There Was Only One Way to Settle This... An Evening of Hagstone Stunners Wrestling Cabaret

Words by Mel Elliott

Photos by Rob Brazier (@theheaddrop)

If you’re a child of the 70s or 80s, the word ‘wrestling’ might conjure up thoughts of Big Daddy or Giant Haystacks and Saturday afternoons huddled round the big telly, booing whilst slurping a carton of E numbers through a skinny straw.

A child of the 90s or noughties would have visions of Hulk Hogan and WWF, and these days ‘wrestling’ is what we mostly do with our emotions. But, if you want a night off from analysing how shit everything is, The Hagstone Stunners have your back… whilst almost breaking theirs in the process of cheering you up.

“Oh mate, I’m so glad cathartic violence helped you out!”

The past couple of years have been very challenging for me and my family and I’ve been finding it so difficult to let go and have fun, not through lack of trying might I add.

Ladies and gentlemen and everyone else, at Hagstone Stunners Wrestling Cabaret I was shouting and booing and laughing so damned much. Yes, no matter how dark your days are, this evening of fighting will make you LOL and  ROFL and even FAFL (face aches from laughing - just made that one up).

“Oh mate, I’m so glad cathartic violence helped you out!” Heather Brandenburg tells me when we chat.

Heather is the Hagstone Stunners orchestrator, producer and wrestling referee who sashays into the ring dressed as Cher and to the tune of ‘Believe’. Her highly important job is to keep all the unruly wrestlers in their place whilst also deciding upon an eventual winner.

The night is brilliantly compared by international, award-winning drag king, Loose Willis, who self-describes as a host, joker, boylesquer and lowlife. Their comedy routine often reflects the darker side of pop culture and I was so impressed by them, their wit and their costumes. Their lip syncing routine following the wrestling matches was incredibly funny, clever and evocative.

Each wrestler plays a character. My favourite of the evening was Kyle: a sixteen year old emo kid who came on wearing skinny jeans, a baseball cap, smoking a fag and drinking a large can of Monster energy drink. Kyle was quite rightly pissed off that his beloved Sourcepark was being pulled down by Hag. Hag is a broad Northerner who lives under West Hill and eats children. She feels that if there were no skatepark there’d be more sad boys roaming the streets and therefore more snacks for her. There was only one way to settle this… FIGHT!

The wrestling was so impressive, skilled, athletic and well… brutal. The whole crowd were invested in poor, under-dog Kyle and his desperate fight to save the skatepark. And to all the skaters, scooters and bmx-ers reading this, you can sleep safe in your beds tonight and pop your Vans on your feet tomorrow, knowing that this hero, fueled by Monster (other energy drinks are available) and with stubble drawn onto his face, saved the day. We all yelled “Ky-le! Ky-le! Ky-le!”, as his hands were held aloft in victory.

After watching their show and then meeting Heather to discuss, I had one burning question.

”WTAF?”

Heather doesn’t answer though, instead she asks if I enjoyed the show.

”It was silly and funny and really clever” I answered “surely it’s all staged though!?”

”When people ask me if wrestling is planned, ‘barely!’ is the answer”, Heather tells me with a laugh.

“Two to three hours before a show, we’ll sit in the back room at the Masonic hall with the six wrestlers and Loose Willis and I tell them all the crazy shit I want them to do. It’s like being milked. I’ll be like ‘so Jack in the Green turns evil due to some sort of witchcraft”.

Heather has been involved in wrestling for over ten years, having started by accident.

”How do you start wrestling by accident!?” I ask.

”I knew nothing about wrestling,” she says. “All I knew was that it was banned at school and I was about ten when WWF was massive on the telly. I was watching a friend do a gig in East London and the guy behind the bar was like ‘Do you wanna do wrestling? We have a Lucha Libre wrestling school here’.

After about six months I eventually went along on a Monday night and it was this room full of the most random people: all shapes and sizes, mostly men but a few women and they were all doing this stuff that was incredibly hard. I was encouraged to push myself, to take up loads of space and make loads of noise and that was it… I was absolutely hooked!”

Lucha Libre (which translates as free wrestling in Spanish) is a style of Mexican wrestling, known for its colourful masks and for being very flamboyant, over-the-top and acrobatic. Heather’s teacher was a homosexual named Cassandro.

“As I found out, most wrestling isn’t like this and is usually big manly men, not many women and no queer visibility, not diverse and the storylines are all ‘I’m angry at you and you’re angry at me, oh lets have a fight’. It’s really boring and not a world I was ever going to succeed in”

Heather found her own way in wrestling as well as finding lots of other people who were in a similar position. She had always leaned towards the world of cabaret and the crazy side of wrestling and Hagstone Stunners and Cher the referee were born.

“I had to stop wrestling for ages because I got endometriosis and then cancer and it turns out I know so much about Cher that I created this cabaret show called ‘I need to Cher’ which is just like a powerpoint presentation about her with some cabaret in it. I might bring it to Hastings.”

Online, Hagstone Stunners are described as: “Hastings’ best/only wrestling cabaret show! A stunning violent panto where you can expect 3 battles between some of the country’s best wrestlers and the heavy-weights of Hastings past, present & made up.”

Besides finding the Hagstone Stunners show hilarious, I was also impressed at the skill that was on display.

”Oh it’s really really hard!” Heather confirms. “The wrestlers I work with are all incredible and some of the best in the country. They all train three times a week and you have to be at such a ridiculous level of physical fitness. You don’t get to re-record, you have to read what your opponent is doing and you have to keep your opponent safe, you can’t just go in and smash people up. It’s like a dance… a violent dance".

"You get to a point where you plan nothing, you just go in and that’s a level of skill that most wrestlers have, but it makes my life harder because I have to concentrate more as a referee. My job is to stay out of the way, sometimes count to three and look fabulous, and that’s the way I want it!”

“I see you have bruises all over your arms, are they from wrestling?” I ask.

”No, I don’t actually wrestle these days, they’re from pole dancing.”

“Ah, of course”.

By day Heather is an access worker and mum to two young children and I ask about her world outside of Hagstone stunners. “I have three specialist interests” she says, “Cher, Big Foot and wrestling”

I must admit, I wasn’t expecting Big Foot but then this interview is proving to be full of surprises and I think we’ve reached a point where anything goes.

”My husband plays the Kentish Apeman for Hagstone Stunners which is a version of Big Foot but he couldn’t do the last show because he had to look after the kids”.

“He should have put his foot down” I think to myself. “So do the other wrestlers have day jobs?”

“Oh yes! One of them is an IT technician, one works at the RNIB, another works in a school, two of them are charity workers, one is tattoo artist and one of them works in M&S food hall”

This isn’t just wrestling, this is Hagstone Stunners wrestling, and if you’re in need of some cathartic violence and a good old FAFL, I cannot recommend it highly enough - the silliness and laughter that you get from one of their shows should be bottled and sold by wellness gurus.

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Hagstone Stunners' next show is at The Masonic Hall, St Leonards on 13th February

The event is 18+ and tickets are £16

Buy tickets here

Loose Willis, photos by @theheaddrop