Kevin in front of them, tears in his eyes, shocked and disbelieving at this magical twist of fate right along with them. It’s not simply that he’s not-Seth and not-Roman; it’s as if the booking has given the audience an excuse to openly embrace what they already feel, consciously or unconsciously: that they love and admire Kevin. No character ever particularly deserves a eucatastrophe; it’s a gift, unlooked-for and unwarranted. The Houston audience is as much a recipient of this rescue as Kevin is, saved from either of the two catastrophic options, and the relief is electric. As if a switch has been flipped somewhere, Houston ignites into a roar of affection.
I listen to it, still on my knees, my heart pounding. I’ve always stoutly, loudly, vociferously maintained that Kevin could, at the end of any given match, have an entire arena cheering for him and loving him. Seeing undeniable proof of it is immensely gratifying, and by that I mean that I’m shaking all over and making a high-pitched keening noise that is certainly giving all of the neighborhood dogs headaches. I can’t believe this is happening; I can’t even seem to process it. Other people have certainly loved Kevin for much longer than I have; other people certainly love Kevin with more intensity than I do. But I think I can say with some confidence that not many people currently watching have watched as much of Kevin’s career in the last year as I have in my voracious quest to understand his history: endless matches and promos from whatever random times I could get my hands on, consumed indiscriminately hour after hour, month after month. As a result, here is a gif of the inside of my head at this moment, as I watch Kevin ascend to the pinnacle of the top promotion in the world:
It’s an utterly unhinged jangling jumble of everything, everywhere, all at once: too much to comprehend, too much to take in.
When Sami Zayn remembers it later, he says “I was watching him win the title… and I had no emotion. Because I couldn’t believe what I was watching. It was only when he walked through the curtain that it punched me.”
His jaw drops and his eyes get distant at the memory, and I suspect he was experiencing a similar highlight reel in his mind to mine, but a thousand times more detailed, in three dimensions, with all five senses, and so many different emotions colliding that they all canceled each other out. As for me, with my simpler perspective, all I feel is the brightest, simplest happiness: Something very good has happened to someone I care about! My heart is a flawless crystal cup brimming over with the purest, clearest, most luminous delight. Look, oh look!
This should all be a disaster. On paper it’s nothing but a disaster: the boss of the company shows up to destroy one rival, turn on his own chosen one, and hand the title to an upstart who wouldn’t even get in the ring to fight at first. But the booking is such that for this moment we are all encouraged to love him, to see this as a triumph rather than a catastrophe. Suddenly, with no transition at all, Kevin’s secret godfather has walked past his step-siblings to hand him tickets to the ball; the Beast is revealed, for just a moment, to be a prince after all.
I suddenly remember my gifset, sitting in drafts; with shaking hands, I hit the post button. Look! Oh, look! My images go careening off into the void, striking sparks off a thousand other hearts in America and India and Russia: Something very good has happened to someone we care about! Tolkien refers to the “catch of breath, the lift and beat of the heart, near to tears” of the eucatastrophic moment, and we kindle into joy as our breath catches, our hearts lift together. Joy beyond the walls of the world, Tolkien writes, as poignant as grief. For a moment we share it.
A eucatastrophe is a gift, unearned and unexpected. It’s a moment when a story hands you some miraculous happiness and you stare at it, stunned, unable to believe it’s real. You look around in shock, expecting there to be a trick, to discover that actually this good thing is happening to someone else. But no, here it is, held out with no strings attached, a good thing with no flaw or blemish, a moment of pure grace. Like Kevin–his back against the turnbuckle, staring wildly around him–we often don’t quite know how to take such moments. Wrestling doesn’t give them often. But here it is in Houston. Here it is in Kevin Owens, the good disaster, the best disaster of a human being. And like him, all you have to do is accept it and say to wrestling: Thank you.
Thank you.
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