A wrestling show held on Friday night provided a great example of how the performer’s demographic is rapidly shifting away from bodybuilders and models and towards kids. Young nerds have grown up watching them.
Kidd Bandit, a non-binary cosplayer and Twitch streamer billed as a “pro-wrestling protagonist,” took part in a “devil’s playground” match with fellow indie wrestler Drexl at Prestige Wrestling’s Nonstop Feeling on July 22. The gritty confrontation characterizes all the excitement and bloody confrontations one would expect, but Kidd Bandit delivers with lovely flair, pop culture they gave a performance that caught the attention of the internet.
The match unfolds, for example, with Kidd Bandit writing their opponent’s name in their “Bandit Note”, a manga and anime play. Book Death. If you haven’t read or seen the source material, this is basically an inspirational piece of trash talk that predicts the end of Drexl.
Don’t worry, though, Drexl ended up tearing the page with his name on it out of the notebook and pin it to Kidd Bandit .’s head. I’m not 100% sure if that negates the curse but it’s pretty brutal.
At some point, Kidd Bandit also dropped Drexl onto thumb tacks with their version of the One-Winged Angel, a move popularized by pro-wrestling superstar Kenny Omega color it is named after Sephiroth’s theme in Final Fantasy VII.
However, the highlight of this match came when Kidd Bandit revealed a secret weapon: a barbed wire-covered version of his Heart KingdomIconic Keyblade. After swinging the weapon randomly around like Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars prequelKidd Bandit naturally used it to attack Drexl, a legal tactic in forbidden form.
The violent scene culminates with the anime-inspired wrestler diving over the top rope and posing near a fan reading the sign “Kidd Bandit has sold this seat.”
Oh, and in case you were wondering, Kidd Bandit won the match.
While Recent news around Vince McMahon makes it easy to fall in love with WWE’s traditional approach to professional wrestling, it’s nice to be reminded that that’s not all. Kidd Bandit and their contemporaries in indie wrestling represent a breath of fresh air in the industry, one that quickly becomes too hard to ignore.
