An Ode to Red Pants

I am zen af right now

Oh Reader….I am engaged, and in all the easy breezy, stress free 

paradise of wedding planning (Are you married, Reader?  Yeah, you know what I’m talking about!  Remember how simple and care free this was?!) I would like to take a moment to tell you about someone I love very dearly, and why.

His name is Red Pants. I have mentioned him once or twice before.

That’s not really his name, really his name is Shinsuke Nakamura, and he is marvelous.  He is a professional wrestler.  He is my favorite professional wrestler.

He is perfect.

I mean it’s hard to pick a favorite, I know.  There’s Khal Drogo, and I like him a lot but he’s on sick leave.

The Swamp Witches were...memorable, but have been gone for a while. 

Other-Prince is a delight.  

Bouncy Guy is a joy to watch.  

Jericho seems like the best kind of wise-ass.  

Asuka is my second favorite wrestler, because she looks so dang cool, her mask-makeup-thing gives me chills, her coat is flawless, her costume looks like Lisa Frank designed it, but she's not cutesy and she'll kill you.  She gets to go by her real name in my head because “Wears her underwear on the outside” is a lot.  

Anyway, there are many iconic wrestlers from whom to pick.

But Red Pants is the best, and don’t worry, I am going to tell you why.

Here’s why:

1. I appreciate his body.  Don’t make it weird, Reader.  I don’t mean I sit over here staring at him like everyone stares at Aquaman.  What I do mean is that he just looks like a dude.  A fit dude, yes, absolutely— a dude who works out, sure.  But also a dude who gets excited when girl scout cookie season starts, and has hobbies outside of

 the gym, with a body you might encounter irl.  He has better things to do than slavishly pursue some crazy cut-like-a-diamond, look-at-all-my-veins, slathered-in-baby-oil, once-had-a-regular-body-but-then-someone-filled-him-up-with-helium-like-a-balloon-and-now-he-has-no-neck-and-a-solid-B-cup, hard-body ridiculousness.  He just looks like a dude. 

2. BUT THEN HIS STYLE COMES POURING OUT AND HE IS LARGER THAN LIFE AND AMAZING.  

He is called The Artist Known as Shinsuke Nakamura, and he is aptly named—he is an artist.  He is a performance artist, giving his audience everything within him in every match.  People think all kinds of things about wrestling, but you can’t pretend it is not a performance art.  This man leaves it all on the floor whenever he does anything.  He gives 110%-- and holler if you hear me, any Reading performers out there—he doesn’t just give it to himself.  He works hard to make everyone else shine. 

Takes it like a boss.

He takes his hits hard, he makes his opponents look good.  He is a PROFESSIONAL.  Which means that when I watch him, I begin to respect wrestling as a profession ß NOT A THING I EVER THOUGHT I WOULD EXPERIENCE.  

Look Reader, I know next to nothing about wrestling but I know something about performance and this is a man anyone would beg to work beside.  

"Does he even sing?"
"Don't worry, this is going to be amazing."

Just look at that joy!

3.  He has so much fun doing all this, and that is refreshing.  So many of these guys are super hyper angry and intense and it's just boring to watch.  But Shinske Nakamura, the King of Strong Style, is having fun.  He is full of joy, and his joy is contagious.  

4. Finally, and this is really the clincher, let’s just talk about his intro for a minute.

I am.

All wrestlers have their own special intro, when they enter the arena and approach the sacred ring to hurl themselves around for the benefit of bloodthirsty fans.  Some intros are funny, some are Super Serious, some are Very Hard To Take Super Seriously, but all are intended to capture the flavor of the wrestler and prime the crowd for the scripted violence that is about to go down.

Red Pants has an intro too and….Look, you’re just going to have to watch it.  I’ll wait.

DID YOU WATCH IT??  DO YOU NEED TO WATCH ANOTHER ONE??

ONE MORE AGAIN BECAUSE IT IS SO GOOD??!?!!!?!

Ok ok…Let us unpack: First, you see what I mean about his joy, his showmanship, his beautiful ridiculousness, and those red pants.  But on a deeper note.....Shinsuke Nakamura brought the violin to the World Wrestling Entertainment crowd.  He could have chosen anything, and he chose culture....and made it cool.  The violin is the nerdiest instrument.  I know, I used to play it and have utmost respect for it.  It can draw tears out of a stone, but it is not widely considered cool.  But now it IS cool.  How cool?  SO COOL.  Are there little WWE fans appreciating the violin now?  Thinking about playing the violin now?  Or at least thinking about not bullying violinists now?  I believe there are.

