An annual exhibition of mental and physical prowess, Fighting Express 2010 is a wrestling show put on by students of the Pro Wrestling Club every year at Kyushu University, Ohashi Campus. The students do a fantastic job of organizing the entire event, from building the stage out of plastic crates, to designing introduction movies and skits, making their own custom costumes and running the lighting and music. There is also a panel of “judges” who are mostly there for comedic relief and openly spout vulgarities and perverse remarks. This is not so strange except for the fact the panel of judges are made up of University professors who see and interact with students every day.
The skits (I am told) are filled with inside jokes that seem to be understood by the entire student body save the foreign students. But even being completely out of the loop, I still appreciate how professionally everything was done.
The Costumes
Sometimes, they were recognizable characters like Pikachu and Bomberman, and sometimes the costumes were completely indecipherable. For example, there was one guy with just a big floppy headdress, a sniper with a bad nose job, a giant guy in what appeared to be a diaper, a Mexican wrestler, two minion bombs of Bomberman and a large assortment of scantily clad wrestlers. The match would usually include a duo of wrestlers on each side and some sort of 2 versus 2 tap type of wrestling match would take place. The rules and official point of the match would get a little muddled since everything was obviously preplanned and staged anyway. But at least unlike American wrestling, this is so obvious they just admit to it.
Pikachu Twirls Big Floppy Head Guy
Bomberman and his Bomb Minions
Sniper with a Bad Nose Job
The Fighting
Even though the show mostly revolves around comedy, this does not detract from the actual athletic ability of the wrestlers. The fighting is ironically quite real at some points, with loud slaps ringing and resounding off the bare chests of the guys on stage. Also there were some very impressive acrobatics performed by some very large guys including jumps off ropes and posts, flips and twists, grabs and spins that would involve a guy standing straight up and lifting another guy upside down into the air. Like so…
The performers obviously take this show very seriously. They have to all be very aware of what they are doing in order to avoid injury to themselves or injuring others. Afterwards, I realized just how real some of the fighting was when I saw some friends who performed after the show; their whole bodies were red from real slaps, and bruised all over from real falls. Despite being black and blue, they were all in good spirits and thanked us all for coming. What good sports.
My Regret
If I had to do one thing different I would have liked to participate in this instead of just watching it. Baptiste and Ai-chan had mentioned doing it, but only briefly and we never seriously considered joining the club. But I think it would have been really nice to do a 2v2 gaijin battle. The whole time, I was imagining what crazy fake personas we would have each assimilated. Too bad we missed our chance.
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