For the last two weeks, fluorescent lightbulbs had consumed my soul. And it wasn’t because I was planning a kitchen remodel or attempting to replace the actual burned out light tubes in my garage. No, I was imagining hundreds of them lining a wrestling ring in a Houston warehouse on Saturday night, waiting to be turned into a toxic cloud of glass and dust over a poor man’s head. 

I’d been hyping Loko Wrestling to my buddy Joe for almost a month, telling him he needed to expand his horizons and see how everyday Americans got their kicks on the weekend. I told him about the blood, the acrobatics, and yes, those milky-white cylinders of satisfaction. I told him about how when my other buddy Duff and I last went, the lightbulb carnage from the title match was so brutal, so complete, that the ring mat looked like shaved ice with cherry syrup squirted on top.