True Featherweights

The Sport Might Seem Fluffy, but Pillow Fighters Pack a Punch

NEW YORK The reigning world champion of the Pillow Fight League is backstage, strategizing about how to put the hurt on Betty Clocker.

"I tend to knee a lot, but not this time," she says, whispering so her opponent can't eavesdrop. "Because she'll be expecting that. I'm switching it up."

Stacy Reardon, or Champain, as she's known in the ring, is keeping the particulars a secret. Whatever pillow punishment she has in mind will be a surprise to Ms. Clocker, not to mention the roughly 170 fans now seated in rows around a square mat in the middle of a performance space/bar in Brooklyn called Galapagos.

They have come for the first out-of-town appearance of Toronto's PFL, a year-old league that answers this crucial question: Will people pay to watch Canadian women clobber each other with pillows?

The answer: Duh. Demand for the $20 tickets was so high that a second night at Galapagos was added and quickly sold out. But anyone who comes for a giggly face-off between two chicks in undies -- the age-old slumber party fantasy -- is in for an unhappy shock. "Real women. Real fights" is the league's motto, and this is no joke. When the fight starts, nearly anything goes -- leg drops, arm bars, chokeholds and punching -- as long as a pillow is the point of contact. Just don't gouge, scratch or pull hair, and no fair hiding bricks or any foreign objects in the pillowcase.

You win by pinning an opponent's shoulders, as in a standard wrestling match, or pummeling her so hard she quits, or if the referee stops the action. If there's no winner at the end of the one-round, five-minute fight, three judges choose a victor, based on style, stamina and aggressiveness.

"The name of the game is use your pillow," shouts the evening's emcee, who calls himself the Mouth, briefly explaining the rules to the audience.

Nothing is fake or scripted, though in the tradition of professional wrestling, each fighter takes a nom de guerre and a persona. Lady Die enters the ring dressed in elegant equestrian gear, though she undercuts the aura of English hauteur by flipping the bird with both hands as she struts to her corner. Eiffel Power is dressed in a shirt with those horizontal stripes that will forever connote Frenchness. Lynn Somnia enters screaming, ostensibly driven insane from a lack of sleep and wearing a white hospital gown.

"When I came to the first practice, and I was looking for a character, they said, 'Well, what do you do at night?' said Ms. Somnia in a post-match interview. "And I said, 'Well, I don't sleep.' "

On Friday the evening starts with the introduction of the 22 fighters, followed by the singing of the U.S. and Canadian national anthems. Then it's go time. Each contest starts with two bed pillows in the middle of the mat, and each fighter in a corner.

"Roxxy Balboa, do you want to fight?" shouts the referee.

Thumbs up from Balboa.