True Featherweights

"Ursula Anvil, do you want to fight?"

As a matter of fact, she does.

"Fight like a girl!" howls the ref -- the phrase that launches every bout -- and it begins.

Forget technique. None of the fighters seems to have any, aside from the basic windup and swing and the occasional leg sweep to dump an opponent on the mat. The action is frantic and grueling. The fighters seem exhausted after a minute. Wild swings outnumber square hits. Much of the action happens on the ground, where the fighters pitch and roll, occasionally using their pillows to try to choke each other, which doesn't really work. There's nothing sexy about it, and with a 20-ish, mostly male crowd calling out such bons mots as "Hit her low!" the event often has the atmosphere of a "Jerry Springer" melee.

The PFL is the brainchild of Stacey P. Case, a 39-year-old who swears his name is really Stacey P. Case. In 2004, he was driving through Austria with his band, the Tijuana Bibles, when a thought struck him out of nowhere: pillow fighting. Real fighting. Ladies only.

"A light bulb went off," he recalls, smoking a cigarette outside Galapagos during intermission. Case is tall and lean and wearing a 1950s-style hat that makes him look like a young Art Carney. "Everybody thinks it's a strip thing, but it's not. We've had offers from nudie bars to come and fight there and I don't even return their calls. I've got a rule on the books that says no lewd behavior."

The fighters, he says, are mostly denizens of Toronto's art scene, which means the whole show could be interpreted as one big performance art piece. (That doesn't make the violence less real, but it gives onlookers the out of regarding the PFL as an exhibit they are watching rather than a car crash they are gawking at.) Fighters train once a week, at a studio, and so until this night in New York they've had five public outings, all in Toronto, including a show in front of 600 people. Each fighter is paid the same amount, described by the league's referee as enough for "a good dinner and a couple drinks."

Of course, this is a part-time gig for everyone involved, though Case dreams of turning it into a career. When advance word of the PFL's inaugural jaunt to Brooklyn hit the Web a few days ago, the offers poured in from U.S. venues around the country.

"I asked the girls the other day, 'Hey, how many of you would quit your jobs and become pillow fighters full time?' And half the girls raised their hands."

As undignified as professional pillow fighting often looks, it is alluring enough to tempt a few in the audience to try. Once the appropriate waivers are signed, a dozen attendees remove their jewelry and belts and, after being paired off with strangers, they start roundhousing each other in impromptu five-minute battles. Among them is a woman in a red gingham top who obviously came ready to riot. She has "Vermonster" written in pen on the back of her shirt, and after coming close to pinning her startled opponent, she wins a unanimous decision.

The fighting, according to the pros, is just part of the appeal.

"Off the mat, we hang out," says Reardon, the PFL champ, who has inked the word "hate" across the knuckles of both hands. "You might be mad at someone because of what they did on the mat, but you bring it back to the mat."

Reardon's showdown with Betty Clocker is the final match of the night. Clocker enters wearing an apron and bearing a plateful of cookies that she hands out to the crowd, instantly turning her into the audience favorite. Reardon, who enters wearing the three-pound PFL champion belt, doesn't care.

"I tried to do my judo and sweep out her legs," Reardon says grinning and out of breath after the match, her belt firmly back around her waist. "And once I got her tired, I knew I could get her on the ground and smother her."