PROFESSIONAL wrestling, or “sports entertainment,” holds a contentious place in the wider sporting world. Bringing together incredible physical skill sets with larger than life characters and pantomime-like storylines, it’s often dismissed as “fake.”

Happy Pride month from all at EVE - from roster to crew!

Here's to continuing to push for more diversity, acceptance & representation of the LGBTQ+ community in our wonderful world of pro wrestling

Photo features @charliemorganuk
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— EVE - Women's Pro Wrestling (@ProWrestlingEVE) June 4, 2018

Within the world of wrestling, female competitors have always held an even more contentious position. Are these often scantily clad women merely a bit of eye candy for the male audience? Or are they serious athletes performing awe-inspiring and gymnastic feats of strength and agility?

Looking at the major wrestling companies doesn’t necessarily help to answer those questions. Women in the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), wrestling’s biggest promotion, have a storied history. 

For every Trish Stratus, Natalya or Sasha Banks — highly skilled athletes — there’s an Eve Torres, a Kelly Kelly or a Debra — who are obviously there to look pretty and who win unlikely victories via a roll-up pin in about two minutes flat. 

While many of the major wrestling promotions are giving more time to their female wrestlers, there’s currently nothing like parity. 

Earlier this month at a WWE panel discussion, wrestler Charlotte Flair made the seemingly obvious remark that wrestling is a “male-dominated industry.” WWE chief brand officer Stephanie McMahon stepped in immediately to correct Flair, stating that wrestling “was” a male-dominated industry. 

Relegating wrestling’s gender imbalance to the annals of history seems a bold move for someone whose company still pays its female wrestlers less, gives them less screen time and worse storylines than their male counterparts. 

But, while many of the big wrestling promotions have some work to do, Emily and Dann Read — owners and promoters of Pro-Wrestling: Eve, a UK-based women’s wrestling promotion — are well ahead of the game.

Formed in 2006, Pro-Wrestling: Eve takes wrestling in general, and women’s wrestling in particular, by the scruff of the neck and gives it a massive injection of punk and politics. 

For Emily and Dann, it’s not enough to just focus on these female performers. In their promotion they wrap up explosive sports entertainment in a forthright feminist politics.

While they’re not the first or only women’s wrestling promotion — in the United States there’s Shimmer Women Athletes and its sister promotion Shine Wrestling and in Japan there’s Stardom — Pro-Wrestling: Eve is different. 

Advertising themselves as feminists, riot grrrls and political, they exceed all of these simple labels. At their Eve Are The Weirdos, Mister event on Saturday June 9, Emily tells the audience packed into Bethnal Green’s Resistance Gallery that this is “where you see women be loud, unapologetic and take up space.”

Foregrounding the promotion’s politics right from the start, Emily starts the night warning the audience in no uncertain terms that, if we chant anything that might constitute hate speech or slut shaming, we’ll be thrown out and not allowed back. 

She asks the tall people in the audience to consider letting the shorter people behind them move forward and she lets us know that, if we don’t feel safe walking to the tube alone at the end of the night, there’s people who’ll come with you. 

On the surface these seem like small things, things that perhaps we’d hope people would do automatically. But in highlighting them Pro-Wrestling: Eve makes it clear that this is a shared, inclusive space and that we should reflect on how our actions might affect those we’re sharing that space with. 

And this works. People start chatting immediately to the strangers around them, making the atmosphere instantly friendlier than it already was. 

While Emily and Dann do a huge amount of work to create this politically inclusive atmosphere, in the ring it’s the wrestlers who really wow the crowd. 

The depth of talent here is phenomenal and that was evidenced on Saturday by the fact that the first match on the card featured the Vixen of Violence: Viper. 

Viper has wrestled in Japan with Stardom, in the US for the WWE and was the subject of a recent BBC documentary. There are no filler matches on a Pro-Wrestling: Eve fight card. 

The fourth fight of the evening is Jetta v Laura de Matteo and it’s a match that really pops, perfectly bringing together the humour, crowd interaction and physical skill necessary for entertaining wrestling. 

Jetta is uniquely charismatic and she directly interacted with the crowd, responding to chants quickly and wittily, all while managing to make arrogant showboating endearing.

Jetta and de Matteo started the match trading a series of holds, before their contest physically exploded with Jetta hitting 10 vertical suplexes on de Matteo — to put that in context, it was a big deal when Millie McKenzie hit four in an earlier fight. 

This physical skill set on display in Jetta and de Matteo’s fight is also present in the others, it’s in Jamie Hayter’s devastating powerbomb on Erin Angel, it’s in McKenzie’s flying dive out of the ring onto Addy Starr and it’s in Kay Lee Ray’s precisely executed Koji Clutch on Kris Wolf. 

These women are not here as eye candy. They’re here to fight. 

Saturday’s joint main event was a tag team fight in which Charlie Morgan and Session Moth Martina beat Bea Priestly and Chardonnay. 

A competitive, high-intensity fight, which spilled out into the crowd, this was by far the best match of the night and, if we started the evening with a politics of inclusion, we ended the evening in the same way. 

In July 2017, Charlie Morgan came out during an in-ring promo at Pro-Wrestling: Eve’s event Dangerous Women, a remarkable, brave thing to do. 

But since then she’s been really successful, with her fights gaining rave reviews and Morgan receiving huge support from the fans. 

Speaking after the event on Saturday, Morgan remarked: “Pro-Wrestling: Eve gives females the platform and the opportunities to express just how powerful women are,” adding that, “when I came here, Eve and Dann and Emily certainly gave me an amazing opportunity and platform to express how I felt about what it’s like to be a gay woman in the wrestling business. 

“I sometimes think it’s harder for lesbian and gay men because society as a whole doesn’t accept it [homosexuality] and that plays into loads of different sports.”

While Morgan isn’t the first pro-wrestler to come out, lesbian wrestler Sonya Deville is currently employed by the WWE and Darren Young acknowledged his homosexuality while working for them, she’s notable for being an out wrestler in a company that massively celebrates that. 

Morgan is front and centre of what Pro-Wrestling: Eve do. She’s a title holder, she’s totally over with the crowd and she’s an incredibly talented wrestler — her signature move, the Horizontal Wall Unit, needs to be seen to be believed. 

Importantly, Pro-Wrestling: Eve’s support is not just limited to Morgan. Up-and-coming wrestler Rebel Kinney recently invited her twitter followers to “come and see why married women love Rebel Kinney.” 

There’s no throwing around empty words here, no simple and bland statement of support. Rather, there’s action. 

The intoxicating thing about wrestling is the mix of theatre, larger-than-life characters, explosive energy and physical skill. Pro-Wrestling: Eve excels at all of that and then it adds a progressive, inclusive and thoughtful politics in to the mix. 

Full Card
Charlie Evans defeated Viper
Millie Mckenzie defeated Addy Shaw 
Casey defeated Misha East 
Laura di Matteo defeated Jetta 
Jayme Hater defeated Erin Angel 
Kay Lee Ray defeated Kris Wolf 
Charlie Morgan and Session Moth Martina defeated Bea Priestly and Chardonnay