Photography by West Smith
When I first saw the poster for Meet Us In The Parking Lot: Drag Wrestling at Massive, my brain couldn’t quite piece together what it was going to be. After working in the independent pro wrestling industry for ten years now, I know how much hard work and training it takes before a wrestler is allowed to even have a match in the ring. “There is no way they are actually going to wrestle,” I thought.
I reached out to drag queen Mimi Gina, one of the wrestlers on the poster. They replied with a voice memo assuring me that they were going to, “get in the ring and, like, actually fight.”
Produced by Massive’s Ethan Cory, the show was, in fact, local drag queens wrestling in a real wrestling ring for the first time. After all, pro wrestling has often been compared to drag, sometimes even being called “drag for herteros.” Why not combine them? Each match was set to music and it really did feel like equal parts wrestling match and drag show. I popped (the pro wrestling term for the reaction of the crowd, often integrated into the show) when Papusa hit a lariat on This Girl and I popped again when the opening piano notes of Abba’s 1980 hit “The Winner Takes All” started.
The matches were fantastic: they featured great in-ring psychology, storytelling, and showed physical prowess across the entire card. I truly believe that if any of these queens decided to hang up the heels and go on a run of the independent wrestling circuit, it would only be a matter of time until someone put the belt on them.
Choose your fighter.
