Title Nine Unleashed

What is it about girls fighting that captures the
male mind like a steel trap on a drunken bear? Somehow it connects the
Sports Zone of the brain to the Sex Zone, which together
make up approximately 95% of the typical American male’s mental real
estate.

From the beer ad featuring two comely combatants in
a classically refreshing fountain, to the continuing popularity of mud
wrestling, through the reemergence of female professional wrestlers like La
Gata Negra, movies like Million Dollar Baby and boxers like Lalia
Ali, battling babes are hot commodities on the modern media market.

Two stories that appeared In the past several
days seem to indicate that this is not a purely American phenomena. First,
women’s sumo wrestling is making a comeback.  Who even knew it had
gone away? According to an article in the Japan Times:

YAMAGATA
(Kyodo) Female sumo wrestlers wearing "mawashi" belts
over their underwear once competed in tournaments throughout Japan, Taiwan
and Hawaii, a popular entertainment until it disappeared in the 1960s.

Female sumo wrestlers grappled in a tournament promoted by the late Heishiro
Ishiyama in Tokyo’s Asakusa district in 1958. But women’s sumo is attracting
attention again.

Meanwhile, the sumo ethos is spreading
around the world. Sumo, we discovered, is a featured event at the World
Games, held this year in Duisburg, Germany. How did we not hear
about this annual event until right now? If only we had known in time
to request blogging credentials.

This incredible smorgasbord of old and new includes
ancient standbys like Archery and Tug of War (?!) as well as relative
newcomers like the international hit Korfball.  In addition, official
sports include waterskiing, karate, rhythmic gymnastics, frisbee, fistball
and fly casting.  Not to mention Sumo, both men’s and women’s divisions.

What, you may ask, is Korfball? According to the official
web site of the International
Korfball Association, "Korfball is the
world’s only true mixed team sport with the rules laid down so that both
men
and women have equal opportunities." The only thing more athletically
erotic than women fighting is mixed competition.

Well, we thought we had seen everything when we came
across the following article on women’s professional wrestling in, of
all places, Bolivia.  The
landlocked Andean fortress of Bolivia, of course, is the final battleground
of the 500-year American
Indian War.  It is the country with the highest percentage native
American genetic heritage (over 70%), as well as the poorest country
in the hemisphere
despite a healthy endowment of gas and other natural resources.

Now the Dowbrigade has spent half his adult life in
South America, and is a strong supporter of the native peoples of
that star-crossed regions and their attempts to reclaim their ancestral
cultures and somehow recover from near genocide, chronic poverty and
systemic discrimination, but for the life of us we can’t
figure out the cultural significance of tiny, traditionally dressed Indian
women from the altiplano, in their voluminous layered skirts, puffy white
blouses and multiple strands of beads and necklaces flying through the
air and pounding the canvas within the squared circle of the Bolivian
version of the World Wrestling Federation.

EL ALTO, Bolivia – In her red multilayered skirt, white
pumps and gold-laced shawl, the traditional dress of the Aymara people,
Ana Polonia Choque might well be preparing for a night of folk dancing
or, perhaps, a religious festival.

But as Carmen Rosa, master of the ring and winner of 100 bone-crunching
bouts in Bolivia’s colorful wrestling circuit, she is actually dressing
for a night of mayhem.

With loyal fans screaming out her name, she climbs the corner ropes high
above the ring, bounces once for momentum and flies high, arms outstretched
for maximum effect. To the crowd’s delight, the dive flattens her adversary,
Mar?a Remedios Condori, better known as Julia la Pace?a (Julia from La
Paz).

from the New York Times

Call us old fashioned, but we prefer a good old-fashioned
bake-off or quilting bee.