A temperate Spring Saturday night in Philadelphia, an excellent time to go out and partake in one of the myriad cultural offerings that abound in the city. The Editor, along with Der Fledermaus, LLC video crew and Dr. Frank Farley of Temple University struck out on this night with a particular diversion in mind...

 

CZW

It's the first match of the night, the start of a professional wrestling event held in the gymnasium of Philadelphia University [1], formerly Phila. College of Textiles and Science. Out strides a tall man dressed like a giant leprechaun, green pointed boots, shillelagh in hand. Letters on the back of his green vest spell "Giant Leprechaun." A contingent of maybe twenty apparently Irish fans sitting together in the stands cheer him on throughout the match, waving signs reading "Patty-O 3:17" and posters of the wrestler--all very fitting for the day after St. Patrick's Day. The match is pretty standard stuff. The guys throw each other around for a while and eventually Patty-O pins his obvious punching-bag, but not before also body-slamming the wrestler's female companion who had entered the ring too. Patty-O exits to the cheers of his loyal fans, most of whom leave after this first match featuring their favorite. Backstage dressed in his street clothes the Giant Leprechaun looks like a school teacher, and declines a request to be interviewed saying he's not really too much a part of "this." What he means by "this" is the main event, CZW, Combat Zone Wrestling, where before the night is over men will hurl each other into glass, thumbtacks and barbed wire and will attack each other with a bowling ball, a kitchen sink and a weed whacker.

When you apply a weed whacker to a guy's bare chest it makes about the same sound as when you push it into a patch of weeds--but I get ahead of myself. CZW is pretty new and not too well known which may explain how such a violent show, where people bring their kids (from about age five on up)[2], can take place on a college campus. It is one of two or so New Jersey-based wrestling groups similar to the more popular ECW that specialize in a more violent, more real type of match where those involved sustain cuts and bleed profusely. By the time this event was over, the entire mat was pink with wrestlers' blood.

Blood is the image that dominated my mind on leaving there. Blood on the wrestlers, blood on the mat and on the implements they use to attack each other, bloody bandages on the floor backstage. As we climbed the stairs to the backstage area--the gym's locker room--there were spots of blood all over, smeared on the steps, diluted in small scattered pools of water on the cement floor.

Blood sport has a circular history. A form of it surfaces, suffers protest and often gets shut down or loses popularity and goes away eventually. Gladiator games were on-and-off during their time--banned occasionally depending on who was in power. The disappearance of organized fighting always presents the question of when its eventual resurgence will come and what form it will take. Why the appearance of this branch of wrestling, bleeding as entertainment, now?

There's the Peacetime/Good Economy explanation--that things are good, that there isn't the slightest threat from an outside aggressor or enemy, and hence the public need to direct its natural collective aggression (in relation to nationalism/identity-definition) elsewhere--in this case through staged battles, that these contests fill a need by safely discharging potentially dangerous libidinal energy. In other words, better to spend the evening screaming and swearing at a wrestler you don't like than to walk out onto the front porch one afternoon and take it out on your neighbor, yelling something like "Get the fuck off my lawn you Goddamn [insert appropriate racial/ethnic/religious/gender slur here]!!"

This is a good explanation of professional wrestling's incredible popularity right now. For our brand of bloodsport their is another theory too, that of intensification. This has two parts; first there is "upping the ante," or competing groups in a category of entertainment each taking the next step in an effort to draw a larger audience--offering more violence, more sex etc. than their competitors. Second is the intensification of something's "underground" that coincides with other parts of it becoming more "mainstream." This happens most obviously in music, where as one genre becomes more acceptable, more polished and commercialized, underground groups of the same genre, despite having similar roots, will become more extreme, more divergent and experimental than their commercially popular "peers," growing in a different direction. CZW does promote itself as "Ultraviolent Wrestling," and claims no other league comes close to its violence, to its reality. The more something is socially accepted--in this case the WWF/Hulk Hogan style wrestling--the more radical the steps made by the underground to distinguish itself; maybe CZW is just taking the next logical step in pushing wrestling further.

And speaking of reality, the "reality" question complicates things further. The wounds are real, though the fight itself is not, so a reality of fighting cannot be presented the way it can for instance by boxing or Ultimate Fighting where the men are in a true contest; the men cannot simply tear into each other without restraint, with the intention of honestly hurting each other. Extreme Wrestling seems to have married two needs as closely as possible in a society that won't permit people to rip each other apart in a human cockfight: the desire to see a fight, or battle, and the desire to see someone inflict a wound during this-- enough to draw blood, enough to make it "real."

During one match, a wrestler is getting the better of another who ends up lying on his back across a folding table outside of the ring near the wooden bleachers. Groggy, he just sort of lies there awaiting the inevitable. His opponent walks up the bleachers, climbs up onto the basketball backboard and walks carefully out to the edge, right up to the backboard. He jumps, landing on the opponent, crashing through the table, and is knocked unconscious. It is about fifteen minutes before he is up and walks away with help, wearing a neck brace.

This was too real, though maybe not for spectators who, as Farley suggested, would probably tolerate a much greater level of blood and violence. This incident laid a pall over the rest of the event and not just from a newcomer's perspective; it was decided that some of the more extreme stunts planned would not be used during the remaining bouts. And we were told several times that this match in general was considered one of the more "tame" ones. Other matches include blood-drawing activities such as cutting each other with a pair of scissors. On occasion this has gotten out of hand, the wounds created by this needing stitches.

