Portage la Prairie, MB – 

Delinda Rasmussen expected a fun night out with the girls when she agreed to go to a live wrestling event on Saturday night.  What she ended up with was an absurd evening of questions, doubts and anxiety.

“It was the strangest and scariest thing I’ve ever seen in person,” Rasmussen said.  “We were sitting in the front row.  I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget it.  The smell of sweat, the grunting, the tights and tall women’s boots.”

The night started off well according to Rasmussen with the pleasant discovery the bar was open.  After two glasses of wine, the matches began with hundreds of Portagers packing the stands.

“The MC seemed like a nice guy.  He wore a suit and was very professional.  Then another man came out to thank the sponsors.  That’s when it went down hill.”

Eyewitness reports suggest the promoter successfully mispronounced the name of each sponsor and was generally incoherent.

“He was like that Cherry guy on Hockey Night in Canada. I thought something had been put in my wine.”

Rasmussen was baffled by the audience’s enthusiasm and how excited they became at a series of questionable bouts that appeared to have no rules.  Large men fighting each other, sometimes four at a time, small men fighting large men, small men fighting other small men, women fighting women, in, on and around the ring.

“At times they fell down without being struck.  Other times they flew over the ropes without much of a reason and sometimes they’d miss kicking the other guy but the scare was enough to knock the other guy over.”

“I kept asking my friends, what the heck is this?  There are guys in referee shirts but they don’t seem to do much except try to count to three very slowly.”

She is seeing a counsellor for, what she describes as, PTSD like symptoms.  There is no timeframe for her recovery.

“If I remember correctly, at one point one of our city councillors was in the ring fighting someone and the crowd was going wild.  I’m not sure what wrestling has to do with City Hall but my therapist is helping work through it.”

 

Disclaimer

Photo Credit: Mike Jentsch: https://www.flickr.com/photos/digitoxin/