Baby Wants to Fight

The Masked Who Dat? vs Hayden Beaulieu, Video #9 (Living Room Wrestling)

"See that clock on the wall? In five minutes you are not going to believe what I've told you.." - Jeffrey in Blue Velvet

Living Room Wrestling has created a video for wrestling fans disappointed that underground wrestling isn't weirder than it is. Provocatively patterned after David Lynch's 1986 masterpiece Blue Velvet, the video imitates the creepy and dangerous bond between Jeffrey Beaumont and Frank Booth, only on a wrestling mat in a living room, with the Dennis Hopper character wearing a metallic-gold mask and cape emblazoned with the fleur-de-lis of the New Orleans Saints.

There's a ref on hand, Sean Evans, who was Hayden Beaulieu's opponent in a previous match, which Sean voluntarily threw in order to give Hayden a "cheap victory" and the fans, a truncated video. Hayden and Sean have further bonded with each other following this match, so though technically, as ref, Sean should not be personally involved in the match, he is and is even more heatedly so after Who Dat? brutalizes Hayden. So Sean is Laura Dern? Or is he Isabella Rossellini?

The action shifts to outside, where Sean settles the score with the mysterious Who Dat? But is this the end? Perhaps only the robin knows. (That is a robin, isn't it? It was an animatronic robin in the film, at any rate. The mechanical bird in the movie vaguely resembled the bird perched on Julie Andrews' finger in Mary Poppins. This one is, at least, a real bird, LRW having spared no expense.)

If all you enjoy about wrestling are jocks with biceps and high and tight haircuts, LRW may not be for you. If you, like me, don't crave a non-wrestling storyline attached to your wrestling, this video may produce more head-scratching than whoops. All the same, I admit I'm a little bit intrigued by Video #9's attempt to replicate Lynch's surrealist film. Hayden and Sean's near-affectless performance styles are a close match to every performance in Blue Velvet except for Hopper's scary histrionics, reasonably duplicated here despite the encumbrance of a lucha mask. The two protagonists are slender and good looking, but the wrestling is not so much wrestling as a string of abuses and sadistic humiliations.

I can't say that this 23-minute video is like any wrestling exhibition I have seen before. It's definitely something for the adventurous and open-minded. So here's the question: "You wanna go for a ride?"


Visit LRW here.