Sometimes strangers roll up and ask if they can write something for the Spectacle of Excess. I always say yes, but mostly they don’t deliver. No shade for them, by the way! It’s quite challenging to write something that clicks in the niche of the old Spectacle here. Now, often these submissions need revisions and edits. The English teacher in me says this one could use some tidying and tightening, but the unhinged mystic in me who sometimes channels dead wrestling writers says let’s leave this one in all of its wild glory. Welcome, George, to our weirdo literary salon! LFG, as they say.-KF
My friend, let me tell you the story of how I, one of your typical Chicago pro wrestling marks, flew across the country for one long Memorial Day weekend this year to see some Japanese wrestler girl named Maki Itoh who liked to call herself “the cutest in the world” and Our Queen of Simps.
Now, was she talking like cuter even than Pikachu, Trixie in Speed Racer, or Hello Kitty? That’s some kind of claim there. This, I had to see for myself, for real, and we’re talking from dollars to doughnuts real.
So, I took a Holy Quest to Portland, Oregon, that left me a bigger simp than I was before, my friend.
Eventually, I found myself sitting in the balcony of the Roseland Theater there, waiting for the local matches to start, trying to get it straight in my mind about how I first came under the spell of this Maki Itoh.
Was it when I was watching AEW Revolution one night and, all of a sudden, the Maki Itoh comes prancing out of nowhere, this dancing girl, singing her own entrance song? I mean, how many wrestlers sing their own entrance song, let alone in Japanese—and no rappers, you don’t count.
Then there was her wrestling gear. All that hypnotizing glitter, the splashes of silver spangles all over her dress that also marked the large red bow on her top above her bare midriff. Strips of tartar cloth patterns on her skirt that look like they were cut off a Scottish kilt. The red and black bows tying her black and red streaked hair into foxtails. Her big knee-high boots with a yellow fluffs on the top. Her fingerless black leather gloves with gold hearts pinned to them. All pretty cute, but “cutest in the world”? A solid maybe.
But eventually, up there in the balcony, I finally decided that all it took was one strange move out of her to put me on this Holy Quest for an audience with Our Queen of Simps.
See, it had to do with what she brags is her “iron head,” and she knows how to use it, for sure. Running into the ropes of the squared circle, bouncing off them, then hurling herself toward her opponent, lying there on the mat. And, just when you think she’s aiming to squash her with stomps, that’s when Our Queen of Simps I’m talking about will stop to suddenly turn sideways, go stiff like a two by four, and drop to put an iron head butt into the gut of the other girl.
Now I’ve watched lots of cool moves out of pro wrestlers over the years where their character would not have been the same without them. The Teutonic claw of Baron Von Rashke digging into the chest of his opponent while he was howling like a butcher over a piece of prime meat. The quick face plant into the canvas called the Mic Check that Mr. Anderson worked in honor of his own brash, crass announcement of his name on an old-time broadcast mike hanging from the ceiling before his match. The wrenching, crack-of-the-neck finishing move that Bray Wyatt pulls off after kissing the head of his opponent, named after the haunting crone that inspired his wacked-out persona, she who was Sister Abigail.
But those moves always borrowed something out of moves from wrestlers past, what you might say were “variations on a theme”. Whereas this particular iron head butt from the Maki Itoh I have been telling you about, I for sure had no idea where that was coming from, my friend.
That is, until I heard a masked AEW announcer, name of Excalibur, call it out during one match:
KOKESHI
So, of course, I had to look up on the Web. And I found out, it’s this Japanese doll that’s been around for something like 150 years. A wood thing that doesn’t have any arms or legs and looks to me like a short lamp post with a round bulb at the top, you know what I’m saying? Which is why, when Our Queen of Simps drops the iron head butt on her opponent, she tucks herself in tight so that it looks like no arms, no legs on this living doll of hers.
So now I wanted to know where did this Maki Itoh get the idea for the move? Maybe she grew up with a Kokeshi doll of her own that she used to drop on the floor. But more likely, I was thinking, she probably got it off some video game with a nasty Kokeshi character in it who blocks escapes from the eternal doom of the other characters, or something like that.
