Having a bash

>> Toronto-based Pillow Fight League
unleashes mayhem in Montreal

CURRENT WORLD PILLOW FIGHTING CHAMP: Champain

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

The Pillow Fight League, like many of history’s great inventions and people, was conceived out of boredom, six hours away from Linz, Austria. Spending long, dull days in a van touring Europe with his band the Tijuana Bibles in 2004, “You think of things to talk about, and you become more deranged the more you drive,” says League commissioner and founder Stacey Case, over the phone from Toronto. “And someone said the magic words, ‘Pillow Fight League’—my partner [co-Bible Craig Daniels] said it was his idea, I say it was mine. But I started thinking about it.” Regardless of its progeny, Case says he “was the first dope who thought about applying rules to it.”

The TO-based PFL arrives in Montreal this Saturday, May 5, with a bang, as current champion Champain defends her belt against an undetermined-as-of-presstime opponent.

RULES ARE PRECIOUS: Sarah Bellum

Real women, real battles

And so, after much more thought, the PFL was born, ushering in what ESPN.com columnist Neil Janowitz called “the future of sports.” The name is self-explanatory: Women (and only women, see rules below) get onto a mat, are surrounded by an audience and buffers, and whack each other into submission, using only pillows. The winner is decided by pinfall, surrender or by judge’s decision. It’s simple—but not gross. It isn’t mud wrestling, and “lewd or lascivious behaviour” is forbidden.

Enlisting the help of his tour mates, the Skin Tight Outta Sight burlesque troupe, the PFL’s first performance took place on New Year’s Eve, 2004. A year later, it returned, again with the burlesque women as fighters, but this time with scripted endings, which Case agreed to reluctantly. And while the audience was “rabid,” he says, he was “whatever.” Performing behind the fighters, he says he “was getting bored, because I knew how it would end. But then I saw these two girls in the front row who were just going apeshit. So I decided to have an extended amateur match and was praying that these two girls would volunteer, and they did.”

That show, he says, was his road to Damascus. “Those two girls tore each other apart,” he says. “It was fun, it was funny, it was exciting, it was competitive—they fought for real. And I thought, ‘That’s the Pillow Fight League, real women having a real fight.’”

He began recruiting volunteers in March 2006 to practise at his downtown studio and, with the help of Matt Mullen (also the PFL’s referee) and Dan “The Mouth” Lovranski as announcer, and performed their first re-invigorated PFL show the following month. And since then, it’s flourished. The PFL now has 25 fighters who train one to three times a week at Case’s studio, a champion, a belt, tournaments, even novelty acts like a 20-minute Iron Woman match (most contests are two two-minute rounds) and the Party Rockers, featuring partners Vic Payback and Trashley vs. “one of the toughies.”

The PFL has also garnered national as well as international interest. Toronto media’s covered them extensively, and, prior to a performance in Brooklyn in January, Case says he fielded interviews from “CNN, ABC News, ‘Good Morning America,’ FOX, three TV stations from Germany, three from Japan and a full-page write-up in the National Enquirer.” A Reuters reporter had come to the Toronto show in the week before they left for New York. “By the time I got to Brooklyn, I had a $1,500 cell phone bill.”

He also recently signed an agreement with TV producers Al Berman (finales for Survivor and The Apprentice, the 1998 Nagano Olympics for CBS) and Eddie October (Tommy Lee Goes to College, VH-1’s Bands Reunited).

ROCK ’EM SOCK ’EM: Ref Matt Mullen (L),
Kill Kelly and unidentified opponent

Eye of the Tiger

It’s not all fame and fortune though. There’s commitment involved, and, says Case, every Pillow Fighter needs three things: style, stamina and the Eye of the Tiger—which current PFL champ Champain has in spades. She says that in her first practice, she “kicked the crap” out of her opponent. The key component to her game, she says, mental preparedness.

“”When I go into a fight, I’ve thought a lot about my opponent’s usual fighting style and try to figure out how to prey upon her weaknesses,” she says. “I think about different moves I can pull out—a lot of people expect me to knee them, so maybe I’ll fake that and bring my arm down on the top of her head.”

While a match can be violent, everything stays in good fun, as policed by referee Matt Mullen. “We want a good show, so I have to make sure it stays on the mat, and keep the action moving,” he says. In one recent fight, he says, two women were circling each other, looking for an opening, without striking. “For people who know fight sports, they can see the tension and follow the mental game,” he says. But the crowd—whom he describes as “urban, sophisticated and young; hip, but not hipsters”—was “pissed. They want rock ’em sock ’em fights.”

The PFL does combine elements from different fight sports, including trash-talking and storylines. Champain says she refrains from trash-talking—“I don’t need to; I’m going to win, and that’s the end of it”—and doesn’t have one particular nemesis, although she says Sister Resistor has been known to attack her outside the fight zone and without warning. “She’s been disqualified so many times,” she says.

Sarah Bellum, a “semi-retired” fighter now turned referee and self-described nerdy girl whose “life got ruined by rock ’n’ roll,” says she will openly insult her opponent’s credibility. Bellum, a kind of sexy-but-tough librarian-type, is her alter ego but “cranked to 11,” she says.

But off the mat, there is a camaraderie among the fighters. “I love all the girls, but on the mat I have real issues with the Persian Princess,” says Bellum. “She’s a really dirty fighter, and she doesn’t respect my precious rules.”

Rules and regulations

>> Pillow Fight League is not a free for all

1. Female pillow fighters only. No exceptions.
2. Pillow fights have a five-minute time limit and are won via pinfall, surrender or referee stoppage. If a pillow fight ends at the time limit with no winner, a winner is declared by a three-judge committee, using the traditional 10-point system. Pillow fighters are judged based on Style, Stamina and the Eye of the Tiger.
3. Pillow fighting is Fun. No biting, scratching or hair pulling. Malicious intent and blatant disregard of your opponent’s safety (or your own) may result in immediate suspension and/or dismissal from the League.
4. Mouth guards, knee pads and elbow pads are mandatory.
5. Bearing in mind Rule #3, most anything goes in a pillow fight, as long as there is a pillow at the point of contact. Preventing your opponent’s offence by holding her pillow is not allowed.
6. Pillow fighters must practise good sportswomanship. No rude, lewd or suggestive behavior.
7. A pillow is not a weapon. Deliberately compressing the pillow fibres to increase the density of the pillow is not allowed. Loading a pillow with a foreign object such as a brick is strictly forbidden.

The Pillow Fight League throws down on
Saturday, May 5 at Petit Campus
(57 Prince Arthur E.), 9 p.m., $10.
For more info, visit www.gopfl.com.