The violent content of these matches has caused some controversy in Bayonne, New Jersey where they usually take place. Responding to complaints, the Mayor called for an investigation of the events. CZW boasts they have been banned in some areas. One of the weird things about this show was seeing so many kids there--kids years away from even being able to attend an R-rated movie by themselves. Naturally this is the main concern of Dr. Farley, an educator, commentator/specialist on Risk-Taking behavior, former head of the American Psychiatric Association, and an outspoken opponent of the fact that children are present at these matches. When Farley interviewed some of the participants backstage during and after the event a group of answers, defenses and rationalizations, emerged: children should be accompanied by their parents [this is not enforced at the door]; there is a ton of violent content in much entertainment in our society--this stuff is no more violent than what is available to kids elsewhere, and it is a little more basic and honest in its presentation than these other entertainment forms; they make no attempt to hide what takes place at the matches--people are aware of what they are about to see; and yes, some of them would not allow their own kids to see this.

Backstage a triage is set up in the area where the showers are. Two medics clean up and bandage the wrestlers' wounds. Guys sit and walk around, cooling off/coming down after their performance. Just about everyone is bleeding. A bloody aluminum kitchen sink sits against a wall. Most of the wrestlers are annoyed by the camera presence, but one of the medics is happy to talk to us about everything, describing the worst injuries, showing us the pliers he uses to pull thumbtacks from wrestlers' backs. A few wrestlers speak with us as well. A loose bandage hangs from the chest of Wife Beater as he talks to us. He was hit pretty good with the weed whacker and has a funnel shaped pattern of lacerations and opened areas on his right side but the bleeding has stopped. He turns around to show us past wounds; his whole torso and arms are covered with scars in various states of healing, various shades of pink. Later, walking into a local bar with glasses and a jacket on he looks like any college kid.

Backstage has a feel of community to it, kind of like a circus only where everyone is the Strong Man. John Zandig who is in charge of the whole thing, and a wrestler himself, explains that everyone involved is professional in what they do (wrestlers are trained at a school operated by CZW), that being liked, being able to get along, is a prerequisite--no jerks can remain in the organization.

The event has many of the show elements of larger scale wrestling: a fog machine, girls accompanying some wrestlers, and loud heavy metal provided for their entrance. The standard wrestling props are used-- trash cans to hit each other with, folding tables to smash through. There is a lot of audience participation, mainly in the form of shouting at individual wrestlers, and chanting some standard responses: Boring = the action during a match is going too slowly, Phony or I smell shit = things are too obviously set-up, Faggot = usually a wrestler who is running from another, though this can be shouted at anyone, and You Fucked Up = a stunt or move has obviously gone wrong. For example, one wrestler jumped from the top of a ladder set up in the ring. He was supposed to fall on two wrestlers standing beside the ring but fell short of this, hitting the corner of the ring before bouncing to the floor. This chant seemed especially nasty since in some of these cases the wrestler was obviously really hurt [this was briefly chanted as the one wrestler described earlier lay unconscious].

For the final match, a chaotic free-for-all involving many wrestlers in simultaneous fights, barbed wire is wrapped around the ropes. A kitchen sink is brought out for use in the ring. Things begin and it's not long before the blood is flowing. The telltale small engine scream means someone has fired up the weed whacker, and we see him running toward the ring with it. Zandig and Wife Beater become the main point of attention, Zandig getting the better of him, both covered in blood. Thumb tacks and some broken glass from a fluorescent tube stick out of someone's arm. It is in this match that the wrestlers will grab objects handed to them by audience members--stuff the fans have brought in themselves--to use as weapons on each other. Soon it looks like the contents of someone's garage are littered on and around the ring--blocks of wood, a hubcap, a tv, pool cue, crutches, computer keyboard, cash register, pipe wrench, a bowling ball and a toy fire truck wrapped in barbed wire. Someone tosses a cheese grater into the ring and Zandig catches it. He applies it to the prone Wife Beater's head and throws it back into the cheering crowd. A kid picks it up, holds it in the air, and from the other side of the ring you can see it is half covered in blood.

The match over, I thought I had seen it all, so to speak, regarding ultraviolent wrestling. The most bizarre part of the night was to come however, something I couldn't have anticipated. After all the wrestlers had gone backstage, and the music had stopped, and some of the crowd were moving toward the exits, many of the fans rushed up to the empty ring to retrieve the objects they had brought to be turned into weapons. The way they crowded around, it was like a K-Mart blue light special for useless blood-covered flea market items. People were thrilled as they gathered these things and walked away holding their possessions, as Dr. Farley said, now consecrated, touched by the heroes. The kid with the fire truck walked passed me smiling, the barbed wire he had wrapped around the toy still attached, but dangling loosely.

 

 

[1/02 Note: CZW is currently banned from playing in New Jersey. Matches still take place in Pennsylvania.]

 

 

[1] The "Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science" must have sounded too vocational, leading to the inflation to "University" status.

[2] Which maybe isn't a surprise since in other parts of the country I know people take their children to cockfights.

 

A past CZW Playbill

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