How Bad Bunny Changed My Fantasy World

There are two types of pipe dreams: the possible and the impossible. By definition, a pipe dream is something that will almost certainly never happen. Whatever your pipe dreams are, whether you wish to be President or to win the Grammy for Best Comedy Album, the odds are so seriously stacked against you that you’ll likely never take significant steps to achieve your dream.

And that’s okay. Having pipe dreams is a meaningful part of your fantasy universe, but they’re fantasies for a reason. We’re mostly fine with having our pipe dreams forever remain pipe dreams. The majority of them would take a radical and infeasible change in lifestyle to bring to fruition, and we really don’t want them THAT much. They’re just there for fun.

Not all pipe dreams are created equally, however. Let me speak from personal experience. I would love to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and I’d also love to be a starting guard in the NBA for the Charlotte Hornets. Those are both fantasies that I’ve entertained for my entire adult life, but neither of them are going to happen, and I’m satisfied with that.

That’s about the only thing they share in common though. The poetry thing, though incredibly unlikely, exists in the real world as something that I could, if a million things in my life were different, achieve. I’ve written a lot of poetry, some of it good, and there’s still plenty of time in my life to write more. I would need to completely change the focus of my life to dedicate myself entirely to my craft, and I’d also need an unprecedented influx of raw talent that I have heretofore never possessed. More importantly than either of those things (not everyone who wins the Pulitzer Prize is talented…), I’d need to enter the world of contemporary poetry, its submission machine and literary agents and publishing politics. I’d need to shop my poems, probably for years, and I’d need to engage in the kind of networking that is required to even get my poems into book form, much less distributed by a publisher that is on the radar of the Pulitzer committee. Experience tells me that poets almost never win the Pulitzer without a significant history of previous publications, so (my chapbook and miscellaneous publications in random minor places notwithstanding) I’d basically need to build a portfolio from scratch. All of this would almost certainly have to be in place for at least 3 years before I’d have a shot at being considered for the Pulitzer. Even if I didn’t need to become a better poet in order to get multiple books published (I would like to think that being a better poet would be a requirement for that, but I know that it isn’t), the commitment of time and energy to write the books, campaign for them to get published, hob-nob with the poetry world’s tastemakers, and everything else that comes with this process is enormous. Like I said, it would necessitate a huge lifestyle change to pursue something that only 21 people have been awarded this millennium and that I don’t believe I really deserve in the first place.

But it’s still POSSIBLE. I can write poetry of the sort that is in fashion at the moment, though not of excellent quality, and a series of events could theoretically take place that would take the poems I haven’t yet written (or, even more improbably, the ones I already have) to the top of the poetry world. Maybe my chapbook gets into the hands of someone, and they love it so much they commission a book that I somehow find time to write? Maybe THAT book is so great that it takes the literary world by storm, forcing the Pulitzer committee to recognize it? Maybe something really unique happens to me (I get stranded alone on a hot air balloon caught in a tree for four days and survive on nothing but a handful of Cheez-Its) and, after going viral, I write some poems about it that are good enough to win me national appeal? The world is a weird place, and much weirder things have happened in it than someone who almost got an MFA in Poetry finding a way to write poems that win a major poetry award. It’s not going to happen, but it’s still possible.

In contrast, me being a starting guard in the NBA is not possible. I’m 5’8 and have the muscle definition of a wet Oreo. I’m not strong, can’t jump high, and am only fast in comparison with slower people. I’m inconsistent on the 8-foot basketball goal in my own backyard, even using the smaller ball that we bought for my wife’s third graders. Even if the basketball talent pool became so decimated that the REARICKS were called upon to join the NBA, I would still be the second pick in my own family. Possibly even third if my dad could just be a spot-up shooter and didn’t have to run the court. There is no situation, literally none, in which I could play in the NBA, much less start. It just couldn’t happen. I would need the kind of magical talent infusion that the little kid in that Kevin Durant movie gets when the two of them are Freaky Friday-ed. And I would say no to the NBA’s invitation to play anyway because I’m a stay-at-home parent who doesn’t want to spend half of my year traveling to play on a Hornets team that probably isn’t going to make the playoffs if I play on it.

