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

By David Segal
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 22, 2007

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.

"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."