Can a wrestling ring be a safe space? This promoter tosses hate out of the ring

This story was originally published on May 29, 2019.

Looking up, I see the body of a 250-poundman flying toward me over the ropes. As if in slow motion, he eclipses the red OV neon beer sign that illuminates the wrestling ring. I scurry aside on my knees, protecting my camera, and he crashes to the floor next to me in a heap.

We both groan in pain simultaneously.

As I stare at the agony in his face, wondering whether it is real or just for show, another wrestler jumps on top of him and delivers repeated blows to his head. The crowd counts along in delight with each forearm smash.

Welcome to Winnipeg Pro Wrestling on a Thursday night at the Sherbrook Hotel.

It's quickly become part of a wrestling tradition in Manitoba that dates back 140 years.

But this event is different. This is wrestling with a social conscience, thanks to WPW's progressive promoters.

Meet the colourful characters of Winnipeg's wrestling community:

A look inside the squared circle

5 years ago

Duration 3:50

Check out the cultural and creative diversity of Winnipeg's newly thriving wrestling scene. Video: Senior Designer, Duk Han Lee - Videographer: Tyson Koschik

Devin Bray started Winnipeg Pro Wrestling last year with fellow Winnipeggers Ben Kissock, TJ Stevenson, Adam Giardino and James Korba.

It's based on the popular New Japan Pro Wrestling events held around the world. There's all the comedy, drama and theatre of the absurd that you'd expect.

But there's one crucial difference from wrestling in the past:no homophobicor racist slurs are allowed.

"I think Winnipeg is a social justice town," Bray said. "We're trying to attract a more diverse audience that, I think, likes it at home but maybe haven't experienced it outside of their homes."

Bray fell in love with wrestling as a child, watching it on TV while sitting next to his drop-kick-loving grandma.

In his day job, Bray works as a sexual health facilitator, so it's important for him that the event is a positive, socially responsible experience.

"The social justice side of it, that's where I'm coming from," Bray said. "But I'm also a wrestling fan. We want people to get excited for the right reasons. "

"The Zombie Killer"Mentallo

"The Zombie Killer,"Mentallo, is a 22-year veteran of the wrestling scene in Winnipeg.

His masked alter-ego is based on the Lucha Libre wrestlers of Mexico. But he says the real reason for the mask goes deeper.

"When I first started wrestling I wore a costume that covered me from head to toe,"Mentallo said. "I didn't want promoters to book me as a drug dealer, break dancer or any other stupid negative stereotype.

"As I became more comfortable and gained experience, I learned how to develop a character that, for the most part, transcends race."

It's not surprising today's wrestlers often reject the labels assigned to them. From the beginning, organized wrestling in Winnipeg developed against the backdrop of racial tension.

The organized wrestling in Winnipeg dates back to the1880s, a time when the city was teeming with immigrants from central Europe.

"For a lot of people coming here, this would have been the first time being immigrants," said C. Nathan Hatton, a historian at Lakehead Universityand author of the bookThrashing Seasons, which documents the history of organized wrestling on the Prairies.

"This would be the first time they were exposed to a lot of different cultures, and for a lot of people coming from central Europe, they didn't hold the power of, say, an Anglo-descendant. But on the mats, that was one place they could be on equal footing."

In those days, wrestling matches were based on gambling, and by the early 1900s wrestlers held a highly regarded place insociety.

"For [immigrant] members of the audience, wrestlers were their public faces," Hatton said. "The events of their peoples wouldn't be making the papers. All of a sudden there were pictures of him on the sports page. He was one of their people. He represented their community."

Over time, that community also became racially stereotyped, consistently linked to the wrestling profile.

It's those ethnic stereotypes that wrestlers such as Mentallo rejectin favour of a deeper, more-nuanced characters of their own creation.

Even his moniker "the Zombie Killer" has a deeper meaning.

Mentallo says he wants to excite the crowd and help them break away from their closed-off, technology-obsessed lives.

"It's kind of a metaphor for people who walk around with their faces in their phones," he said. "They're almost like zombies."

As industrialization brought people off the farms and into the offices and tight spaces, Hatton says, men sought a way to compensate for their perceived lack of manliness.

"There was a real concern that perhaps with less physical skill needed in work and more female supervision, that men were becoming soft and, perhaps, effeminate," Hatton said. "So sport, including wrestling, would be seen as a perceived antidote to those things, and instill those purportedly male characteristics."

But those days are long past, Hatton says.

"As we see the transformation of cultural values, perhaps we're entering a new zeitgeist of what male expression should be,"Hatton said.

"I expect what we are starting to see with this new type of wrestling leagueis simply a reflection or an attempt to capitalize on changing cultural values."

But despite the progressive feel-good, social justice side of it, it is still wrestling.

"It's an oxymoron to have politically correct wrestling. But I think we're actually doing it," said Joanne Rodriguez, the voice of WPW wrestling.

She introduces the wrestlers, spins the story lines and helps move the show along.

"We're not tolerating racism, sexism. It's negative, but in fun," she said.

The promoters hope one day to showcase female wrestlers, but the stable of local talent remains small.

"To even just be ring announceras a woman, I think, is a really big step. I'm honoured to be that woman" Rodriguez said.

Wrestling as art

"Wrestling is an art form," Bray said. "And it can be conveyed in different ways. Maybe there's not a good way and a bad way of doing it, but there is our way of doing it."

Bray hopes WPW wrestling shows will be a seasonalevent that all Winnipeggers can enjoy.

"We want our shows to be on the same level as a Rainbow Stage production or a Fringe Festshow," Bray said. "An experience, from the second the fan walks in the dooruntil the second they leave.

"Our biggest thrill so far is hearing from people that ours was the first wrestling show they've ever attended, and that it might have shattered some perceptions they had about wrestling."

Crawling back upright, I survey the crowd of roughly 300.

It's made up of men, women, young and old. It's one of the most diverse crowds I've seen at an event in Winnipeg on a weeknight at a venue this size.

They're all clamouring at the ring, chanting along with with each drop-kick and body slam.

They laugh at all the right comic bits and jeer at all the villains.

But it still requires a high degree of alertness to avoid the thick elbows and knees of these tumbling giants.

And the streams of maple syrup? Don't ask.