With striking good looks and increasingly frisky homo-social contact, the two played with queerness by smooching in the ring to taunt opponents–in between gorgeously synchronized aerial attacks.
The Golden Lovers formed in 2008 while both Omega and Ibushi competed in Japan’s more comedic league, Dramatic Dream Team Pro-Wrestling (DDT).
Kenny Omega and Kota Ibushi, the flirtatious duo who comprise the team, must now wrestle with with the responsibility of queer identity. This is precisely a question wrestling fans have found themselves grappling with as New Japan Pro Wrestling’s explosively popular tag team, The Golden Lovers, has become an unlikely breakout. Now, as pro-wrestling goes attempts a progressive overhaul in the face of growing social change, in what ways do the discussions about sexual diversity extend to an art form defined by artifice? Conversations about queer representation have dominated the discourse of LGBTQ people in entertainment in recent memory.
