Meditations on Chaotic Wrestling
Meditations on Chaotic Wrestling
On faith and wrestling and how sometimes they're kind of the same thing.
Friday nights are something sacred. For the majority of us, they signal reprieve – from stressful and thankless workplaces, from school studies and exhausting artificial social circles, from bill paying and errand running. Since beginning the process of converting to Judaism approximately eighteen months ago, my general reverence for Friday nights has only increased. Recognizing Friday nights (and the mandated rest that comes with them) as a God1-given gift is one of the concepts I can most readily embrace and understand. Friday nights just feel different. There is electricity, a feeling of being alive, that just wasn’t present in sleepy Sunday morning chapel pews, always tinged with the dread of fast-approaching normalcy of Monday.
Having said that, I fully realize that it may come off as blasphemous or even hedonistic to admit that my favorite thing to do on a Friday night is to head downtown to the Sons of Italy multi-purpose room. There, I trade in Kiddush wine for a $5 Miller High Life and watch muscle-bound goliaths throw down on the nights I hold most sacred.
The Watertown, MA Sons of Italy multi-purpose room is one of the venues frequented by Chaotic Wrestling, New England’s premier independent wrestling promotion. What you need to understand is that on the nights Chaotic is in town, the multi-purpose room at the Sons of Italy ceases to be the multi-purpose room at the Sons of Italy. It instead becomes another universe entirely, divorced from the realities of banal everyday life. The moment you check in with the ticket-wielding gatekeeper – always the same person, a very nice woman with an M&M candy tattooed on her breast – you are welcomed into a highly exaggerated otherworld, where emotions only exist in extremes, and feuds are settled with sweaty, half-naked bodies in skin-tight costume.
I can feel some of you scoff as you process these words from the other side of this screen. This is understandable, and I forgive whatever judgment you may have in advance. After all, wrestling has long been written off as crass, lowbrow entertainment, particularly in the United States2.
During the country’s colonial infancy (particularly in the rural, occasionally ungovernable South), no-rules rough-and-tumble fighting was a means of settling disputes and defending honor among European immigrants. These backcountry brawls were particularly brutal, as combatants frequently aimed to gouge out the eyes of their opponents. As guns became more accessible and laws more enforceable in the 19th century, the sport resettled in the loving embrace of carnival sideshows. Though significantly fewer men were stepping out of carny-organized matches horrifically disfigured, wrestling remained a largely lawless realm. It was by nature nomadic, marred in secrecy, and fueled by high-stakes bets facilitated by the unsavory sorts not above scamming an audience.
The sport-spectacle hybrid experienced spikes in popularity over the years. This ultimately prompted independent wrestling promotions to plant loose roots, the territories of which were divided by region. Despite growing public interest, though, these stages cropping up across North America were largely viewed as platforms built by and for simple provincial folk to worship simple provincial heroes. For decades, televised matches were sequestered to late-night shifts and midday filler on local syndicate channels.
It was only in the 1980s when the former Capitol Wrestling Corporation, once sequestered to the Northeastern US, fully cannibalized its competition and headed to primetime as the World Wrestling Federation (aka WWF). After sopping up the remains of Ted Turner’s WCW promotion and handling a legal dispute with the World Wildlife Fund, the WWF became the WWE, the gaudy billion-dollar freak show kingpin enterprise that has become more or less synonymous with modern professional wrestling.
Most preconceived notions that the uninitiated hold, understandably, stem from wrestling’s top echelon. Under new management and the creative leadership of former heavyweight champion Paul “Triple H” Levesque, a concerted effort is currently underway to bring the WWE into a better, brighter new era. But the shadow of the promotion’s darkest moments still loom heavy. The mere mention of “WWE” conjures images of monopolies, union busting, grievous sexual assault allegations, and traumatic injuries to brains and bodies alike. At the end of September, Netflix released a controversial six-part docuseries on longtime company overlord Vince McMahon, which chronologically compiles decades worth of the real-world heel’s sordid misdeeds. The restless ghosts of men like Owen Hart and Chris Benoit haunt the collective memories of even the most devoted and dedicated fans.
In short, I get it. When you view wrestling as nothing more than a straight razor pressed to bare skin, drawing blood for the sake of appeasing the bloodthirsty, Shabbat spent ringside sounds sacrilege. From a cynical perspective, it is a blatant disregard for the sanctity of life and pursuit of justice that Judaism (at its best) holds so dear.
