The Night of the Skywalkers

by W. Todd Kaneko

Because when my four-year-old son emerges from his room with a toy championship belt, he flexes his arms and growls, “I’m the world champion.” He is a little vision of imaginary violence, a boy pretending to be a man the way an arena full of pro wrestling fans on a Monday night pretends to be an audience watching a sporting event.

. . .

Because my favorite pro wrestling tag team when I was a kid was the Road Warriors, a pair of mohawked juggernauts wearing spiked armor and faces painted for war. With their manager Paul Ellering at ringside, the Road Warriors were invulnerable to the blows of common mortals, barely registering their opponents’ punches and kicks, beating up everyone on my television every weekend.

In interviews, Ellering waxed poetic about pain and violence. Road Warrior Animal shouted guttural threats at the camera before looking at his partner: “tell em, Hawk,” he said. Road Warrior Hawk spoke with a screechy growl about chaos and murder and apocalypse. Hawk said, “Money can’t buy love, but it can pay your hospital bills and buy you a nice headstone.” Hawk said, “it’s better to be dead and not make money than it is to try to make money against us.” Hawk said, “we snack on danger and dine on death.” Hawk said, “ohhhh, what a rush.”

. . .

Because my father was a black belt in Aikido. He used to bring my sister and me to watch him train at the dojo in Seattle—a room full of bodies being thrown and flipped, bodies tumbling and rolling on the mat. Back then, I didn’t understand why anyone would want to learn Aikido, to fight while not hurting anyone. Before he died, my father never taught me to throw a person, but he did his best to teach me how to fall without getting hurt.

. . .

Because I have hypertension, a condition I have had since I was young, inherited from my father, from my grandmother before him. Sometimes, I imagine my heart hurting, the rhythm in my chest momentarily interrupted. It’s painless except for the hypochondrial sound of the ocean in my ears, the weird thrum of electricity on my lips and in my fingertips. I imagine briefly how life might go on in my house without me: my wife holding my son on her lap as they watch television, the flicker of light playing across both their faces, the smell of freshly baked bread—and then I’m back, heart whole and healthy. Sometimes, when my son sees me taking my blood pressure medicine, he asks me what I’m doing. When I explain that my doctor wants me to take pills to keep me healthy, he says, “like vitamins?” And I say, “yes—exactly like vitamins.”

. . .

Because nothing is really fake.

. . .

Because in the 1980s, the Road Warriors feuded with the Midnight Express, two men with sexy monikers and average physiques: Loverboy Dennis Condrey and Beautiful Bobby Eaton were managed by Jim Cornette, a rich loudmouth who sported a yachting cap and a tennis racket. The draw for the audience wasn’t so much to see the two teams compete as it was to see the Midnight Express get beat up.

. . .

Because on Thanksgiving night in 1986, Starrcade was the National Wrestling Alliance’s biggest show of the year. They called it The Night of the Skywalkers and erected a construction scaffold twenty-five feet over the ring for the showdown between the Road Warriors and the Midnight Express—the team who threw their opponents off the scaffold would be named the winners of this spectacle of a fight in which the wrestlers were more likely to get hurt than hurt one another. In an interview leading up to the feud, Road Warrior Hawk looked into the camera. “There’s been a lot of talk about the Road Warriors losing their hearts, their taste for violence,” he said. “Well, we never had no hearts to begin with.”

. . .

Because the ancient Romans would have loved professional wrestling—all that violence and all that blood and the fans rabid in the stands to see one man hurt the other, sometimes with his fists, better with a folding chair or a Kendo stick, the God of War exhaling through everyone’s lungs at once. Imagine the bloodlust a man can inspire if he can return night after night instead of being fed to a lion. Imagine the angels watching from up on high, waiting to escort the fallen away from the battlefield. Imagine all our thumbs joyfully pointing to the colosseum floor.

. . .

Because my father wrote poems about surviving that concentration camp for Japanese Americans where he and his parents were imprisoned, poems about his divorce from my mother, poems about his life before I was born and while he lived apart from us. Those poems still speak to me, still spill new secrets every time I sit down with them. And yet there are so many things I will never be able to ask him. Like, which do you hear more often at your house: morning rain or morning birds? Like, do you imagine seeing my porch light when you look out your bedroom window? Like, do I love you or your shadow? When I hear my father’s voice in my head, he speaks English, except for the word he used when he tried to lift something heavy in the yard, the same word my grandfather used. They say it together in Japanese: Usho! Usho! I never learned exactly what this word means.

. . .

Because in America, heart attacks are on the rise. Because according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, one out of every four deaths in the United States is the result of heart disease. Because heart disease is the leading cause of death for nearly every racial demographic. For Asian Americans, a stopped heart is the second leading cause of death. The first is cancer. Because my father had cancer, but then died when his heart stopped and the doctors couldn’t restart it.

