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Does intergender wrestling encourage domestic violence or is it empowering for women?

Fights between men and women is frowned upon in mainstream wrestling: Getty
Fights between men and women is frowned upon in mainstream wrestling: Getty

Men going face-to-face with women in the wrestling ring is an issue that divides opinion. Some think it may encourage domestic violence by normalising a man hitting a woman. Others think it’s empowering for women to be athletically at the same level as a man, given that we are after all, talking about a scripted sport.

Last year in New York, the state athletic commission stopped a match between a man and a woman on the grounds that it was illegal, causing an outcry from the fans watching and confusion from the performers. The referee of the match picked up a microphone and called the officials sexist. “I didn’t react very well,” says Kris Levin, the referee in question. “I'm a huge believer in equal rights and when I saw that this was being stopped, solely on the basis of Jess being a woman, I was just shocked and appalled. It was state-sponsored sexism. It's ridiculous.”

As the crowd shouted “This is bullshit” in unison, Kris, the wrestlers, the commission officials and a lawyer from the audience went backstage and flicked through a rulebook. It was explained that the match was scripted and, eventually, the officials left with their tails between their legs. The match went ahead and received a standing ovation.

On the independent wrestling scene intergender matches are flourishing. Abbey Laith, a wrestler who has now signed for WWE, became the first woman champion of a major non-female promotion. She says intergender wrestling is empowering to young women watching, comparing it to female superheroes on screen fighting men. “It gives them a strong character to look up to and want to aspire to be” says Abbey.

As someone who has been a victim of domestic violence herself, she says “If you open yourself up to looking at it from a different view, then it doesn't really enforce domestic violence at all depending on how it's done.”

Andy Quildan, the founder of Revolution Pro Wrestling, a UK promotion that runs shows in Bethnal Green and Camden, won’t book intergender matches. “You go to wrestling and suspend your disbeliefs and what's not socially acceptable is a man hitting a woman. So when you see that happening and no one doing anything about it, you're kind of pulled away from it a little bit,” says Andy. “Only in the right scenario do you have that intergender-style match. Yes, women should be equal to guys but fundamentally women and men are built differently and there's nothing I can do about that.”

Now, men versus women matches don’t really happen in the mainstream anymore but it certainly used to. In the late 70s there was one man who brought it to the world's attention on prime time TV. That man was Andy Kaufman, the late Saturday Night Live comedian who was portrayed by Jim Carrey in the film Man On The Moon. In addition to wrestling women from the crowd on SNL, he also wrestled hundreds of women on college campuses. I spoke to Bob Zmuda, Andy’s best friend and co-writer who refereed those matches.

And he made some startling claims about Andy’s motivations behind wrestling women. “Andy was excruciatingly shy. He didn't date much or anything but he realised, after he could wrestle a woman, he broke down all those physical barriers. He said ‘You know, Zmuda, someday I'm going to open up intergender wrestling palaces all around the country’ and he would've done this had he lived – so shy guys could go in and they can meet these girls and they could wrestle them and eventually, if things worked out, they could have sex with them. That's exactly how he thought about it. I'd say eight out of ten times he'd end up on these college campuses sleeping with that girl that night because he really believed that it broke down the armour and they were so into it.” These claims are quite remarkable and sit uncomfortably with me. Was Kaufman a celebrity wrestling innovator or something far more sinister?

That wasn’t the only time men wrestling women has made it into the mainstream. WWE’s 1990s star Chyna regularly wrestled men, winning championships and entering the Royal Rumble. And it wasn't limited to mainstream wrestling in the United States. There was a woman who wrestled men in the UK as well. It was on ITV on a Saturday afternoon, and amongst the names Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks and Mick McManus was one woman: Klondyke Kate.

“They didn't want to wrestle women because some are quite the gentlemen and quite sexist and sort of thought we weren't tough enough to be wrestled by men or they didn't want to hurt us but the thing is we had to work twice as hard to prove ourselves because it was predominantly a male business,” says Jayne, who played Klondyke Kate. “To this day, a lot of men still don’t accept it so it is very sexist but women are doing so well now, more so than I ever imagined”

So does intergender wrestling encourage domestic violence? Ultimately, no more than it encourages violence in general – and everyone I spoke to rejected the notion on that basis – but there are clearly issues related to the image of a man hitting a woman (in any context) that would make a wrestling product less PG and lead to most promoters not presenting those matches. It is clear too that the impact of a woman beating a man in the ring, just as it does in superhero films, creates powerful female role models for young women watching wrestling.

Despite its fledgling popularity on the independent scene it's unlikely to hit the mainstream unless it's a carnival-like special attraction akin to Chyna or, god help us, Andy Kaufman returns and opens his palaces.

Dan Higgins is host of ‘The World According To Wrestling’. Intergender wrestling is explored in depth on The World According To Wrestling podcast, available now on iTunes