But ultimately, another core tenet of Judaism – the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake – won out. The flyer I first saw stapled to the telephone pole outside of my local CVS pharmacy was vague in its description, providing little more than a date and address. Its brevity ignited curiosity about what exactly was going down at the Sons of Italy on Friday nights. Were people actually piledriving one another into the ground? The desire for truth gnawed at me. And ultimately, it drove me ringside in search of answers.
But truth is a tricky thing to nail down.
The most common criticism hurled at wrestling, by far, is that it is somehow “fake”. Naysayers bemoan that wrestling’s supposed inauthenticity makes it something fit only for the most gullible and slow-witted among us. This criticism bothers me because it lacks nuance. Wrestling is exaggerated and predetermined, but to deny the authenticity of the showmanship, athleticism, and energy that engulfs the atmosphere is to lie to oneself. Just because that showmanship, athleticism, and energy manifests in a way that subverts the expectations of what a sporting event should be doesn’t mean that it’s not real.
Quite the contrary, actually – performers devote thousands of very real hours to practice and preparation. The majority of the wrestlers performing for Chaotic do so at the New England Pro Wrestling Academy in North Andover, MA, under the tutelage of former heavyweight champion Chase Del Monte. The sole proprietor of Chaotic Wrestling and head trainer at NEPWA, Del Monte's hand in molding New England’s most talented up-and-coming wrestlers is difficult to overstate. Naturally, he was the person I turned to in hopes of better understanding the performances I’ve grown to love over the last year and a half.
When we spoke, Del Monte readily admitted that many of his students harbor lofty dreams of the WWE, downsides be damned3. A few NEPWA/Chaotic alumni have indeed made it big over the years – Sasha Banks, Kofi Kingston, Tomasso Ciampa. However, Del Monte explained that his aim isn’t necessarily isn’t to churn out famous wrestlers. Something as fickle as fame is partially determined by uncontrollable factors like sheer luck that no amount of study or practice can guarantee. Instead, he strives to facilitate “great wrestling”, entertaining and exhilarating as it is athletically impressive.
“In my eyes, being a great wrestler means being able to have a great match with just about anybody,” he explains. “Many wrestlers are very good at their style, but have a hard time adapting when working outside that style. A great wrestler has the ability to work and blend their style with whoever is across the ring from them. Akin to an actor who only does action movies, but does not have the chops to handle dramatic roles.”
In other words, great wrestlers need to be adaptable. Their success does not hinge solely on memorizing the mechanics of chokeholds and body slams that, when executed, won’t land a person in the hospital. Nor does it simply boil down to perseverance in the form of training the muscles that make a person look and feel the part of a wrestler. There’s a cerebral element that involves knowing how to counter or react appropriately on the fly to the unexpected elements inherent to live performance.
Understanding how to react appropriately requires a degree of introspection and soul-searching and unwavering confidence that holds up under the glare of a spotlight. While that may seem to directly contradict the importance of adaptability, great matches are brought to life by the feelings and intentions characters bring into the ring. When a wrestler is firm in their role, it informs the split-second decisions that please audiences and guides the movement of their bodies.
During an interview, legendary Stone Cold Steve Austin once stated that, “the best characters are guys [being] who they are with the volume turned up”. I don’t know the wrestlers of Chaotic intimately enough to know if the personas they adopt on stage are reflections of who they really are.
But if there’s any truth to Stone Cold’s statement, one commonality connects all of the great wrestlers of Chaotic. Every single one of them is a little bit odd.
Over the years, Chaotic has garnered a reputation as an especially eccentric promotion – an especially impressive feat, considering the eccentricity of the genre. After grappling alongside the musical stylings of bands like Disturbed at Worcester MA’s 2001 Locobazooka numetal festival, Chaotic drew comparisons to well-established alt-punk indie promos such as San Franciso’s (now defunct) Incredibly Weird Wrestling4. As time went on, Chaotic also began incorporating elements of the underground hardcore wrestling5 embraced by promos such as Philadelphia’s (now defunct) Extreme Championship Wrestling.
But the wrestlers of Chaotic are odd in a way that feels…authentic. They aren’t clowns, the sort of exaggerated one-note characters used only for comic effect a la the Gobbledy Gooker or Mantaur or Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS. Instead, Del Monte referred to Chaotic’s stable of performers as “misfit toys”. The promotion (or perhaps practice of wrestling itself?) seems to attract those frequently written off as “too much” – too big, too loud, too weird. Chaotic, rather than attempting to fit their personnel into a specific mold, instead harnesses and celebrates the unique attributes that make people “too much”.
In turn, this has created a roster of memorable characters that compel audiences and push boundaries mainstream circuits shy away from.
