From Stephen Platinum: What was Joey Kidman to you? It’s a question that you answered in the last few days. For some, an answ...
From Stephen Platinum:
What was Joey Kidman to you?
It’s a question that you answered in the last few days. For some, an answer they were obliged to piece together. For some, they tried their best to avoid the question because the answer was too painful,or they felt made them look too bad. For others, they knew clearly. When you read the tributes, the stories, look at the pictures you can imagine the time poured into making sure the right picture was found, or that the most appropriate one was being shared. For some, that meant finding the exact right picture – the one that had him with you. For some, it meant finding the one that you felt captured him the best– being goofy, being loving, or being magnificent. For some, it meant having to look inward and try and figure it out – a sure sign of a life of significance. Joey Kidman mattered.
What was Joey Kidman to you?
He was young. Extremely young. More than anyone else in recent
memory, Kidman represented the promise of youth. You couldn’t help
but marvel at his size, his power, and the most dreaded and
tantalizing word of all – potential. That’s a word that does two
things at once – potential lifts you high, rife with expectation and
above so many petty things. But it also crushes you if you let it,
becomes a burden that affects everything in your world like gravity
does.
Potential. Kidman represented that as well. For all of the
haven’t-beens and never-will-be-wrestlers that inhabit the fantasy
world of pro wrestling at “our level,” whatever that means, Kidman was
potential personified. Sparks of brilliance, inspirer of envy, the
kind of guy that everyone who has contact with that you could easily
recall stories, conversations. When he began working out in earnest
it meant something to you, good or bad. When he won the PWA Heritage
title, that forced a reaction in you, inspired discussion for those
smart enough to know that he mattered. People who were his actual
friends, his actual mentors, and his actual family intermingled with
those that wanted to be. People were drawn to him.
He was gold. He won titles. Those that truly have a connection to
this thing called pro wrestling, those that care about what’s the draw
and who can make money and who has a real shot – Kidman was all those
kinds of gold. Promotions wanted him to be champion. The reason is
clear – he’s young, he’s good looking, he has “it,” he’s going to be
in the WWE, or TNA, or ROH, so you want to say “He was here, and I saw
it. He was gold and I had a hand in finding it. He was.” He was
money. He was the shining stuff that men go West for, that men want
to have. He was that kind of precious gold.
He was. But he isn’t, not anymore. Not on this world.
Jimmy Rave is clean and well. He wasn’t even aware of what had
happened to Kidman beyond what he had read on Facebook, which must
have been a confusing thing indeed. Rave has famously battled some of
the problems that Kidman faced. Jimmy Rave’s very name is symbolic of
youth, of a potential, and of a period of gold. Since that first
christening of the name, Jimmy Rave has battled. Ups and downs. And
in a wrestling business where those on the outside think it’s
comprised of normal people who do an unusual thing, and those on the
inside know that it’s comprised of abnormal people trying to normalize
an unusual thing, Jimmy was telling the truth. He hasn’t relapsed.
He hasn’t “fallen off of the wagon.” And for saying so, I apologize
wholeheartedly. He remains, weary from his battles but alive, and a
testament to many things – perseverance, the ability to start again,
the sign that you can find your way back from a VERY dark place more
than once, and…luck.
Luck.
It’s a tough concept, luck. For most it’s an excuse on why they
didn’t, why they couldn’t. Certainly most weren’t born with Kidman’s
genetics. When you look at Kidman’s much-maligned father (who
attended a great many of his son’s wrestling matches and was extremely
supportive, in spite of what has been purported) who is quite
short…Kidman’s outstanding size and ease at putting on muscle and
unbridled youth, potential and shining gold seem to come out of the
ether. But they don’t. His father is strong. His mother is strong.
Those that helped him early on, strong. All of those factors, all of
the happenstance meetings, the connections, the relationships that
could have easily never developed or never even happened in the first
place did, and that happenstance, those myriad of factors…that luck
was a part of the now myth of Joey Kidman.
The other side of luck. A bad decision that led to the improbable…for
many the impossible. Joey Kidman is dead. His youth forever
preserved but also lost forever. His potential now immortalized –
lifted and put into the ground all at the same time. As for gold….
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Rest in peace, Joey.