Well, after seeing that move, I could be nothing but your everyday simp for Our Queen of Simps, my friend. And I must make this Holy Quest in search of a bigger simp than I was.
But there was something else about her that had me thinking as I looked down at the empty squared circle down below. Those promos of hers. Delivering them in what she calls her “Maki-glish”, mangling the English language until it comes out sounding like stray blurts of zen think.
One promo in particular. Where she totally nailed what the barbed wire baseball bat has meant to me over my years of watching it in action. I had marked out for the barbed wire baseball bat ever since I saw Mick Foley threaten some other wrestler with it. It was his “Barbie”, he said, but later stopped using the name, because Mattel didn’t want their plastic beauty doll associated with the bloody cuts of mayhem, I’m guessing.
Anyway, in her promo, the Maki Itoh is standing in the industrial park of some factory plant somewhere in Japan. It’s stark, my friend, with a couple strands of barbed wire at the top of a chain link fence. Right away, I’m thinking, it looks like Our Queen of Simps tore off some strings of it to wrap around the baseball bat she’s holding before dancing around in circles with little hops and shouting “YAY”!
In this promo, she tells us in Maki-glish that this isn’t your usual barbed wire baseball bat match, no way. We are talking exploding barbed wire baseball match here. Whoa, only a Japanese pop culture mind into anime video games could come up with something that fierce, am I right?
Then she says something that truly put a stranglehold on my mind: “I will break your fucking face if you don’t join Wrestle Universe and watch,” Wrestle Universe being a pro wrestling channel out of Japan. For whatever reason, this line got to me, to the point where I lost a Twitter account quoting it. You do not want to go quoting violent pro wrestling lines on Twitter if you want to keep your account, take it from me.
“Stay safe, and have a nice day, shitheads,” Our Queen of Simps then says, before swinging the bat at the camera out there in this industrial park and shouting, with a big smile:
HORA, BANG!
Well, first, this promo introduced me to the way Our Queen of Simps throws out swear words, and we will talk more about that talk later, my friend. Then, the whole idea of a promo about a barbed wire baseball bat, let alone one that explodes. I mean, how does to your typical Chicago pro wrestling mark react?
You buy the t-shirt, my friend.
This one has the Maki Itoh waving her exploding barbed wire baseball with a rabid look to her eyes while she’s flipping off some alien creatures who have just stuck a kind of squid thing on the face of one of her wrestling partners.
Now, I figure I was the only one wearing this Maki Itoh t-shirt at the celebration of that legend CM Punk returning to pro wrestling in the United Center in Chicago a few months after I bought it. Then, wouldn’t you know, her exploding barbed wire baseball match happened to take place in Japan that very same damn night. I mean, the climax of the match even went social media viral when her exploding barbed wire baseball bat hit the same exploding barbed wire baseball bat her opponent was holding. And HORA BANG, a huge fireball went up, throwing both of them backward. The Maki-Itoh, she’s so proud of it that the photo is still on her Twitter banner. And who wouldn’t be, really.
Now all this stuff I just told you, it was close to making her “the cutest in the world,” but I still felt I needed to make the Holy Quest that would eventually transform me into something beyond your everyday simp. So when I heard in January that Prestige Wrestling was bringing in the Maki Itoh for matches in the US of A, man, was I ever so there. I stretched the plastic, got everything settled for the trip, and waited it out.
Now, when the time came for the start of my Holy Quest, I decided to travel light and defy our age of COVID. I never wore a mask and I didn’t even take my medicine bag full of exotic herbs to build up the immune system either.
Then, at the airport, I did something real stupid. See, it was the first time I had taken a plane in a awhile, so I forgot that drinking a full and large bottle of water before getting on wasn’t such a great idea. Yeah, you guessed it, I spent most of the trip draining the lizard. So, by the time we landed in Portland, I was totally drained, in every way you can think.
But we are talking Holy Quest here. Rough traveling goes with the territory. Kind of like, those people in the 13th century who went on a crusade all the way from Europe to Jerusalem on bare feet. No Nikes back then, my friend.
