The body slam of Venus

Black Venus thinks that wrestling is “quite similar to sex.” We’re talking on the phone, a few days before the Iron Fist Tournament, a lesbian wrestling competition taking place in a secret location on the outskirts of East London, and Venus, a sex worker, educator, and martial artist, was preparing me for what to expect. “The primality of it, the rawness, that skin-to-skin contact—just sweating on each other. It's very physical."

Venus and I have met once before, at a “Sex and Rage” lesbian strip club party she’d organized in an arts centre in Dalston, a dazzling night of maximalist razzmatazz: glittery stilettos, flashes of diamenté, fake dollar bills flickering like moths in the floodlights. Friday’s event, she warns me, was going to be different. “It’s very chaotic,” she explained, “The messiness of it just allows people to enjoy their bodies as they are, without overthinking and hypersexualizing every aspect of themselves.” 

Venus began hosting kink wrestling battles last year, following the release of the romantic thriller Love Lies Bleeding, when “there was this surge of interest in strong women,” yet wrestling games seemed to only cater to a straight male audience. In the UK, a number of venues, such as The Submission Room in London and The Wrestling Factory in Manchester, host session wrestling competitions, but Venus hadn’t come across any events that were run exclusively for lesbians and bisexuals. “We wanted to do something that allowed us to be more free,” she told me. 

A few days later, on a balmy Friday evening—the beginning of the UK’s sunniest spring on record—I took two trains to the secret location (which is revealed to guests after booking). I arrived at the East London high street just after 7pm, and zoomed into Google Maps, trying to locate the elusive gym, somewhere between a car repair shop and a tattoo studio. Eventually, I zigzagged down a gritty alleyway, where a Euro football game was blasting from the back of a restaurant, and noticed a concrete-slabbed building with a door ajar. 

There I spotted Venus—warm and radiant—dressed in a white sports bra and shimmery black shorts. The gym is deliciously kitsch: a wrestling ring is surrounded by bright blue and red padded mats; walls draped in union jack bunting, decorated with pin-ups of butch female wrestling legends and printed photographs of amateurs. Venus told me that she keeps the exact location of the gym private to protect the safety of the performers, but the venue is well known among wrestling communities on a “if you know, you know” basis. “A big part of the events, for me, is creating a space where people can just have fun, not take themselves too seriously,” she said. 

The event kicks off with a kinky wrestling workshop. By 7.30pm, London’s lesbians and bisexuals have filled the room, and are stripping into gym gear. Venus, who is standing inside the ring, tells everyone to find a partner. 

Wrestling can be a form of BDSM, but the sport also falls into its own sub-category. In 2023, “wrestling” was the most searched term on Pornhub in Norway and Finland, while sites such as herbiceps are devoted to female muscle worship and feature numerous erotic battle videos. “Normally you have the dom, who's controlling the scene, and the sub who's vulnerable, in the sense that they're letting go of control,” Venus explained, “The interesting thing with wrestling is that those roles can shift with play… You can really explore those different parts of your personality.” 

For the next hour, participants are instructed to choreograph their bodies with their partners, pushing, plunging, twisting their bodies into a series of movements: chokeholds, facesitting, head scissors. The atmosphere is both horny and goofy; some couples get off while others fall to the ground laughing. Venus reminds submissive partners that they shouldn’t totally surrender to their partner; the best (and safest) play happens when they exert force too. “A good submissive is actually really strong… because they can take a lot of pain,” she said, “You're exposing your body to a lot of impact.”

After the workshop, it’s time for the tournament. Six wrestlers take turns competing in one-on-one battles. In one performance, a topless Mario pins a tattooed Luigi to the ground, ripping off her mustache as the familiar video game jingle plays in the background. In another, a sultry sailor facesits Superwoman. The audience, spread around the ring, drink beers and buzzballs and coconut water, cheering at every beat. 

“One of the reasons why I started this is because it's so queer, so drag, so camp. But for some reason, it's so cornered into a straight scope and space,” Superwoman, who usually goes by Sabrina, told me after the game. We sat upstairs on a bench in the landing, where the other wrestlers were getting ready for their next game, yanking off crop tops and pulling up shiny pink bodysuits. 

All participants are sex workers—some of whom have created erotic wrestling videos themselves (where “the person who comes or bottoms the most loses.”) Others have performed in fantasy wrestling competitions or run private combat sessions with male clients. Sabrina recalled one man, “a really high power finance bro,” who works late during the week, he has drinks with colleagues on Friday, and he’s hungover on Saturday. Then on Sunday, he wrestles her. “It’s his silly time that no one knows about,” she told me. The only time he breaks from his otherwise organized and predictable routine.

Performing for a lesbian and bisexual audience, however, is a whole new experience. “It's a very different mode here,” said Sheela, who wore a cherry red wig and a mesh leotard draped in plastic ivy. She had winged eyeliner, strawberry-shaded eyeshadow, and matching crimson-painted lips. “I wouldn't be in a submissive role with a client personally, because as someone who's strong but quite slight of frame, you do have clients who have a lot of ego.” 

Minutes after we talked, Sheela is called into the wrestling ring to fight a contestant in a metallic red bodysuit. The fight is both vicious and tender. Straddling leads to scissoring. Slaps are followed by gentle strokes. I think back to something Sabrina said about session wrestling, how the practice wasn’t as sex-oriented as one may think. “All adults want to play too,” she told me. Kink wrestling, she figured, was a way of tending to our “inner child”—the parts of ourselves that are weird and bratty and helpless. The sport was as much about force and control as it was about tenderness, care, and release. Sheela ties up her opponents legs with poison ivy, then caresses them, urging her to surrender, slowly, kiss by kiss.