Kim Chee

A Kimpenetrable Jungle

I expected this tough guy to have a shell harder than a Madagascan coconut. I’d heard from friends in the business following wasted trips to Africa, returning only with unanswered questions and sometimes worse: black eyes, swollen lips or bruised egos. My quest was to interview Kim Chee: explorer, landowner and former pro wrestler, presumed lost in the wilderness until caught on CCTV in a pub garden in Freemantle, UK, consensually spanking bodybuilder and recently-crowned Slenderslam champion, Lex Luger. On his ten-week tour of Europe, Chee had not broken his silence; instead of public speaking he was using interpretive dance to highlight the plight of rare primates and other animals. He still wears a luchador mask and carries a riding crop and was last seen prising a semi-tame pygmy hippo out of a Co-op fridge. I needed to sharpen my machete if I was going to open the coconut without spilling the milk. He is not your traditional competitive athlete. Think 19th-century discoverer Dr Livingstone, crossed with Spinal Tap’s cricket bat-wielding manager, Ian Faith, spliced with Thames Television’s popular yellow teddy bear hand puppet, Sooty. Except that David Livingstone’s mission was to find the source of the River Nile, not to seek wrestling’s Samovar trophy. The list of mysteries was longer than an African asp. Why did Kim Chee never speak, nor show his face in public? Why, in 2019, did he travel 6,000 miles to the Waterloo Arms, Hampshire, UK? What exactly was in the small print in that contract made with Hollywood A-lister, Mitch Sizemore? And what had happened to his friendship with barefoot, moob-painted, loincloth-wearing associate, Kamala the Ugandan Giant? ‘Kim Chee is not mute,’ a colleague of mine had informed me. ‘He chooses to communicate from behind a leather facemask using only nods and grunts. He can speak, but he refuses to do so. You’re wasting your time, ATB.’ So I headed into Africa for adventure and, unlike those that had come before me, I had a plan. I would stride where others had tripped and this meant observing Chee’s passions as though they were my own. The enigma was waiting to be explored like the dense rainforest a few miles from his home. It was Martyr’s Day when I landed in Kampala, Uganda, where I knew my quarry would be doing accounts in the office behind his bar. From a table in the corner I sipped a margarita and thought about my childhood obsession with Sooty the bear. Sooty was very cheeky. He would only communicate through one person, the larger-than-life Matthew Corbett, and he did this by whispering into his ear. Likewise, Chee would whisper instructions to the massive Kamala, the latter being the talkative one. Despite being physically dwarfed by Matthew it was Sooty that would constantly torment his human friend, routinely humiliating him, usually by custard pie or water pistol. The similarities to the Kamala / Kim Chee relationship were not to be ignored. I could hear the churring of nightjars as the sun massaged the horizon, knowing full well that only one of my messages had been responded to: the one about the lemurs of Madagascar. I was on Chee’s turf now – he owned the place, so I had to be patient. I was fanning myself with a beer mat when a beaded curtain parted and a burly man, all in khaki, came and sat opposite. He placed his safari hat on the table and without removing the monochrome facemask he bade me good evening. The hardest part was out of the way; I was potentially the ‘mark’ here and my ‘mute’ interviewee had just spoken! I very almost said ‘Dr Chee, I presume?!’ but wisely I withheld. The salutation was disarming and I scrambled to make the most of this unanticipated foothold by asking him about the Ugandan delicacy I had taken a renewed interest in with my fork. ‘Nsenene?’ he said. ‘They’re grasshoppers, fried in their own juices. I feed the legs and wings to the weaverbirds. Do you like it?’ Chowing down on garden insect I thought I’d address the elephant in the room by asking him about the mask. It was pure white except for a softer black part over the eyes, nose and mouth. When he spoke the lower portion of the hood moved up and down like a camel chewing a toffee. I could see no part of the man’s face; presumably he could see from behind it perfectly well. He stiffened when I drew attention to it. It was a nervous stumble on my part. He beckoned to the barman, who nodded back and brought a worn-out riding crop to the table. This was clearly bravado but I thought I’d better give up on the mask mystery unless I wanted a drubbing. For now, I had to assume it was to keep out the mosquitoes and leave it at that. It was quite normal for Kim Chee to carry out everyday tasks hooded and brandishing equestrian accoutrement. Not wishing to be whipped for insubordination I asked him about his second passion after hurting people for entertainment: his conservation work. ‘It’s an uphill battle but we’ve had some recent successes,’ he said. ‘Deforestation is always a concern but animal adoptions have really taken off. Folk are much more educated now than they were several decades ago.’ Three decades earlier, Chee was living in New York City and going by the name Steve Lombardi. He wore no mask and Brooklyn was his jungle. If you had pressed Lombardi back then to give you the name of his wrestling stage-name he would have said ‘the Brooklyn Brawler’. If you had asked this street fighter if he knew the true identity of Kim Chee he would have spat gum in your face. The truth is nobody knows Kim Chee’s true origins. I had to focus on what I did know. I knew that Kamala was more likely to fry an animal than adopt it. ‘We’ve had our differences,’ Kim said of his relationship with Kamala. ‘I mean, I nurtured and guided him in the early days. People called him a headhunter, which drove him crazy. Sometimes I abused him with my leather prompter. He kicked my ass in ’93.’ He was flexing the riding crop and I imagined him riding a zebra across a savannah. He went on, ‘we reconciled much later and things went back to the way they were. We even got high up the bill at the Texas Wrestlemania. I was there when he fought Randy Orton in ‘05. I was there for him time and again. ‘We’d made plans to go to Slenderslam, but when he found out about the lemurs he lost it. He told me my newfound occupation was at odds with sports entertainment. He knew I would be trying to push my primate agenda onto punters and that it just wouldn’t work at a wrestling event. Sustainability and all that. Also, he knew Bobby would be there and that Bobby would crucify me.’ He was referring to wrestling great Bobby ‘The Brain’ Heenan, known for managing myriad wrestling greats, for his unique colour commentary and for his roasting of so many industry egos. Nobody was safe from this guy, especially not the eccentric Chee. So Slenderslam 11 was attended without the mighty Kamala, but nobody saw what came next: Chee forged a new alliance with the event’s long-term host. ‘I met Mitch Sizemore online in a nature forum. He was there purely by accident. He had been looking for wild life, not wildlife.’ He went on to tell me about the conservation programme he had convinced Sizemore to help fund, in return for several reels of previously unreleased backstage footage he had acquired in the mid-eighties. He appealed to Sizemore’s weakness for ‘the exclusive’ and Sizemore lapped it up. The deal enabled Chee to build an aviary, several pens and a lean-to. So why trade monkey-flips for monkey trips? ‘In Madagascar I found an injured black and white ruffed lemur,’ he revealed. ‘I named her Mukwano. It means friend. I nursed her back to health and she went on to mother six wonderful infants. ‘The species is critically endangered now, hence the adoption programme. It’s not a zoo; more of a holding zone before they are released into the wild. That one is a red ruffed lemur.’ He pointed at the pin badge I had fastened prominently on my lapel and he knew I must have adopted one of the lemurs. I imagined him smiling under that black and white mask. He handed me a paper pouch and I gave a donation. There was a photo of Mukwano. She looked back at me, her impenetrable white-furred expression having a perfect black middle, just like the famous luchador mask! I went to hand back the pouch and the enigma was gone. I was sat at an empty table. Instead, the barman took the money and I bade him goodnight. Kim Chee was silent once more. Although he’d said less than 300 words to me I felt like this was the scoop of my career.-ATB

Kim Chee - Slender Slam 11 (2019)

Born Steve LombardiDate of birth April 18th 1961Origin Brooklyn, New York Occupations Professional wrestler, handler, safari hunter Slenderslam Apps Slenderslam 11 (2019)

Grappling since 2009.