I have always considered my pipe dream of having an iconic moment at Wrestlemania that’s based on me actually wrestling (and not me being a special guest referee who gets a surprise stunner or something) to be a pipe dream of the latter variety. If you take a look at the four current world champions, two men’s and two women’s, you’ll find that it is physically impossible for me to represent any kind of believable challenge to them in an athletic contest. Not only am I inhibited by the lack of strength, height, and jumping abilities that I mentioned earlier, I’m also very scrawny, which makes me especially unimposing when standing next to pretty much anyone. And I doubt I have the coordination level needed to perform even the most basic wrestling maneuvers in a convincing way. Additionally, I have what I consider a low threshold for pain, and, combining that with my thin frame and lack of fat or muscle, I strongly suspect that one discus clothesline from Natayla would be enough to sideline me for weeks, let alone the kind of extended and elaborate physical punishment I’d need to take for a Wrestlemania-length match. Let me be clear about this. Alexa Bliss would deal me what could be serious injuries with two or three moves from her regular skill set. If she hit me with her top rope finishing move? I foresee months of physical therapy there.

Pro wrestling has never been in the cards for me, but that hasn’t stopped it from being a pipe dream of mine any more than the NBA thing. The Wrestlemania moment dream has always been somewhat bolstered by the fact that celebrities are involved in the PPV every year, and anyone could become a celebrity in the age of social media, but that isn’t the kind of moment I’d want. I don’t want to throw an awkward punch and have Shane McMahon collapse to the mat like he’s been hit with a sledgehammer. I want a REAL Wrestlemania moment. I always knew that that could never happen.

Always until this year, the Year of Bad Bunny. If you don’t know (I didn’t), Bad Bunny is a Latin rapper and a global superstar. He’s currently the most streamed artist in the entire world on Spotify, and he has multiple platinum records. He’s BIG. I can’t get into his music because not speaking the language of the singer is a dealbreaker for me, but that’s becoming less of an obstacle for people in general. And, you know, good for everyone for being so open to music in other languages. It isn’t for me, but neither is classical music, and that’s stuck around for a while.

Earlier this year, Bad Bunny parlayed his musical superstardom into a series of appearances on Raw, teaming up with an up-and-coming wrestler named Damian Priest. It was pretty standard fare for a celebrity making recurring appearances. He’d stand next to Priest and make the occasional remark or sit ringside for his matches and celebrate with him after his victory. Bunny got into a silly feud with The Miz, and the two traded insults and in-match taunts for a couple of weeks. It was clearly designed to set up a Miz/Priest Wrestlemania match with Bad Bunny in his friend’s corner to give fans an additional reason to be invested in a rising star. I was a bit surprised to see Bunny on EVERY show, and my lack of knowledge of who he was made those appearances uninteresting, but I didn’t truly mind. Celebrities show up for Wrestlemania Season all the time, and Bad Bunny wasn’t hurting anyone, especially since he was feuding with The Miz (although The Miz did improbably take a week off from this feud to be WWE Champion???). The only thing truly remarkable about the bit was that Bunny pulled off a top rope crossbody at the Royal Rumble, albeit an awkward one. The goodwill gained by him performing an actual wrestling maneuver in January was enough to get me through all the way to April. Celebrities usually just throw one fake punch at the big PPV and call it day. I liked that Bunny put himself a little bit at risk with a top rope move. That was enough for me.

When they booked a Miz/Bunny match for Wrestlemania instead of a Priest/Miz match, I was a little surprised. Bunny had done a few other things at that point to indicate that he wasn’t your everyday cameo. He won the 24/7 Championship, which is meaningless by itself, but then he brought the belt for his performance on SNL, which showed me that he wanted the whole world to know that he was a real-life wrestling fan. I was starting to feel like he was one of *US* rather than just a random celebrity using Wrestlemania as a platform (like Logan Paul). When he took a shot to the back from The Miz with a fake guitar, I was sold on the idea of a Bunny/Miz Wrestlemania match. I could tell that he wanted to be there. I could tell that he wanted his own match, rather than a special refereeing gig or an “accompanied by” slot. I was so convinced of this that I felt genuinely disappointed when the WWE changed the match to a tag team one, adding in Priest and Miz’s tag partner John Morrison. I knew that this meant that Bunny had actually only intended to do the usual celebrity “blow a legitimate wrestling move in embarrassing fashion while the announcers fawn over their impressive display of athleticism” thing. You know, like Snooki.

