A Good Time To Fight Dirty
About a month ago, Kelly Becker was walking a dog at the Web of Life Animal Outreach (502-0340), a seven-acre, no-kill animal sanctuary in Chesapeake. The weather had been a bit wet lately, and the organization's secretary was trying to maneuver her four-legged friend between the puddles.
Suddenly, the canine decided to get a little dirty.
"Every time it rains, it's a mud put around here," Becker said. "The dog pulled me down into the mud and pulled me like I was on a boat. When I stood up, I was in mud from head to toe. That's how the idea came about."
She and other workers wondered if local ladies would want to temporarily renounce their cleanliness.
"We thought it would be fun to do a mud wrestling tournament," said Jackie Van Horn, who started the business two years ago. "No one's really done that before. We kicked it around for a while, and decided to bite the bullet." Workers fixed up a 12-by-12-foot square of hay bales and laid a tarp across it. They poured organic-sifted dirt (no gravel or wood), and sprayed water on it, turning out a makeshift swamp.
"We're trying to build an 8,000-foot facility for all the animals, and (the event) was for a building fund," Becker said. "We need $600,000 to build the building."
Around the area, support quickly sprang up. Several businesses offered sponsorships. Dozens of tickets were sold - and participants came.
For the past few months, Autumn Bellamy and her friend Jules Pledger have been training at the Tidewater Ultimate Female Fighting (TUFF) club in Virginia Beach. Recently, a customer came to see Bellamy at work and told her about the mud event.
"He said his girlfriend was wrestling that night," Bellamy said. "I wanted to do it for the experience, something new. I like fighting. It's how I get my aggression out. I get jazzed up. I love being physical."
She, Pledger, and several other women showed up on Saturday night to go for the grand prizes of $500. Clad in bikinis, they took to the ground and came up caked in the dark stuff.
In the audience, Becker and Van Horn remembered their non-human clientele, which includes dozens of cats, birds, and dogs, a few horse, turkeys, and ferrets, and even some emus.
"People that get deployed usually don't have a place to put their animals, so they bring them here and we adopt them out," Becker said. "People who have died and have left an animal behind, we get those animals. People who can't afford or don't want their animals bring them to us, and we adopt them out."
That's to save them from a sadder fate, said Van Horn, who added that roughly 30,000 animals were euthanized in Hampton Roads last year alone.
"And that's just healthy animals that get euthanized just because there's no home for them," she said. "Animal control facilities get so inundated, they only keep them for a certain period of time; if they don't get adopted, they go down. A lot of our animals come off of death row; they've been slated to be euthanized."
It's something that the fans wanted to help stop.
"I wanted to help out Web of Life," said John Eisel of Chesapeake. "It saves the animals that are going to be put down, so I'm supporting it. It gives animals a second chance. It gives a feeling of helping out helpless animals who can't control what happens to them."
Despite a stomach bug and a rib injury suffered at TUFF, Bellamy charged through the middleweight division, taking home the top spot. In the lightweight final, Pledger prepared to take on Erin Haynes, herself a trainee of Norfolk's Boot Camp For Women fitness facility.
The first round (matches were three one-minute rounds) was pretty even, but Pledger got Haynes on her back early in the second, and pinned her, ending the period early.
In the third, the combatants locked arms, and stumbled toward the corner of the "ring." Haynes topped onto the hay bales, and the time was stopped.
Back on her feet, Haynes went on the attack, but Pledger got her in a headlock. Haynes slipped out and took Pledger down, but Pledger maneuvered her way out and got on Haynes' back as the period ended. The decision went to the judges, and Pledger was declared the winner.
"This was for money; you're not going to just roll around and play around for money," said Pledger, who honed her athletic skills on the volleyball and basketball courts and softball field at Great Bridge High. "This was my first time in the mud, and I loved it! It was slippery, and hard to grab on to the girls, but it was a blast!"
She and Bellamy will next hit the mat at TUFF's event Sept. 20 at Steppin' Out in Virginia Beach.
"The mud wrestling thing was awesome," Bellamy said. "I want to do it again!"
She's not the only one - the event brought in roughly $7,000 for the Outreach program.
"These girls came to wrestle," said Kelly's husband Rodney, who refereed the matches. "Everybody fought good and clean, expect for the mud! This was a good night, and I hope we do it again soon."
