Hey, remember how I wrote a whole thing about how my favourite tag team was splitting up and how sad I was?
Well.
That took a turn.
At RevPro Summer Sizzler last Friday, TK Cooper got his grudge match against Trent Seven (you might want to re-read this post, if you’re less immersed in all of this than I am and have forgotten the details!). Because this is wrestling and that’s how wrestling works, I was expecting Teeks to lose: Summer Sizzler was held in Trent Seven’s hometown, Wolverhampton, so the crowd was fully on his side.
What I wasn’t expecting—and didn’t even dare to hope for!—was what happened after the match.
Rather than losing gracefully, TK continued to attack Seven, plucking folding chairs out of the crowd and throwing them into the ring. Before he could do anything with them, though, he was interrupted by Chuck Mambo.
Mambo came sprinting down the ramp and got in TK’s face, wrenching a chair out of his hands. The two of them exchanged some furious-looking words (inaudible, sadly) then TK got down on one knee, daring Mambo to hit him with the chair. When Mambo didn’t respond, TK stood up and shoved him, then slapped him in the face. Mambo reared back, lifted the chair, took a step forward…
And smashed Trent Seven with the chair.
I screamed. Or maybe that’s not the right word. Screeched. Made an inhuman sound like a banshee. Howled. Mambo deciding to turn heel and stand in solidarity with his tag partner was exactly where I wanted this story to go; for the two of them to challenge the RevPro administration together and demand respect for their accomplishments.
Now, obviously, I still don’t know what’s going to happen next, or where the storyline will end, but for that one shining moment, I was fully swept up in the emotion of the moment. Tag team solidarity is precious and I will always lose my mind for big emotional declarations of loyalty like this.
During the interval, I caught up with some pals who were sitting in other parts of the venue, and they all, embarrassingly, confirmed they knew just how delighted our section of the audience had been about this plot development. I’m not sure how many people told me “we could hear you” but, uhhhhh, it was quite a few. I think I might’ve apologised? In the moment, there was part of me that thought, oh no, I shouldn’t have been so loud.
That part fully and completely shut down when I found out that a man sitting nearby had remarked something along the lines of “yeah, yeah, we know you like Mambo, shut up.”
You see, being a woman at a wrestling show usually means being in a minority. When cheers and chants go up, you’re usually hearing lots of male voices yelling together. Watching the RevPro feed back, you can definitely hear me (and my pals) yelling during the Sunshine Machine segment, and we’re definitely higher-pitched than many of the other voices in the room.
But… so what?
Science has shown, over and over again, that people don’t like the sound of women’s voices. Women are more likely to be interrupted than men; more likely to be perceived as talking “too much”, even when they’re actually talking less than men. The things we say are less likely to be taken seriously, less likely to be remembered. There’s even a phenomenon of high-profile women training their voices, learning to speak in a lower register, in an attempt to command more respect.
I know that, in the grand scheme of things, being told to be quiet at a wrestling show isn’t important. It’s one of the most micro of possible micro-aggressions. And this whole thing about who speaks and who’s allowed to speak is far more complex than I could ever get into here, as gender intersects with race and class issues, and it’s all, frankly, really fucking depressing.
But this isn’t the first time men have tried to tell me I’m not welcome in wrestling fandom, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let them win. In the interests of finding joy while the world burns, I am taking that guy’s comment to heart, in exactly the way he didn’t want. I’m going to be just as loud as ever at shows. More so, even. I’m going to fucking increase the fucking thing. It won’t solve anything, really, but you know what? Sometimes, when you want to see representation of more people like you, you have to be the person doing the representing.
Shout louder with me. What’s stopping us?
More things you might like:
The logo for this newsletter was created by Captain Eden Jackson, and I am obsessed with it. OBSESSED. Their rates are shockingly reasonable, so if you fancy a gorgeous logo for your project, drop Eden a line
I nearly started a fight with Peter from the Social Suplex newsletter over a football joke, but then we met at Summer Sizzler and buried the hatchet
ICYMI, Safire Reed’s pre-Sizzler promo won her a ton of new fans, and rightly so. If you haven’t watched it yet, what are you waiting for?
Orange Cassidy and Chuck Taylor went to the premiere of The Naked Gun this week. Proof of life! Look, us Best Friends girlies have to take all the crumbs we can get
Atomic Pro Wrestling puts cool stuff on their YouTube channel. You should probably subscribe!
Thanks for reading!
So, I definitely planned to get another newsletter out earlier than this. Unfortunately, on the day after I sent the last one, I was involved in a car accident—basically, another car crashed into the side of mine—and it turns out there’s quite a lot of admin you have to do when that happens, even if it’s not your fault at all.
Happily, I wasn’t injured (just very shaken up!) but dealing with the aftermath took up all my brainspace. Everything moved really fast, with both insurance companies leaping into action to get everything resolved, I’m not complaining at all, it just. You know. Wasn’t fun.
Anyway, I’m back now and we’re just over three weeks away from Forbidden Door weekend. Are you going? Are you doing any of the indie shows that weekend? Need any recommendations for things to check out? Let me know!