There’s Aaron O’Rourke, sometimes billed simply as “Evil Gay”, a flamboyant, painted-up acrobatic madman who contorts his way around opponents before finishing them off with fantastic flips. His queerness is not some prop to mock or garner humiliation, reduced to the smeared lipstick and frilly pink accessories of an Adrian Adonis6 circa 1986. Rather, this very real attribute is proudly flaunted and used to strengthen what actually drives the Evil Gay persona – his unpredictability and complete disinterest in what anyone thinks or says about him. He’s frenetic, unapologetic, equally capable of kicking out your teeth as he is stealing a kiss. The fact that it’s unclear what course of action he’ll take makes him fun to watch and fearsome to fight.
Paris Van Dale (my personal favorite) is an ultra-femme heel-turned-face whose character Del Monte lovingly describes as “that bitch”. Often seen sporting shades of baby blue and girlish pigtails, she claims that she “can do, say, get whatever I want with just the snap of my fingers”. A stark departure from the girlfriend/lover trope female performers have long been shoehorned into, she instead responds with cool indifference to hopelessly-in-love tag team partner Dante Drago. Though the newly implemented free-for-all Panoptic Championship7 initially drew some skepticism from fans, her impressive 511-day reign against opponents of all sizes, shapes, and genders has single-handedly added an air of legitimacy to the title. While other promotions of the past might have relegated her to popcorn-show bikini-clad filler, at Chaotic she is treated as the headlining star that she is.
Some of the regulars are, admittedly a little sillier. But even the silliest of stars seem to have some depth backing them up. Seabass Finn, for instance, is a down-home redneck who until recently was identifiable by his fantastic mullet and the shortest jorts you’ve ever seen. Recently, he’s stricken up a rivalry with the vaguely Sylvester Stallone-esque Ricky “Smokeshow” Smokes, whose pompous asshole persona belies a highly-sensitive inner life hinted at in supplemental media. Richard Holliday, who at first glance looks the part of a typical wrestler, portrays an arrogant success-obsessed type, always announces to audiences that they’re breathing “rarefied air” upon his entrance, suggesting that his mere presence somehow elevates the status of those privileged enough to lay eyes on him. Like a mad conducted, he dramatically motions his hands upwards toward the heavens from his ringside perch, wordlessly instructing the crowd to cheer louder. Chase Del Monte is himself a character, with a storyline that spans two decades and oscillates between hero and villain, depending on what the narrative of the night calls for.
Social media takes the act a step further, allowing characters to further expand and flesh out in a digital realm. Opponents taunt each other in Instagram comments, and Chaotic frequently shares video vignettes that develop lore and set the stage for upcoming matches.
Ultimately, these narratives and combatting personalities are fleshed out in the movement of bodies. Their actions – so frequently denounced as “fake” – are in reality a combination of careful choreography and spur-of-the-moment improv. Del Monte estimates a 70/30 breakdown between planned and unplanned action, though there’s a rather wide variance. Veterans and longtime opponents become accustomed to one another, allowing for some wiggle room in the equation.
Recently, I spoke with playwright, lifelong wrestling fan, and Substack darling
, who described the performances I’ve been watching as something similar to ballet.Each wrestler kind of develops their own language, their own moveset…they’ve got little tunes that they play, physically. Their movesets, when they come up in a show, delight people. Counters to those moves are really beautiful and delightful as well.
Wrestling becomes a thing of beauty when you consider that every performance, brutal as it may seem, is a dance. Every match is a collaboration, and opponents work in tandem to bring to life stories and evoke emotion from the crowd, something bigger than themselves.
Interestingly, Del Monte also compared the art of wrestling to theater. “Hamlet always drinks the poison at the end of the play. Hamlet always dies, regardless of who is performing. Wrestling is the only form of theater where the audience plays an active role in determining the outcome”.
This brings me to what is perhaps the most compelling aspect of wrestling, the thing that brings me back to Chaotic matches Friday after Friday; the opportunity to act as scriptwriter, to impact physical feats that go beyond my body's capabilities.
This is not to downplay the wrestlers themselves, as they are incredible. However, going to a live wrestling match – particularly in the intimate settings indie promotions like Chaotic utilize – is an incomparable experience. Some of the promotion’s most dedicated fans have been coming to shows for more than 20 years, whole-heartedly invested in the stories happening in and outside the ring. A few show up with homemade signs in hand, cheering or jeering at performers. If an action or outcome doesn’t suit the audience’s desires, their protests can trigger changes in programs that naysayers assume are rigged, set in stone8. Something as simple as an audience member flipping the bird can fire up or fluster a fighter, even change fate altogether.