Oh well. We’d all had our fun believing that Bunny, who was at least still clearly a real wrestling fan, was going to actually wrestle.

But then, something amazing happened. Bad Bunny wrestled the first 12 minutes of his tag team match at Wrestlemania. He hit a tornado DDT, a flying headscissors, and a falcon arrow. He threw legitimate (fake) punches and kicks. He came off the ropes like a pro. And, maybe most importantly, he took a lot of punishment from The Miz and Morrison, most of which looked about as real as it normally does. If you didn’t know Bunny was a celebrity (and you had the announcers on mute), you wouldn’t have known it wasn’t a regular match. It was amazing. It stole the show. It raised the bar for celebrities wrestling at Wrestlemania. And it was an honest Wrestlemania moment.

What does this have to do with ME? Look. Bad Bunny isn’t a big guy. He’s only three inches taller than me. He’s scrawny. And I have strong suspicions that he wore his 2032 outfit for the entirety of his match to hide the fact that he has no muscle definition. I’m not saying that I’m the SAME as Bad Bunny. He weighs like 50 pounds more than me (although who doesn’t?). I’m just saying that we’re not that far apart. Based on his wrestling, I’m thinking we have similar verticals and would be pretty close in a foot race. Bad Bunny isn’t me, but we’re not that different.

What made Bad Bunny’s Wrestlemania moment so special was that he clearly trained for months for his match. The moves he hit were complicated ones, and the only way he could have pulled them off convincingly was by putting in hours and hours of work at the WWE Performance Center. He didn’t just prepare. He WORKED. Getting ready for this match must have occupied a huge chunk of his time, likely from at least February to April, which is especially impressive since he’s about to go on tour. And, even though it raised his profile some, the amount of work he put in so far exceeds the uptick in exposure he received (which he could have gotten without even being in the match) that there’s only one explanation for it: Bad Bunny was exploiting his popularity as a musician to get himself a real Wrestlemania moment, not the other way around.

I’m not going to become a famous Latin rap artist. That’s not on the table for me. But me becoming famous isn’t IMPOSSIBLE. And, if I were sufficiently famous (not matter how I got there), I could get myself a 12 minute chunk of Wrestlemania time. Vince McMahon is a businessman. If he knew it was going to bring in viewers, he would give me as much time as he felt like I warranted. I don’t know how I’d ever be that famous, but there’s always a chance in 2021 of any person becoming a national (even international) star. Bad Bunny is as an extremely popular musician globally, but he isn’t unreachably famous in America. More than a few people in the buildup to his match had no idea who he was. That could be demographics to an extent, but demographics play a large part in determining who gets how much time at the WWE’s most important PPV.

In contrast, I could never be Drew McIntyre, who is built like a Scottish god. I could never be Damian Priest, who looks like an exceptionally athletic bouncer at at musical venue so exclusive and hardcore that it’s basically the rock version of Fight Club. Even The Miz, who doesn’t look superhuman, is a true-life professional athlete. I will never be even half as coordinated as he is. And I can’t act either. We’re talking about live performing here. The Miz may not seem untouchable, but you and I will never reach the level of talent he possesses as a live actor. That’s how he got to be WWE Champion despite looking like this:

All I’m saying is that me being a professional wrestler in an impossible pipe dream. But if I did manage somehow to get super famous, I mean really hugely popular, I would absolutely consider using that celebrity to get myself some Wrestlemania time. And, even though I probably couldn’t be as good as Bad Bunny with an entire year’s worth of training, his Wrestlemania match showed me that scrawny dudes who aren’t strong and can’t jump really CAN live out their dream of having a real moment at Wrestlemania if they work hard enough. It’s still a pipe dream, one that I don’t even know that I want. But, thanks to Bad Bunny, it’s a different kind of pipe dream now, and I will always respect him for that.