cover image One Ring Circus: Extreme Wrestling in the Minor Leagues

One Ring Circus: Extreme Wrestling in the Minor Leagues

. Arsenal Pulp Press, $16.95 (155pp) ISBN 978-1-55152-132-9

Combining a DIY, punk-rock aesthetic with the off-kilter mid-American realism of Diane Arbus and William Eggleston, photojournalist Howell ventures to the Great White North (and the Pacific Northwest) to examine the personalities behind Extreme Canadian Championship Wrestling (ECCW). In the finest documentary tradition, this slim volume presents stark, black-and-white photographs that reveal both the mundane, workaday details of the amateur wrestling circuit and the dizzying, orchestrated violence that takes place in the ring. Shots of grimacing, bloodied faces and flying bodies are to be expected given the subject matter, but the finest images here reveal far more about this insular, working-class phenomenon: dingy motels, long hours between shows, shoddy venues and a litany of small towns. Howell uses brief, laconic paragraphs to explain his images, choosing straightforward titles like""Fans"" and""Volunteer"" to get to the heart of his subjects. Indeed, even in contrast with the wrestlers' decidedly extreme alter egos (Living Dead Girl, Cremator and Disco Fury are just a few), the fans themselves can be downright outlandish. The images' rapid transition between high-octane violence, clownish characters and small-town realities can be disorienting, but it also gets to the heart of the ECCW's day-to-day operation, in which long stretches of the daily grind are punctuated by 15-minute orgies of frenzied glory. 82 photographs.