Battle cries are born in real time. There is an electricity and oneness in the air, perhaps only replicable in a house of God. “The ups and downs a babyface endures as they push forward to achieve their goal are felt by the fans as they rally behind the hero giving him the strength to push forward,” Del Monte explains. ”The fans are rewarded for their support, but unlike a TV show or movie, that one win is just the beginning as the story never truly ends.”
Looking around, the people who wield this power often seem to be just as much misfit toys as the people on stage. Punks and non-conforming hipsters pursuing liberal arts degrees stand beside tried and true blue-collar townies who have lived in Watertown all their lives. There is a kid, at most ten years old, who consistently shows up to shows in a banana costume. Some people come alone, evidently content with the togetherness that comes from shouting in unison. Within the confines of the Sons of Italy multi-purpose room, amid all the fighting, everyone is accepted and no one seems to care about the differences that, in any other scenario, would be so evident.
Which brings me back to Shabbat.
In her 2010 book The Sabbath World, culture critic Judith Shulevitz states the following:
“Imagine that there was a job called “social architect”, and you had it. Your job description would be dreaming up a perfect society, drafting the blueprint for it, overseeing its construction from scratch…casting around for existing social institutions to model your new society on, you’d happen upon the Sabbath. If a strong and powerfully interconnected communal life was high on your priority list, you’d quickly realize that you had stumbled on a very good way to achieve it,
She goes on to postulate that the creation of a recurring day in which the law limits work and festivity is a mandate has strengthened Jewish communities since ancient times, allowing them to survive persecutions and pogroms throughout the centuries. Sometimes, it is difficult to understand exactly where I fit into Judaism because I lack that same ancestral suffering and lived experience. In my darkest moments, I worry that my choice to convert has doomed me to a life of being an outsider in a largely othered group – a misfit among misfits, so to speak.
But on Friday nights, during those few hours of mutually agreed-upon disbelief spent among other misfits, I feel what I think I’m supposed to feel. When an 8-year-old kid in bottlecap glasses yells, “Ricky, you suck!!!” at Ricky Smokes and you catch yourself joining a bunch of middle-aged men in a taunt of “Chokeshow!!! Chokeshow!!”, there’s unity.
During the Chaotic event I most recently attended, on October 4th, my father-in-law Mort accompanied me to the Sons of Italy multi-purpose room. I thought for sure he’d take offense to my wanting to attend. A staunch, sometimes stubborn, seventy-something-year-old Jew, he was in town to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. With the tail-end of the holiday butting up against the start of Shabbat, I thought for sure he’d steer clear of the event.
But, to my surprise, he wanted to go. He didn’t mind listening to Korn’s “Freak on a Leash” play before the show began. He didn’t mind sitting in the less-than-cushy metal fold-out chairs, illuminated by the twinkle of chandelier light. He didn’t even mind the occult antics of tag team God’s Greatest Creation, complete with a face-paint-clad leader known only as “The Entity”9, parading around the stage, proud in his profanity.
Instead, I caught a grin spread across Mort’s face when Chase Del Monte made his way to the ring during the final match of the night. “You’ve turned my show into an African safari,” Del Monte bellows among the motionless bodies of two previously incapacitated referees, ”because all I see is dead zebras”. He then attempted to take over the task of arbitrating the match. Within seconds, he – the man behind the scenes, the mentor to so many of the performers in front of me – was unceremoniously knocked to the ground in moment of cooperation between the raging rivals on stage.
For a moment, I thought about the part in the Book of Genesis that features the night Jacob grappling with a celestial being, after which he is subsequently renamed “Israel” – roughly translated, “contends with God”.
Ultimately, the idea of God as a wrestling opponent – as dance partner, as collaborator, as counter – feels more approachable than God as omnipotent. Though some may question it, maybe a Shabbat at Chaotic is the most Jewish thing I could possibly be doing.
After the show, my father-in-law recounted accompanying his father to matches 65 years ago in his hometown of Trenton, NJ, back in the humble days of territory-based promotions. He recounted memories of a few of his childhood favorites, like Happy Humphrey and Haystacks Calhoun. In 45 years, maybe I will talk to my children or grandchildren about Paris Van Dale or JT Dunn or Brad Cashew with the same nostalgia in my voice. I’m sure, when I am old, that they too won’t peg me as the type that enjoys a good wrestling match.
But sometimes, people surprise you. Sometimes, there is great meaning to be found in the most unlikely and imperfect of places.
