“How would I describe Hoodslam? Hoodslam is adult Disneyland. There’s booze, there’s boobies, there’s violence … It’s metal, it’s live commentary, it’s real-life Rocky-Horror, it’s everything you ever wished [wrestling] was.”
— Brittany Wonder (pictured above)
I was trying to figure out the most succinct way to explain Hoodslam to someone who’s never been, and it finally occurred to me that this text message I sent to my friend mid-match was as good an explanation as any:
This encapsulates what I love about Hoodslam, which goes down on first Friday of each month at the Oakland Metro Operahouse in Jack London Square. It also exemplifies what makes Hoodslam so different from, say, WWE. In most pro-wrestling matches, you can expect minor, generally predictable shenanigans — a smack with a metal folding chair, a wrestler disguised as an audience member popping out at the last minute.
Not so in Hoodslam, where the sky is the limit. And the sky is full of crazy.
I’ve seen two wrestlers grab the referees and use them as proxy fighters, manipulating their arms and bodies like rag dolls to dodge each other’s blows. I’ve seen an evil mad-scientist-turned-clown (that would be Doc Atrocity) use telekinesis to destroy his opponent from 20 feet away. I’ve seen a flailing Link (as in, the protagonist from Zelda) reach into his treasure chest mid-match, pull out a bottle of vodka, and then chug it to “regain” his strength. (Link, thoroughly inebriated, went on to win the match.)
And now I’ve seen a wrestler use her Pokémon, Togepi, to put her opponent’s dick to sleep.
“Hoodslam is a [wrestling event] that doesn’t insult your intelligence as a human being. Like, ‘News flash: Pro wrestling is a performance!’ And a lot of pro wrestling nowadays, especially on the biggest stages, are trying to operate under the illusion that it’s a genuine athletic competition, but the secret’s been out for years now. So we go the exact opposite direction and just make it as ridiculous as we possibly can.”
— A.J. Kirsch, Hoodslam’s host
Everyone performing has their own distinct wrestling persona. (Some have several.) When interviewing A.J. Kirsch, the host of Hoodslam, I asked him if he wanted to be interviewed as himself or in character as Broseph Joe Brody, the bro extraordinaire who both wrestles and emcees. He scoffed and said, “Dude, that guy’s a dick.”
But that’s exactly the point of Kirsch’s character, Broseph: He’s a dick. Clad in a flat-brimmed ball cap (which used to say “DRUNKEN $WAG” and now says “TURNT”), board shorts, and dual cans of Axe cologne that he sprays wantonly, Broseph always makes his entrance to a Nickelback track.
“I realized that if I’m going to perform alongside the likes of Drugz Bunny and the Stoner Brothers and Dark Sheik and Chupacabra” — pictured, left — “I had to come up with a character that was equally outrageous,” Kirsch said. To create the character, he combined elements from his real life: a stint as a bouncer in the Marina — “San Francisco’s douchiest neighborhood” — plus his college experience at party school Chico State, being a gym rat, and what he assures me is a “genuine love” for Nickelback. Thus, Broseph was born.
“I always grew up knowing I wanted to be a professional wrestler,” said Brittany Wonder, who performed tag-team that night against Chupacabra and Virgil Flynn. “I grew up [in the South] watching it … and I just grew more and more in love with it.
“When I found out there was a pro-wrestling company that trained people in my hometown, that was the end. I hit up the school that day. I saved so much money — they were like ‘girls train for free.’” She laughs at this memory.
When Brittany Wonder first started, she was typecast as a generic “girl” wrestler. “When I was still in training, one trainer in particular was plotting out characters and said, ‘Oh, this character’s gonna be this, and this one is gonna be that … but you’re a girl; you’re just gonna be a girl wrestler.’ And that was my biggest problem in training — what is a ‘girl wrestler’? … I don’t know what the fuck a girl wrestler’s supposed to do. I don’t know what it is to be a female as a personality trait.”
Brittany set out to create a more genuine persona than the sexist one assigned to her. “I was sitting there with my best friend one day, smoking a blunt and watching the Powerpuff Girls, and he was like, ‘You know who you should be? You should be Buttercup. That’s totally you. You’re always the toughest chick out of anybody.’”
Brittany Wonder, who tends to go by her wrestler name in everyday life, explained that eventually she became “a full-blown superhero.” She said, “It started out as me being a little kid who followed a superhero into me being a full-blown Wonder Woman superhero.
“You’ve seen me. I’ve lifted 300-pound people over my head, and here I am — I’m 145 pounds myself.”
If you go: Hoodslam goes down the first Friday of every month (and sometimes more often) at the Oakland Metro Operahouse in Jack London Square. This month, Hoodslam is also hosting a special Halloween show, BLOODSLAM, on October 22nd. Doors at 8pm, show at 9pm. $20.
