WE DO THIS TO FEEL ALIVE
Underground Wrestling Federation (UWF)
In a quiet, middle-class part of Yardley, Pennsylvania, is a blood-soaked canvas hidden by sprawling woods. The Lyft driver tells me that if the neighbors had an inkling of what was happening next door, the Underground Wrestling Federation would be shut down. The bi-monthly shows feature a variety of amateur fighters and draw out a couple dozen attendees, mainly friends and family of the participants. For several hours, a handful of young men voluntarily scar their bodies in sensational death matches, some dreaming of going pro and others just trying to get by.
“In a weird way it’s our therapy. I do this once or twice a month instead of me flipping out at work. The physical pain helps with the mental shit - helps keep me in line,” said twenty-two year old Mikey Anarchy, whose marred back has the texture of a braille dictionary. Anthony Santoleri, known as Max Adams, weighed in, “I've just always been a person that like kind of grew up with that core self hate, you know like always feeling down - like always feeling like I'm never good enough. I feel invincible [when I’m in the ring]. Versus feeling like a fucking loser half the days otherwise. When I'm Max Adams, there's no fucking way you can tell me I can't do something.” He went on to say that the pain he chooses to feel in the ring is almost akin to karma for not living up to his full potential in other areas of his life. “It's [hardcore wrestling] just, it helps me prove to myself that I'm stronger and stronger every single time that I get out of that ring.”
The progressively violent scenes from hardcore wrestling shows became a staple in American households in the 90’s and early 2000’s. As the sport rose in popularity, the industry needed a way to raise demand for seats and selling pay-per-view programming. Producers dialed up the violence and sexual content. This trend in wrestling reflects America’s conflicted relationship with violence. We condemn it from the pulpit to the statehouse, yet spend billions producing and consuming increasingly violent media with hazy but undeniable effects on younger viewers. “I can't explain why I do this. I was just asked, ‘Hey, you want to do a death match?’ Oh, yeah. I watched [that] shit as a kid,” recalled Mikey. While death matches are not uniquely American, there is a pattern of greed, mass production, and violence paired with a lack of community resources and medical access that fits a familiar star-spangled pattern.
My cousins and I used to sneak out of parental view to watch The Undertaker and Stone Cold Steve Austin take the ring and dole out increasingly devastating punishments. Like many young boys, we bonded over wrestling and constantly tried to recreate the moves. Revisiting wrestling in my adulthood, I wanted to capture those feelings of nostalgia and the youthful idealism that allows one to suspend belief and be quick to heroize. I sought to validate some positive aspects of what seems like purely self-destructive behavior, while highlighting the overarching structures that glamorize hyper-masculinity, regressive views of gender roles and self-expression rooted in aggression that’s packaged for a young, mostly male audience.
One of the significant draws to UWF in particular is the community. The parents of wrestlers cheer from the stands, children film every second of the action from their parent’s phones, and partners of the wrestlers share bloody kisses after their loved one after a match. It was unlike any other scene I’ve witnessed. Mikey told me, “UWF's not just a fucking wrestling show. It's a brotherhood. There are days where I'd wake up and I'm like, ‘why the fuck do I even live anymore?’ and it's like I look at the flag right in front of my face it's UWF and it is like okay. Let's get this shit.”