All right, let’s get to the matches. This crowd was full of her loyal simps, chanting and shouting “Maki, Maki, Maki” even way before her match, like what I heard out of the United Center for CM Punk, only packed in and louder because of it. Which did my heart good, because I’d been dealing with my psycho-killer rage at her social media haters of late.
These post-Freudian subhuman mutants, they see Our Queen of Simps and they get all hot and bothered. But when they try to go for their glandular organs, to put them in a choke hold, if you know what I’m saying and I think you do, these glands are so tiny, that the sex mutants can never find them. So what do they do? They stew and mew over the Maki Itoh on Twitter.
Their leader is this guy, name of Jim Cornette. Guy I used to like, back in the day when he managed pro wrestlers like a motormouth on crank, waving around a tennis racket, of all things, which I did find original, I got to say. But now I heard from somebody that he was putting down the Maki Itoh on his podcast. Like, this clown boy, he has no room to talk: I never saw an exploding tennis racket match out of him, you know what I’m saying?
See, what’s really going on here has to do with kawaii pop culture in Japan, what you see in cartoon video games, in wacky costumes, in kissy face animal mascots, that kind of thing.
Now get this, from what I read, this kawaii thing, it goes back to around 1912-1925: some artist or other opens a shop selling fancy paper product, aimed at young girl customers, and did that ever take off. Later on, American pop culture got mashed up into it and, there you have it, adorably cute and cutely adorable everywhere. Including pop music, which is where Our Queen of Simps comes in.
See, there are all these idol music groups over there. Young girls dancing and prancing, smiling away, and singing like chirping birds flying through the clouds. And we are talking about training them young for it too. You know, they did that with Babymetal in some school in Hiroshima: it’s like their lead singer, the mighty Su-Metal, was born with a mike in her hand, even.
So, sitting there in the Roseland balcony, I imagined how Maki Itoh must have been trained for the idol life from the start. Part of her legend is that she ended up being let go by some idol group or other because she wasn’t popular enough, or something. I mean, she still calls herself a “failed idol” on her Twitter description.
Now, what’s an angry girl to do but go into pro wrestling and seek revenge, like in “the Chicago Rules”, you know, the big payback, with a baseball bat. It’s like what that French manager Roland “The Brain” Barthes says about it in his promo about wrestling called The World of Wrestling. Now, let me see if get this right. Okay, “the idea of ‘paying’ is essential to wrestling and the crowd’s ‘give it to him’ means above all else ‘make him pay’.”
Man, sometimes, I get to thinking that The Brain could have written out the script that would lead to the coronation of Our Queen of Simps.
Like, see, when the Maki Itoh started her career, she lost most of her first matches real bad, like what The Brain says: “what is displayed for the public is the great spectacle of Suffering, Defeat, and Justice, an excessive portrayal of suffering, like a primitive Pieta, [she] exhibits for all to see [her] face, exaggeratedly contorted by an intolerable affliction.”
But then she works really hard to get better until she wins what they call the Princess Belt of the Tokyo Koshi stable as a champ. To this, The Brain says: “[W]hat wrestling is above all meant to portray is a purely moral concept, that of justice . . . [this] explains why sudden changes of circumstances have in the eyes of wrestling habitués a sort of moral beauty . . .”
Yeah, “moral beauty”, now, here you are talking about Our Queen of Simps and her haters again. They have no concept of “moral beauty.” They see her as some blow-up kawaii doll: all sexed up. But it’s like judo: real kawaii idols are supposed to be all about polite and kissy face, but the Maki Itoh, she’ll swear like something that comes out of the mouth of a Chicago cop after he busts some guy in a back alley next to a dumpster and then flips the bird at the guy after doing it. So what’s really going on, when we are talking metaphors, is her way of flipping around this model kawaii girl angle. It’s like what The Brain also says: “in judo, a [woman] who is down is hardly down at all, she rolls over, [she] draws back, [she] eludes defeat.”
Such is the path of the Maki Itoh, who entered the squared circle that first night in Portland just like how that guy Baudelaire says in The Brain’s promo, with “the grandiloquent truth of gestures on life’s great occasions.” And you want to talk great occasion, that first night, she was defending her Princess Belt in America for the first time ever, going up against a wrestler name of Mia Yim.