Furthermore, his violinist is a black dude.  Who he bows to, out of one artist’s respect for another.   He brought a black nerd violin player into the WWE and MADE HIM COOL and goes out of his way to show him respect.  Are there little (and big) WWE fans, a predominantly but not exclusively white crowd, taking in this respect that Mr. Nakamura, this gem of a human, has for a black man, a black violinist man?  I BELIEVE THERE ARE. 

FURTHER furthermore, he is ridiculous, and he manages to be so purely genuinely ridiculous that you believe it, and you believe in it, and you believe in him.

I mean just look at this man.  Behold him, and my love for him.

Just some anecdotes about Red Pants: he is Japanese and came to the WWE in the last few years.  His English is not great so they almost never give him a mic, and never for long.  Having said that, he’s been here for years.  And yet, still very little mic time.  One time, at an interview, when he was just ready to be done being interviewed, he said “No speak English.”

Then, at a different interview, he was totally having a conversation in English.  When that interviewer said, a little snidely I might add, “Oh, I thought you no speak English?” he REPLIED IN SPANISH.

THERE IS NOTHING ABOUT THIS MAN I DO NOT LOVE. 

Some dear friends got me a Red Pants figurine last year, and it has shared some important moments with me: a harrowing airplane ride, a trip to Denver, graduating from Space Camp, and Christmas.  My King of Strong Style t shirt is featured prominently in the engagement video.  I am a fan, is what I am saying.

You can't really see, but that's
him in a place of honor

Welcome to my adventures, tiny person.

Red Pants in Space!!!

Talking me down from airplane anxiety

Talking me right back up in airplane anxiety

Peaceful contemplation

Trains are better than airplanes

Denver!

More Denver

Hotel party

Somebody get this champion a drink

I'm not the only Red pants fan (I mean, they make a figurine for crying out loud).  He has a
following because he's good.  He recently won a very big fancy belt that I assume he and his lovely wife used as a centerpiece at dinner parties.  In fact, just this week, he won that fancy belt again, rocking a red Elvis-style jumpsuit and reminding me yet again what a gift to humanity he is.

So here’s where all this came from: “Andy”, my beloved betrothed who lives in the garden of my heart, knows a guy who knows a guy who is legit a wrestler in WWE

Specifically, this guy, Xavier Woods.

Who is a part of this group, the New Day, who also get high honors for style and fun

(Xavier Woods is also a DnD nerd so we love him extra for that.)

who knows Red Pants.  They work in different…divisions?  Idk how this stuff is organized, but while they aren’t in the same part of the organization structure, they do cross paths.  And “Andy” asked his guy to ask his guy to ask Shinsuke if he would record a little cell phone video wishing me a happy wedding.

This did not occur.

This did not occur because WWE’s legal team apparently hate fun and abhor weddings.  (That is why I know about this—it was a secret, but then “Andy” got the official no, so he figured he may as well tell me he’d been working on it for the last six weeks.  Six weeks, people.  I’m going to marry the crap out of this man.)

But that’s not the point.  The point is: it got to the legal team because it got to Shinsuke.  The point is: he said yes, until lawyers decided that both love and fandom are for chumps and nobody can have nice things.  Shinsuke said yes.

SHINSUKE SAID YES.

SHINSUKZE NAKAMURA KNOWS MY NAME.  He knows I’m getting married, and wanted to wish me well. 

omgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomg

As I lay here freaking out (there is not enough oxygen in the world for my gasping), just some updates for the burgeoning new Red Pants fan I know you are:

Before

After

He recently went from face to heel (a little industry jargon for you: face is for babyface and it means they’re good guys in the wrestling story arch.  Heel is for tarheel, the bad guys, because apparently wrestlers are Duke fans) for match-after-match punching Mom Hair, another popular wrestler, in the nuts.  

So now he occasionally wears blue pants—do not be fooled, it is still the man we all know and love.  Also, when he switched from good guy to bad guy, he switched his music from the black violinist to an all Japanese hip hop/rock band that raps in Japanese and offers no translation.  It is dope.  Also also, the original intro song was known as the Rising Sun, and the darker, bad-guyish revamped version is called Shadows of the Setting Sun.  See what they did there?  I say again, there is nothing about this man I do not love.

Thank you Red Pants, from the bottom of my adoring heart, for trying.

Now I have to find a Japanese translator who can turn this into readable Japanese so I can send it along with a wedding invitation to my favorite wrestler.

Until then we will start with:

どうもすみません、ありがとうございます  

 

RED PANTS FOR LIFE!!!!