David Jett Explains Apartment Wrestling

Putting a lip lock on your love pork chop.

The Quentin Tarantino film “Django Unchained” features a scene in which Leo DiCaprio, playing an unscrupulous southern gentleman/entrepreneur, orders two of his slaves to violently fight (beat the shit out of each other.)  This scene, also known as the “mandingo fight,” takes place in an ornate game room complete with lavish bar, sitting chairs and a billiards table. People mostly go about their business and converse while two bloody men break bones and battle to the death in this parlor that looks more designed for serving cucumber sandwiches and petit fours than for an MMA match.

When I first saw this scene, I was immediately reminded of Apartment Wrestling, one of the dumbest things in the wrestling industry (and wrestling is nothing if not a series of dumb things.) What made apartment wrestling so incredibly ridiculous was that in a business that is predominantly “fake,” apartment wrestling managed to be even faker.

In the 70’s and 80’s, before the internet and cell phones and WWE worldwide broadcasts, if you were a wrestling fan, you only got to see your local TV program. Wrestling had territories all over the country (Memphis, Florida, St. Louis, Dallas, California) but none of those were shown nationwide. So a wrestling fan craving scoops and info on what was happening outside their local region had to rely on what eventually came to be known as “the Apter mags.”  Although he didn’t create these wrestling magazines, Bill Apter was the predominant editor/photographer and more or less the face of the company. Magazines like Pro Wrestling Illustrated, Inside Wrestling, and The Wrestler dominated the newsstands at 7/11’s and dime stores.

Unlike today, where journalists like Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer newsletter and Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com cover the actual business of wrestling, the Apter mags treated wrestling like it was real. Like for real, for real.  Thus the magazines themselves were printing fake articles and fake interviews about a fake sport. And when sales would dip, they went to the one thing of which they were sure: men like to look at almost naked women. And it was even hotter if the almost naked women got into catfights.

Apartment Wrestling, on the surface, was women having wrestling matches in apartments, or as I like to call it, a typical weekend. But let me make this clear: apartment wrestling did not exist on wrestling tv shows. You couldn’t go to your local arena to see apartment wrestling. You couldn’t even go to apartments to see apartment wrestling (which seems really fucking dumb.) These women were not really wrestlers, they didn’t tour with wrestling shows, hell, they weren’t really wrestling. They posed for photos that ran in the magazines (and more importantly, on the covers) and the accompanying stories were totally fabricated.  In a world of fake wrestling, apartment wrestling managed to up the ante.

The 1995 film The Usual Suspects featured the quote “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” Apartment Wrestling did the old flippity-flop on that quote as it convinced the world it existed when it actually didn’t. Let’s take a look at a few magazines featuring apartment wrestling.

“Hey, her boob is about to pop out! Let me buy this and see if it does!”

Her diary really isn’t confidential if they are publishing it in a FUCKING NATIONAL MAGAZINE!

“Ok, so for my next move, I’m gonna rub my hoo ha on your ass.”

Who demanded this match be stopped? Are there apartment referees? Maybe the building super thought they were making too much noise and he couldn’t hear Mama’s Family.

At least someone had the good sense to have these gals move their shit outside onto the deck.

What the fuck?! That women is about to have her uterus caved in.

WWF champ Bruno Samartino (Hulk Hogan before Hulk Hogan) has to split this cover 50/50 with apartment wrestling.

Now it’s called Apartment House Wrestling? Is it a house or is it an apartment. Is there such a thing as Duplex Wrestling? This should really all take place in a mobile home.

Hard to tell if this is wrestling or yoga. Maybe the one on top is just helping massage a pulled hamstring.

Holy fuck, did she just bite her? That blood’s gonna be hard to get out of the curtains.

At first, the inclusion of apartment wrestling increased sales of the Apter mags many times over. Cause guys wanna see women fight. And in a classy setting like an apartment, not at the self-check out aisle of Walmart. Eventually, the magazine publishers decided to put out a mag with only apartment wrestling and none of the actual male wrestlers at all. It was called Battling Girls and was just as ridiculous as it sounds.

I hate to say it, but those are shitty apartments. They look like somewhere a woman would be kept after she had been kidnapped.

So, the next time you’re sitting around the living room in your swanky apartment, reading a book or watching a relaxing television show, think about how much better if would be if there were two women in bikinis right next to your Wayfair coffee table, not fighting, just posing as if they were. A freeze-frame from a catfight. A moment in time from something that never really existed. Like Keyser Soze.