A while back, I inducted Sports Review Wrestling's long-running apartment wrestling feature to WrestleCrap. Unfortunately, its risqué subject matter got it flagged by Google, so we took it off the site. But now, after some creative edits you'll hardly even noticed, it's back online!
Shortly after Sports Review Wrestling’s debut publication in 1972, the magazine began covering not just the professional wrestling, but a different sort of wrestling altogether. This women-only genre was “an athletic event — the newest and most popular sporting craze in America — known simply as Apartment Wrestling.” And by the end of the decade it had become “the symbol of the 1970s.”
Not just a symbol, but the symbol.
Despite the sport’s uncontrollable popularity, you could be forgiven for never having heard of it, and for good reason: unlike mainstream professional wrestling, apartment wrestling matches could not be found in any arena or gym...
...but instead, as the name implied, in luxurious penthouse apartments. Vince McMahon may take credit for taking wrestling out of the smoke-filled halls (Madison Square Garden) and into the big arenas (Madison Square Garden, post-smoking ban)…
…but he never brought the sport directly into the homes of the crème de la crème of society, where spectators sipped champagne instead of beer.
Rather than numbering in the thousands, audiences for apartment wrestling were limited to just a few dozen business tycoons, wealthy playboys, entertainment bigwigs, world-renowned authors, academic elites, and paparazzi. And there were no tickets — attendance was by invite only, though no one ever turned down the offer. Hotbeds of apartment wrestling ranged from New York, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Vail stateside, to Rio de Janeiro and Munich internationally.
Needless to say, the events were high-brow affairs. That’s not to say that apartment wrestling was a purely intellectual affair. As in any “er𝐨tic sport”, spectators were “treated to views that aroused their most primitive senses”.
In other words: n𝐞kkid women.
Placed awkwardly on the front of each issue, the bikini-clad c𝐚tfight girls made for unlikely cover stars alongside the likes of Bob Backlund or Ricky Steamboat.
Even more unbelievable was that, like all the other so-called “Apter mags” (actually Stanley Weston mags), Sports Review Wrestling specialized in fake quotes from world-famous wrestlers. Readers were thus expected to believe that Mr. Backlund would share his on-the-record thoughts on the Boston crab…
…with the same publication that once printed the phrase, “sweating mass of feminine 𝐨dor, perfume, and body”.
The presence of half-na𝐤ed ladies on a wrestling magazine cover may seem like a cheap marketing ploy, but fans buying an issue off the news stand got their money’s worth. Though a typical issue of Sports Review Wrestling contained only 60 or so pages, a dozen of them were reserved for apartment wrestling. That’s nearly as many pages as were dedicated to ads for miracle height extensions…
…psychokinetic chest hair growth…
…male girdles…
…fake IDs…
…thievery handbooks…
…and piano lessons.
While the main draw of the apartment wrestling features was to see se𝐱y women in full, living black and white, these weren’t simply pictorial spreads. Instead, the articles went into elaborate detail about all the competitors, their backstories, and their motivations for competing. They were nurses, stewardesses, heiresses, actresses, and mistresses, all wrestling for different reasons (none of which were money).
Along the way, readers were treated to TS Eliot quotes...
...reflections on the Spanish Civil War...
...and the absolute h𝐨rniest prose ever found in a wrestling publication. Under the guise of play-by-play, the writer called the action with colorful — though often repetitive — terms for the ladies’ anatomy.
A competitor might possess any of the following types of mamm𝐚ry glands:
- firm brea𝐬ts
- firm, luscious brea𝐬ts
- firm voluptuous brea𝐬ts
- full, delicately rounded brea𝐬ts
- lush brea𝐬ts
- a “lush brea𝐬t” [singular]
- magnificent chest
- magnificent orbs
- a “perfectly formed brea𝐬t”
- a “pert brea𝐬t”
- an “exposed, supple brea𝐬t”
- a “stiff-n𝐢ppled brea𝐬t”
- voluptuous brea𝐬ts
…and, my personal favorite, “fulsome brea𝐬ts”.
If those brea𝐬ts were any more fulsome,
Johnny Cash would have recorded a live album on them!
A pair of wardrobe mishaps even led one spectator to reflect that “he had never seen two women with such identical brea𝐬ts in his life”. Them’s some identical brea𝐬ts, I tell you what!