And when she entered the hall that night, yelling “fight, fight, fight” and singing her brand song in her kawaii microphone stick, let me tell you, the crowd went all berserker for her. Slapping the edges of the mat, throwing streamers above her, hailing her with chants of “Maki, Maki, Maki” until it sounded like it would go on forever.
And when she slid under the ropes and into the ring, her brilliant costume caught the lights and put a total shine to her. Then, to the applause, she turned around and around and threw out all these grandiloquent gestures, waving her arms, cupping her hands out and in to bring on more cheers, and doing a strange little jig, like a Kabuki doll dance.
Now this Mia Yim woman, she was much bigger and more muscular than the Maki Itoh, who’s short but sweet and tough, like a slab of taffy. So Our Queen of Simps, she had to pull out all stops, like she always when she defends her belt. Swinging DDTs where she spins around the neck of her opponent and then levels her into the mat. Stomping her big boots into the other woman. A quick, savage bulldog. A forearm smash connecting like what The Brain calls: a “gesture signifying tragic catastrophe” for Mia Yim. All aiming for her finishing move: a sweet Boston Crab hold.
And, man, does she ever work her arsenal of iron head butts, along with the Kokeshi. Like, that quick jab she does to bang the right side of her head into the chops of her opponent, and I actually heard the pop when it hit Mia Yim. Like, how she flies off the top turnbuckle with the greatest of ease to iron head butt her opponent. Like, when Mia Yim threw the Maki Itoh face first into the turnbuckle, she shakes her head back and forth and back and forth, howling, like it means nothing to her before she turns around to knock forehead against forehead, how wicked is that?
Now this Kokeshi of hers, she’s added a new twist to it these days. Our Queen of Simps will stop in the middle of it when she sees her opponent try to dodge it, and then she actually dances into what Chicago’s very own Joffrey Ballet call a pirouette: whirling around on her big boots with both arms curled above her, then landing the iron head butt on the other woman. Exactly like The Brain says: “[she] emphasizes and holds like a pause in music, corresponding to the mask of antiquity meant to signify the tragic mode of the spectacle.”
And you want to talk about “the mask of antiquity”? All through her matches, this Maki Itoh, she’s constantly pulling faces that I never see out of any other wrestler. Like out of some old Japanese theater. Like she just put on one of those theater masks I would visit at a Japanese import store that used to be on Belmont in Chicago.
These masks: gaping smiles, tongues hanging loose out of grimacing mouths, crying eyes bulging out. Our Queen of Simps, she does it all while she’s screaming and shouting and shrieking like the ghost of some Japanese banshee. So why did I like looking at those masks? Because they reflected the faces on the party kids who hung out at all hours across the street from the Japanese import store, I guess. On the parking lot of a place called “Punkin’ Donuts”, when really it was a 24-hour Dunkin’ Donuts on the corner of Belmont and Clark, you know.
I think now we should talk doughnuts.
See, the Maki Itoh loves doughnuts. Especially those you get at the Dunkin’. Couple of days before Portland, our Queen of Simps posts this tweet, saying she wanted the Dunkin’ when was in America. Trouble with that is, there is no Dunkin’ in Portland: I mean, doesn’t America run on the Dunkin’? And shouldn’t there be a law that every city has one, don’t you think?
Whatever, after the Maki Itoh said that, people in Portland started to tweet about the local doughnuts there. Especially some place called Voodoo Doughnut. All well and good. But they’re talking what you call these gourmet doughnuts, like little cakes. Not even close to the Dunkin’, where it only takes two or three bites until you start feeling the quick fix of the sugar and dough going down with an HORA, BANG! Perfect for after a workout or a death match.
But look, Our Queen of Simps should not be disappointed about anything in America. You know, somebody actually stole her smartphone and credit cards during her stay this time. I’m thinking couple of her haters sent by numb-brained Cornette did it. They should be making them starve in an interrogation room while Chicago cops eat the Dunkin’ Donuts in their faces, am I right?