If you enjoyed this essay and want to say thanks, please consider buying me a coffee 😎
Whatever God may be – human construct, force of nature, the totality of everything, an all-knowing man in the sky. Deciding definitively on the nature of God is a task beyond me, but treasuring Friday nights is something my tiny mortal brain can grasp.
(Although I realize that 36% of this publication’s subscribers are logging in from outside the United States, I fear I cannot go into worldwide wrestling tradition and stigma should I hope to ever finish writing this)
In a 2006 interview with Boston Magazine, former Chaotic Wrestling owner Jamie Jamitkowski stated that the promotion has no desire to compete with Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Entertainment, preferring the "tight-knit community of wrestlers and fans" that Chaotic facilitates. Del Monte similarly voiced his appreciation for the unique, intimate environment that’s lost a little when a wrestler gets contracted for gigs that sell out stadiums. But drawbacks aside, signing with the WWE ultimately means financial stability for people performing their passion, and thus serves as the end goal for the vast majority of Chaotic’s contenders.
What made Incredibly Weird Wrestling so incredibly weird, you ask? I can’t tell you firsthand, but it probably had a lot to do with the fact that it existed at the incredibly niche intersection of NOFX and Lucha Libre.
Think weapons, blood, gore, no-holds-barred matches, general anarchy, et cetera.
Amid the AIDS crisis, WWF wrestler Adrian Adonis adopted the role of “Adorable Adrian”, a gender-bending cross-dressing caricature of a heel who adorned himself in garish makeup and pastel linens. Unlike queer-coded wrestlers such as the androgynous Goldust, who ultimately gained the respect and admiration of fans, Adonis largely served as a punching bag for the likes of Rowdy Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan. Rumor has it that the Adorable Adrian role was devised by Vince McMahon as a punishment for Adonis’ weight gain. Ultimately, the WWF dropped Adonis for “dress-code violations”.
For those interested in the history of LGBTQ+ villains in the WWE, I recommend this piece by Chad Parenteau.
The Panoptic Championship is a title unique to Chaotic. Chaotic allows wrestlers of any gender to compete for any belt, but the Panoptic Championship exists as a platform specifically for performers historically underrepresented and undermined in traditional wrestling forums.
For years, the men and women of Chaotic have trained against each other behind NEPWA’s closed doors. Del Monte explained that the decision to toss gender out of the Chaotic equation was a natural one. “So many great matchups were happening away from the audience, and it was a shame that no one was seeing them,” he explained. Chaotic mainstay B3cca further spoke on the matter in the documentary Special Attraction, which is available to watch on Youtube free of charge.
Some took issue with Chaotic replacing the Chaotic Wrestling Women's Championship with the Panoptic Championship in 2021. This is unsurprising, considering recent controversy and debate surrounding transgender inclusion in women’s collegiate and professional sports. Though the promotion has dealt with some bigotry and backlash, Del Monte doesn’t have regrets: “We don’t need them. For every ten people that have left, twenty-five have taken their place”. He went on to cite how much the introduction of the Panoptic Championship meant to one Chaotic fan struggling with their gender identity. “If [Panoptic] helped just that one person and nothing else, it was worth it”.
Del Monte calls this the Dane Cook Effect. “Dane Cook went from an underground comedian that everyone loved to an overexposed mega-celebrity seemingly in the span of a few months,” he explains, which quickly turned off many of Cook’s original fans. The New England Patriots and the Boston Red Sox went through something similar. “For decades these teams were the lowliest of underdogs, never even able to come close to the top of the sport. Then they turned the tide and became the unstoppable dynasties that everyone wanted to see fail.” What separates wrestling from this equation is the fact that performers can change plans in real time when they sense dissatisfaction in the fanbase.
The Entity told me at the merch booth before the show that his look was inspired by the band Ghost “even though they kind of suck”. He plays a managerial/spiritual leader role to the tag team God’s Greatest Creation. GCC’s initial gimmick poked fun at organized Christianity, complete with tithe collection baskets repurposed to gather tips at the end of shows. The team has recently taken more of a turn toward the occult in general. As a girl with a sticker of the devil slapped to the back of the laptop used to type this essay, I love GCC with all of my heart. Nevertheless, I worried about the reaction from my decidedly more conservative father-in-law, especially when I spotted the tefillin-like electrical tape wrapped around The Entity’s arms.
(For what it’s worth, the tefillin resemblance was entirely coincidental and I had a really, really fun time explaining ancient Jewish prayer rituals as best I could to a dude 2x my size while “Break Stuff” by Limp Bizkit played in the background.)