If you’re into gams, Sports Review Wrestling had you covered again. Legs were described alternately as powerful, long and powerful, exquisite, luxurious, shapely, splendid, and velvety. Sometimes the women didn’t sport legs, but “shanks”, as in the phrases, “splendid shanks” and “velvety shank”.
Various apartment wrestlers had “lithe legs”, a “lithe leg” (singular), or a “beautifu [sic], lithe leg”. One wrestler even transformed her poor opponent’s legs into “two shafts of aching pain”.
"Hey, I need a synonym for 'arms and legs', preferably one that alliterates with 'lithe'."
"No time for that, Stu. We've got a deadline to meet!"
As far as backsides go, the writer had a clear blind spot, referring to them only as “muscular”, or sometimes “muscular and pale”.
Looking at the photos, there wasn’t a lot of variation of body types, but their descriptions fared slightly better:
- beautiful, lithe body
- curvacious [sic] body
- exquisite body
- fulsome body
- long, lithe body
- lush body
- magnificent body
And sometimes, the wrestlers used their bodies as an “exquisite torture machine”, or a “writhing machine of punishment”. “Writhe” was perhaps the writer’s favorite verb. “Spasmodically” was his favorite adverb, as in the phrase, “Her body jerked in hideous, spasmodic writhings”.
The combatants themselves were referred to as the following:
- Amazonian blonde
- beauteous Olivia
- curvatious [sic] brunette [they never did learn how to spell, “curva𝐜eous”]
- exquisite nurse
- fabulous brunette
- fabulous vixens
- lithe blonde
- lovely brunette
- lush beauty
- nu𝐛ile blonde
- 𝐬exy blonde
- shapely Jacqueline
- sultry foe
- sumptuous brunette
- two magnificent specimens of womanhood
- well-𝐞ndowed nurse
- wonderful specimens of womanhood
The writer loved to call the women “𝐯oluptuous”, as in a certain “𝐯oluptuous combatant”, a “𝐯oluptuous grappler”, or one wrestler who turned herself into a “𝐯oluptuous projectile”. Any wrestler might have a “𝐯oluptuous body” or a “𝐯oluptuous and exquisite figure”. In one rare bout, both competitors had “𝐯oluptuous frames”. And in a single article, the writer once referred to both competitors as a “𝐯oluptuous blonde” and a “𝐯oluptuous brunette”, respectively.
One of these ladies, who may or may not have also been 𝐯oluptuous, had a mouth that was “slightly too sensual to be considered perfect”. Whatever you say.
But there was perhaps no word the writer loved more than “alabaster”, whether it be alabaster thighs; long, alabaster arms; alabaster skin; and even an alabaster throat.
The apartment wrestling industry frequently fell victim to controversy. Once, a crooked executive drugged a competitor with a tranquilizer, telling her it was actually a performance enhancer. This allowed him to collect on a six-figure bet and flee the country.
Sleazy businessmen would try to cash in on the craze, missing the point entirely by objectifying the wrestlers.
Once, the four most powerful figures in the industry had to meet and decide whether to pull the plug on the whole sport. It seems the matches had become too dangerous and prone to savagery — “er𝐨tic savagery”, but savagery nonetheless.
Sports Review Wrestling’s coverage of the sport backs up this claim; it seems that every few months, a match would go “too far”.
Though excessive violence could be deemed, “too far”, 𝐧udity was not. In fact, it was simply an occupational hazard — at any moment, wrestlers risked "exposing nearly all that women is about [sic]."
And while Sports Review Wrestling never featured nu𝐝ity in its pictures, its sister publication, Battling Girls did.
Due to the to𝐩less pictures, both Battling Girls and its commemorative photo sets were available through mail order only. As responsible publishers, TV Sports, Inc. even recommended that children get their parents’ permission before ordering the 𝐧udie magazine.
By 1984, Sports Review Wrestling stopped covering apartment wrestling.
In 2002, Stu Saks, the editor of Pro Wrestling Illustrated, came clean about the “sport”. To the surprise of no one, none of the “matches” ever took place.
Instead, Saks himself would caption photo shoots to go along with writer Dan Shocket’s fictitious articles.
Long-time readers were surprised to learn that Dan Shocket was a real person, but not an a𝐬𝐬 man.
Saks admitted that the features were a mistake, alienating the magazine's core wrestling fan base to appeal to a broader (h𝐨rnier) audience that eventually got bored. Sports Review Wrestling folded in 1995.
It just goes to show you that you shouldn’t sacrifice your hardcore fans to appeal to softcore fans.
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