Combat sports & self-defence
June 2010
There’s nothing else in the world of sport or pantomime to compare with the manic mat mayhem of pro wrestling, which amalgamates high-flying stunts with melodrama, spandex, bodybuilding and blood – and sometimes it gets really weird. Wrestling’s 101 Strangest Matches scours 100 years of history to reveal bouts that bordered on the unbelievable. Take the grappler who lost his foot in the middle of a match, the bout that took place in an exploding swimming pool, or the baroque carnage of ultraviolent deathmatches – and then sprinkle liberally with double-crosses, drunkenness, riots, time travel, broken rings and broken bones. Boasting an impressive breadth of coverage which takes in old-school British wrestling and present-day WWE, the bill features Hulk Hogan, Kendo Nagasaki, Muhammad Ali, a wrestling robot and a monkey. Many of the stars and bizarre attractions submit to revealing interviews in a celebration of the grap game at its very strangest.