So, hearing Portland didn’t have what makes America run, I bought the Maki Itoh a gift befitting Our Queen of Simps, a gift card from the Dunkin’. And how did my gift go down? Well, I wanted to mostly come there for the meet and greet the next night before her second match. But, you know, while I was standing in line, I felt something creeping up on me. I looked around, but nothing behind me or anything. Then, this heavy weight started climbing on me, on my shoulders, the back of my neck. I was getting tired. But, I figured, well, this Holy Quest may be starting to wear and tear on me.
And then, as I was getting closer to her, my lizard brain started to chasing its own tail, trying to find the right words to tell her when I handed her the Dunkin’ card. But then things really started going what you call “off”. Just before I was to gain my royal audience, some guy scooted in to lay some Voodoo doughnuts on her. This guy: Would the Maki Itoh then shrug off my offering now that she had some fancy gourmet doughnuts in pretty pink box? Made me want to run the voodoo down on him.
But no problem. When I finally got to her, I handed her the card and told her “I came all the way from the great city of Chicago to give you this here Dunkin’ Donuts gift card.” To this, the Maki Itoh shouted “DUNKIN’’ to everyone around us and gave me the thumbs up okay signal. The good kid. I’m just hoping she keeps this card under lock and key with that jewel of a Princess championship belt, is all I’m saying.
But Our Queen of Simps, who rules the squared circle with grandiloquent gestures and masks of antiquity and all that, she was way different here. Except for her wearing some heavy metal music T-shirt saying Mayhem on it, this Maki Itoh could have been one of those the young Japanese tourist girls who walk over to Millennium Park in summer to take photos of their reflections in what I call the Human Bean, because you always see people in there. You know these girls, all happy funny, smiling away, laughing all around with their excited dances.
I was, what you call, enchanted. Not that I thought she was the “cutest in the world” just yet, but close, very close, my friend.
But I still wasn’t feeling myself. And this thing on my back and shoulders made me forget about taking a photo with her and it forced me back to the rear of the line. And wouldn’t you know it, just when I was close to her again, she took off to get ready for her match. Even if I heard she’d be back meeting and greeting after the match, who knew if that would happen?
And if that wasn’t enough, when I walked over to where I’d be sitting in the second row, I found folding chairs with no backs to them. I hate that: it’s like those chairs at some coffee shop that doesn’t want you sitting around too long, hogging the refills. A $100 ticket and no backs to the chairs? You kidding me, man?
Now, finally, after some real good local matches, including a death match where many fluorescent tubes met horrible fates, it was again time for Our Queen of Simps. Now she faced Miyu Yamashita, the deadly Pink Striker. Matter of fact, when I first heard Miyu would be in Portland too, I thought this was like adding extra glaze to the doughnut. This girl, throwing down her kick show: a buzz saw of legs and feet chopping her victims down to size, yeah, I live for this kind of stuff. Besides watching Our Queen of Simps in action, of course.
Anyway, I had bought into this view, with the hopes of getting close up to the Maki Itoh when she walks around with her kawaii microphone stick before entering the ring. But all that happened on the other side of the ring, I mean, I could barely see her. Then people in the ring started blocking my view. Some announcers at the start, followed by this referee who kept his back to me most of the time so I had trouble following the match. No backs to the chairs, but this guy has his back to me, go figure on that one.
Anyway, from what I could make out, it was a pretty good match. But to put aside the kayfabe I’ve been doling out here, it was the Miyu show, so the Maki Itoh was doing lots of selling, flopping all around and landing hard and screaming her moans, you know the drill. She did put an iron head butt to Miyu’s jaw that brought her down and made it look like her blank eyes were seeking out or solar system, but other than that, the Pink Striker ruled and won.
I mean, even if I think that Our Queen of Simps should never lose a match, if she has to, might as well be Miyu who beats her. All I’m saying is, it should just not happen to Our Queen of Simps when I’m in the house on a Holy Quest. Just . . . not.
So why did this happen to happen?
