Last December, a group of women and femmes filed quietly into a Kensington basement through a side door. Inside: a cleared-out basement, a few wrestling mats, folding chairs, and the unspoken understanding that something unusual was about to happen.
This was Hot Girl Wrestling, Philadelphia’s unregulated, community-run fight club sustained by commitment and word-of-mouth. There are no referees and no waivers.
Since launching in September, Hot Girl Wrestling has taken place outdoors, in parks and public spaces across Philadelphia. When the weather turned, there was no venue willing to host an event where people showed up to wrestle with no rules, no insurance, no governing body.
So the group did what Philadelphians do best: they improvised.
The December match took place in a cofounder’s family member’s basement, cleared out as a Christmas gift so there would be room for a makeshift ring. Total strangers showed up for an event that ended up feeling like a ritual.
“It’s been so much fun to lean into the side of me that likes to be a little theatrical and antagonistic,” said participant Liz Thomas, a social worker and therapist based in West Powelton.
Nicole Ney, a bartender and wedding coordinator who resides in Point Breeze, and Jess Olavage, a public schoolteacher in Wissahickon, cofounded Hot Girl Wrestling this past summer. The two met in middle school in 2007.
The club started out as a joke.
“Nicole and I were at a concert, sitting in the crowd waiting for the band to go on, and we were talking about how fun it is to wrestle,” said Olavage.
“We joked: ‘It would be so funny if we started an all-girls wrestling team.’”
“Wrestling came up naturally for us because Jess and I both grew up with one sister close in age,” said Ney. “My sister and I were always fighting growing up, sometimes play-fighting, sometimes fully going for it. Even if it ended with us both getting sent to our rooms.
“It felt cathartic.”
On that night, Ney realized she had never wrestled Olavage. “Which felt wrong,” she said.
They started by tussling in the grass just for fun. It all ballooned from there and now the club hosts packed meetings every month around the city.
And to their surprise, people keep showing up.
Six months on, they have a whole wrestling team, usually between 15 and 50 people each meeting.
“The timeline from idea to first meeting was about 10 days,” said Ney. “We immediately decided we needed flyers, publicity, a wrestling belt, and tournaments.”
Right after the concert, they created the club’s Instagram account. Soon, they were cutting up magazines to make flyers.
“We didn’t have glue so we used tape and nail polish. It was very frenetic,” said Olavage.
Ten days later, in September, 40 people showed up to the first meeting held behind a Walmart in South Philly.
“It felt unreal,” said Olavage. “We had no idea what we were doing. We had some discarded gym mats, snacks, and drinks, and started with introductions, zodiac signs, and poorly organized stretching.”
The only instruction was: “If you want to fight someone, go find someone.” It turned into two hours of what Ney called “pure girl on girl violence.”
The vibes are very much underground Fight Club, but they talk about it.
“That’s the first rule. If you’re a girl, you talk about Fight Club,” said Ney.
It has worked out well so far.
The other rules are: no biting, choking, or body slams.
“Everything else is vibes-based and whoever wins is decided collectively or when someone taps out,” said Olavage. There’s no bracket or order.
“It’s become a community-building thing,” said Ney. “We’re mostly strangers who occasionally beat each other up and now have a bond.”
The point, she said, isn’t dominance. It’s a release.
In a culture that rarely offers women and gender-nonconforming people sanctioned space for physical release, the chaotic, vibes-based Hot Girl Wrestling meetings have become spaces where collective care is forged through this rare sensation of public release.
“Bodies, especially more feminine bodies, are policed and stigmatized by societal expectations and norms, but in the community of Hot Girl Wrestling, all of that goes out the window.” said software engineer Destiny Muskovitz of Point Breeze.
“We all show up, either to just watch or to wrestle and there’s not really any questions about who belongs in the space.”
Folks will often turn up exhausted or not in the mood. “We’ll say ‘I’m not wrestling today,’” said Ney. “But once people show up, our energy completely changes. It fills our cups in a way we didn’t expect.”
What do they hope people take away from this?
“Catharsis and community,” said Olavage. “It’s liberating to do something weird and physical and outside gender norms.”
“The unregulated nature is freeing. There’s trust here,” said Ney. “People might be a little weird, a little outcast, but there’s safety.”
Ultimately, it’s about community and supporting weirdos being weird.
“It’s also a creative outlet. We make flyers, bracelets, stickers,” says Olavage. “We also bake cookies. People bring snacks, water, and candy. There’s no charge. We’re broke women in a city, and no one should have to pay for community.”
Most people find out about the club through the flyers, Instagram, or word of mouth. Some bring friends.
“We use a pink American flag with a screeching possum to mark our location,” said Ney.
When asked what the possum represents, Olavage said, “We don’t overthink anything. Possum energy just fits.”
“Nothing is serious,” she said. “This is a fever dream we decided to actualize.”
Hot Girl Wrestling is on Instagram at @hotgirlwrestlingphl