. . .

Because my son’s middle name is Hawk. He wasn’t named after Road Warrior Hawk, but it makes for a good story. I once told my wife that if we have another child, I wanted to name her Animal. She laughed, thinking the idea was only half-funny. I was only half-joking.

. . .

Because that scaffold match at Starrcade ’86 was more about the danger of falling than it was about wrestling. It runs seven minutes bell to bell, the Midnight Express refusing to climb the rickety ladders while the Road Warriors wait for them up top. “This is ridiculous, This isn’t even civilization,” Cornette hollers. “It’s ludicrous! It’s insane! It’s stupid!”

At the beginning, the Midnight Express blinds Hawk and Animal with a mysterious powder thrown into their eyes. From there, the action is hesitant, all four men fighting on their knees or lying prone, bellies pressed to the scaffold that shivers and sways with every move they make. The crowd squeals with glee when the wrestlers tease falling—Hawk dangling off the scaffold while Loverboy kicks him in the head, Beautiful Bobby hanging from Animal’s leg until he can swing to safety. The Road Warriors fight to their feet and the Midnight Express tries to climb down—the match ends with both teams hanging from the scaffold’s bottom, the Road Warriors aiming savage kicks at their enemies’ backs and legs, the crowd screaming because someone is about to get hurt. Loverboy falls first and Beautiful Bobby quickly after that. Afterwards, Hawk drops to the ground to attack Jim Cornette, who panics and climbs back up the scaffold to escape. The crowd shrieks in delight because when he gets to the top, he finds Animal pounding fist into palm, both of them thirty feet above the floor.

. . .

Because I still won’t say that pro wrestling is fake.

. . .

Because after being diagnosed with cancer, my father lived with my sister for eight months. The cancer moved fast, spreading throughout his colon and into other parts of his body. He was getting chemo and needed someone to help him move around, to plan his diet, and to help him change his colostomy bag.

My sister’s house is not big, but she made it big enough.

Because my family and I flew from where we live in Michigan to see him in Seattle. He and I ate food court ramen and went grocery shopping and made small talk about being a father, about poetry, about cancer. I have one photo of him holding my son in his lap, the only time the two of them were ever together because shortly after we returned home, my son started daycare and was coughing or sneezing constantly. Our house became a breeding ground for germs, and because my father’s immune system was compromised by chemo, I didn’t see him again until after he died.

. . .

Because in a video to promote the Night of the Skywalkers, the Road Warriors travel to a construction site. Road Warrior Hawk explains that construction workers risk their lives on the scaffold: “They’re the closest ones to the sky,” he says looking up like he can see the ghosts of men reliving their last moments up high before falling to their deaths. After climbing to the top of the scaffold, the Road Warriors produce a couple of pumpkins with names written on them in black marker: Loverboy and Bobby. “This is what your head’s gonna do when it hits the ground,” Animal says as Hawk throws the pumpkins to the ground—they hurtle through the air, a slow motion montage of two gourds sailing groundward as Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” plays unironically in the background.

Because I can almost hear the pumpkins’ voices through all of this, their terrified chatter as they are lifted over Hawk’s head, their horrified cries as they tumble through space, unable to resist gravity’s pull. “That pumpkin is like your heads,” Animal hollers, as if the metaphor isn’t obvious: the cartoonish splatter of rind and melon guts hitting the dirt. 

. . .

Because the Road Warriors were also called the Legion of Doom. Doom, as in unavoidable future. Doom, as in ruinous destiny. Doom, as in the end.

. . .

Because after my parents’ divorce, I didn’t want to believe that pro wrestling was fake. My father and I had two days together twice a month and we watched wrestling at his house. He tried so many times to tell me and my sister that the fighting we watched on television wasn’t real violence, and I didn’t understand why he would lie to us.

Because I didn’t believe my father was mortal—he was an Aikido master who stood in the middle of the dojo and let the whole school rush him one by one. He was beautiful, spinning and turning, side-stepping punches and pitching person after person to the floor, a fluid dance of deflection and redirection, a gust of bodies flying from his hands to the ground in every direction.

. . .

Because the Road Warriors usually finished their matches with a move called the Doomsday Device. Animal lifted one of their opponents onto his shoulders in a sitting position, the way I lift my son onto my shoulders to look over a fence or brush his fingers across a ceiling fan. Then Hawk leaped from the top turnbuckle and caught the opponent with a flying forearm to the throat that sent everyone tumbling to the canvas.

Because the Hart Foundation was a tag team who beat their opponents with a similar move, except Jim Neidhart simply held the opponent in a bear hug and Bret Hart’s clothesline came off a running rebound from the ropes. Safer than the Doomsday Device, their move was called the Hart Attack.