Not to blame Prestige Wrestling. Excellent shows, if you ask me. No, not them. For all I know, I could in reality have been sitting in an EZ Boy armchair, sipping a cold one, watching the Maki Itoh do her prance to the ring up close, seeing her raise her middle bird finger in the air then bring it down to her cheek with a lick to her smiling lips. Everything she does, then watching her beat Miyu, locking the Boston Crab on her.
No, I blame that weight on my shoulders and neck that must have been overloading my brain into seeing a hot mess instead.
Whatever.
Anyway, let us now go to after the match. There I was, waiting in another line so I could get my picture taken with the Maki Itoh, like, as in finally. But then, a rumour started going around that she may not show, because she had a bad headache from all those iron head butts of hers.
If so, that didn’t stop Our Queen of Simps from fulfilling her royal duty. A few minutes later, I saw her image dart past the line and toward the meet and greet table. Only, she was without her squared circle face makeup and just rubber bands tied her hair into foxtails. But she was still in her sparkling stage costume and big boots.
And that was the HOLA BANG of my Holy Quest. I hit the mark: the Maki Itoh was the “cutest in the world”, no doubt about it, my friend. Happy Funny girl and Our Queen of Simps both in the mix. Two into one. Like when you pull the Queen of Hearts out from a deck of playing cards, turn it upside down, and it’s the same difference, know what I mean?
Oh, yeah, that photo of us together. The twin middle bird fingers of the Maki Itoh pulling her mouth into a grin and me, looking grim, as I feel the weight bloating me down. All shot in this black-grey murk like in the shadow of a shroud.
Anyway, after the photo shoot, I ended up wishing her good luck, she waved goodbye with both hands, and my Holy Quest was sealed and delivered.
But that didn’t exactly take the weight off me. I had to carry it a long time. And I’m talking, right into the plane home, where it started into shaking me back and forth until I was holding on to the sides of my chair to try to make it stop. With no luck, for four hours, right until we landed.
And I still wasn’t exactly feeling myself when I got back into my pro wrestling cave here in Chicago. Now, the weight on my shoulders and back was grabbing my chest, making me cough into a cold sweat that was soaking my skin even after a shower. Time to call my doctor, I finally decided. She said, take the test most of us are taking these day, you know what I’m talking about. It came out: COVID. Five day quarantine for me.
But I wasn’t all that convinced. It still felt strange on me, something you might call psychic, beyond medical science. It was kind of like: you ever hear about that anime character, that Obari thing? Say you’re walking through some forest one day and, all of a sudden, you hear this real cute magic sprite calling out to you before it jumps on your back and slaps a sleeper hold on you. You feel the sleeper hold going tighter and tighter until you’re gasping from the choking. And to get it off, you have to stay awake and haul the Obari all the way home.
I must have had a Maki on my back.
But listen, they say once you make it home with the Obari, you earn a reward, you strike it rich. All I had to do was wait out this quarantine and it’d be like I won the Illinois lottery, am I right?
Not exactly. No, something even better.
See what happened was, I saw this interview with Our Queen of Simps during my quarantine: someone asked her about getting married and she said something in Maki-glish about only to a rich man, not to a poor man, no, you want to marry me, first I have to look at the bank account.
And at that instant, my friends, I felt everything lift off from what I suffered from this Holy Quest of mine. Like I say, when you make a quest, you become a bigger simp.
Did I ever.
Because now I want the whole world to know that I’m a custom-made $600 lizard shoes, $13,000 Rolex watch and diamond ring wearing, limousine riding, Lear jet flying, eyebrow raising, Havana cigar smoking, espresso sipping, wheeling and dealing son of a gun.
Woo, Mr. Big Simp. Everything on the house, kid.
George Hook is a fiction writer and former editor of the Arts & Letters page of The Wall Street Journal/Europe. He regularly performs at open mikes throughout Chicago and is part of the writing community of the University of Chicago Writer’s Studio. His short stories have been published by FreezeRay, Flying Island of the Indiana Writers Center, Thrice Fiction, and Danse Macabre. His other works, including chapters of a novel developing as The Girl With the Hemingway Tattoo, are available in his blog at https://tinyurl.com/25xhnfj7.
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