. . .

Because Road Warrior Hawk wrestled his last match in 2003, teaming with someone who was not Road Warrior Animal in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. Because the Road Warriors had been wrestling separately because of Hawk’s problems with drugs and alcohol. Because two weeks later, his wife found him dead of a heart attack. He was taking a nap.

. . .

Because your father is your father. Maybe you feel abandoned. Maybe you feel like you abandoned him. It’s both and neither. He is gone. He is behind you right now. He has something to tell you. Listen real hard—you might be able to hear his voice. Anything can be real if you believe hard enough.

. . .

Because some things are easiest to believe in when they look fake.

. . .

Because cardiac arrest and a heart attack aren’t the same things. The latter is caused by blockage while the former occurs when an electrical malfunction stops the heart. After several months of treatments, my father was improving, the cancer in his body shrinking to a point where the doctors believed they could remove his colostomy bag easily. Before the operation, we spent the entire day and night texting and calling back and forth, trying to catch one another to say hello, good luck, everything will be fine. His heart stopped the following morning. It’s a routine procedure, my father said on my voice mail before he went in. I’ll call you afterwards.

. . .

Because I really want this essay to be about how my son has never watched professional wrestling. We tried to watch it on television together once—the Road Warriors entering the arena wearing vicious face paint and spikes to a mix of raspy guitar and a sinister voice punched through a fuzzbox. They marched to the ring through a haze of darkness and smoke, Animal scowling at the crowd, Hawk with his tongue lolling out of his mouth. I asked my son if he was scared, and he nodded. I changed the channel and we watched a cartoon instead. Now when I ask him if he wants to watch wrestling, he says, wrestling is boring.

. . .

Because when Jim Cornette finds himself alone with Road Warrior Animal twenty-five feet above the ring, he drops to the scaffold and hugs it like it’s the ground. Because he scoots his body off the side to dangle above the ring where his bodyguard is waiting to catch him, or at least break his fall. Because when Cornette lets go and falls to the ground, his bodyguard just watches him hit the canvas, just watches both of Cornette’s knees blow out under him from the impact. Because this is a real injury captured on film. Because you can watch it over and over and no one ever reaches out to catch him.

. . .

Because I don’t remember what happened that night. I was busy at work that week, my schedule crowded with meetings and paperwork and raising my son to be a good person. The following morning, I had several missed calls from my sister, and when I was finally able to reach her, she was in tears.

“He’s gone,” she said. “Dad’s gone.” “I’m on my way,” I said.

. . .

Because next year, my son will be five and we will watch wrestling together. He will cheer for the good guys and jeer at the bad guys. I won’t explain anything about what is real or fake. My heart will be healthy. I will be eating lots of salad and exercising regularly. My son will figure out for himself what he wants to believe in.

. . .

Because one night, the skywalkers will come for me, too. Descending from the ceiling, one of them will pin my body to the sheets while the other slaps the mattress three times. I will kick my legs, windmill my arms, but everyone disappears behind that dark curtain one day: my father, me, you. No amount of disbelief, no amount of denouncing anything as fake by anyone—president, pope, or world champion—can change this.

. . .

Because at the Road Warriors’ Wrestling Hall of Fame Induction Speech in 2011, Animal and Paul Ellering accepted the honor along with an action figure they placed at the front of the podium, a tiny plastic likeness of Road Warrior Hawk that faced the crowd, one fist raised in salute to the wrestlers and fans in attendance. If you believe hard enough, you might be able to hear Action Figure Hawk speak.

Paul Ellering: “Hawk, we both love and miss you…I’m not an angel, but I know an angel. And what does that angel say?” Action Figure Hawk: Tell ‘em, Animal.

Road Warrior Animal: “Ohhh, what a rush!”

. . .

Because there is nothing more real than hearing the dead speak.

. . .

Because it was nearly midnight when I finally got to the hospital to say goodbye to my father’s body. The nurses had placed him in the bed so he looked like he was sleeping. I don’t remember everything we talked about. I made a lot of apologies. He said, you’re my son. It’s okay. He said, You don’t have to say anything. I love you too. He said, Don’t worry—you’ll figure out how to be a good dad. When I kissed him goodbye, his forehead was like a stone pressed to my lips.

. . .

Because the other day, when I picked my son up from preschool, he said to me, “my heart is in my hand.” I didn’t understand and asked him to repeat it: “my heart is like my hand,” he said.

“Do you mean your heart is the same size as your fist?” I said.

“Yes,” he said.

W. Todd Kaneko is the author of This is How the Bone Sings (Black Lawrence 2020) and The Dead Wrestler Elegies (New Michigan Press 2021) and coauthor of Poetry: A Writers’ Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury Academic 2018). A Kundiman fellow, he lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he teaches at Grand Valley State University.