Girl fight club

The call came on a Friday afternoon: Underground girl fight. Tomorrow morning. Eleven a.m. A hangar downtown on Santa Fe Avenue.

The call was from a PR firm. That was all the information there was.

It seemed like a Hollywood fantasy of “edgy.”

But it was real. Sort of.

The address was a shuttered brick storefront. Razor wire coiled atop chain-link fences. Nearby was a strip joint and a seafood plant.

Parking was not a problem.

Around back, the circus began. Vans crammed into a tiny alley. Women, hands taped, posed like cheap pinups on three strips of dingy Astroturf. Men with cameras roamed the premises, devouring the spectacle. You could see it on their faces: This was too good to be true!

In the media race to find ever more edgy, ever more urban, ever more underground scenes, this one felt intoxicatingly authentic. That was the high. That was the buzz.

“We live in a society where everything is inauthentic,” says Neal Gabler, author of “Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality.” “Or everyone believes everything is inauthentic. To paraphrase [Italian writer] Umberto Eco, we want the real so badly that we have to fabricate it.”

Releases required

Spectators could enter only after signing a release to Demolition Pictures, stating that their likeness could appear on film. Fighters -- some naive, some savvy -- signed away their right to sue anyone for anything, whether they got cut, broken, maimed or killed.

Fighters would be paid commensurate with the risk of serious injury: For boxing with headgear, $100 for the winner. For boxing with no headgear, $150. For three rounds of street fighting, $225. For four rounds of street fighting, $275.

This “Extreme Chick Fight” was the 10th to take place this year in Los Angeles. Previous fights were held in a backyard in Crenshaw, a loft in Venice, a photo studio on Melrose Avenue.

The underground “scene” is the creation of a 29-year-old woman who will identify herself only as “Marie,” but who made herself available for multiple media interviews, from Penthouse to the Los Angeles Times. Marie, a partner in Demolition Pictures, organized these fights, she said, so she could shoot them for a DVD, which she planned to market for $19.95 over the Internet, “Bumfights”-style. She hopes to next spread her “scene” to Detroit, Atlanta and Chicago.

“I work in the industry for real for real,” said Marie, dressed in a black tube top with “Playgirl” printed across the front. She says that she’s a UCLA film school graduate whose passion is documentaries, and that she’s produced “urban” shows for VH1. “This,” she said, “is something more underground, more hip, more counterculture.”

That this underground scene exists only because she created it to sell as a commodity to people who want to feel edgy and in the know without ever leaving their living rooms does not bother Marie. Nor does the fact that these fights are exploitative and dangerous. “These girls are in their right minds,” she said. “I don’t think we are taking advantage of them.”

And in the end, in the midst of this fake underground scene that Marie created to establish herself as a renegade filmmaker, one thing is real: the girls.

This core of reality, Gabler suggests, is what draws people to a fake underground.

Gabler calls it the “Jackass” phenomenon. Or the phenomenon of reality television. Why would anyone want to see a guy stapling his scrotum to his thigh, or women bashing their heads, Gabler asks. It is not, he says, to see them humiliate themselves, or to feel superior to them.

Rather, he says, in a world where nothing is real, we hunger for and desire to consume anything that seemingly, even in its fakery, has some reality at its core.

“Girls are really getting hurt,” Gabler says. “The blood is real. The cries are real.

“It is just this side of a snuff film. The appeal of a snuff film is not to watch the violence. It is to see something authentic, something that crosses the line from being fabricated to something that can’t be faked, even when it is in the process of being faked.”

Under canvas banners of graffiti commissioned by Marie, the women bounced around, some of them sparring. Others stood awkwardly by, like cattle in a holding pen. They looked excited, stunned, scared. Word zapped through the crowd: One fighter was out doing sprints under the hot midday sun to warm up. Whoa. That was hard-core, man. That was real!

The DJ put on some hip-hop and directed the crowd like a conductor. “Let’s get as many people around the ring as possible,” he prompted.

A skinny guy in a black tank top entered the ring and spoke to the cameras. “Let’s keep it clean, and make sure nobody dies.”

Regardless of whether it is boxing or street fighting, if two unarmed combatants are in the ring whacking each other, certain rules have to be followed to make the event legal, says Rob Lynch, executive director of the California Athletic Commission. For example, the fighters must have neurological and physical examinations, and be tested for HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C. At least one paramedic, an ambulance and commission-certified physicians, referees and judges must be present. Nevertheless, events like this, or mixed martial events, continue to flourish underground, he says.

“Unfortunately, it is going to take the death of a participant to draw the public’s attention to what is going on.”

“We called the police, and asked if it was legal,” said Marie. “They said, if you fight on private property, it’s legal. It’s not a promotional event.”

An LAPD spokesman said if profits are being made and the proper licenses are not in place, such a fight would be illegal.

There were seven fights that day. Women were paired by size and fighting style, not by skill or experience. They ranged in age from 20 to 35.

The women came seeking fame, cash or just a place to fight.

There were women who train at boxing gyms; a world-ranked taekwondo contender, accountant and mother of a 1-year-old; an aspiring stuntwoman and ex-Marine; a high-school athlete who turned up to fight for kicks; a debt collector and former college track star who used to box for beer in a Chicago nightclub.

Some were recruited by Marie. Others came because they’d seen an ad. Tisa Key, a.k.a. Thunderkat, got wind of the fights online at Craig’s List, where she said they were listed under “part-time work.” She needed cash.

The first few fights were a joke.

A willowy Latina with a ponytail to her waist and a petite Asian woman with dark hair dyed magenta at the tips did battle first. Venus and Freddie were their fighting names. They wore gloves and mouthpieces, but no head protection.

The ref donned shades and surgical gloves and stepped into the ring. These were his rules: “Do not turn your back. You are here to fight, not to look at each other. Go to your corners.”

The women were completely mismatched. Freddie could punch. Venus cowered at the ropes, giggling through her mouthpiece. It was all over in less than two minutes.

The next bout was called off because one of the women wouldn’t fight.

“I told you girls, it’s not a modeling show,” the ref said before tossing them out of the ring.

Few matched foes

Ben Lira, a coach in El Monte who hosted the first amateur women’s boxing match in California in the early ‘90s and who has taken women to the U.S.A. Boxing Women’s Amateur Championships every year since, estimates there are 80 to 100 women currently doing amateur boxing in Southern California. But while there are a lot of opportunities for women to box, he says, it can be difficult for them to find opponents in their ability and weight class.

Elle Nucci, a.k.a. the Moroccan Princess, trains at Wild Card Gym in Hollywood and has boxed in seven chick fights. “In high school, I would go to a club and get in a fight. I was the one people would call to scare people.” She’s not ready to join the amateur boxing circuit yet. She likes her cigarettes too much. And she likes the money here, which she won’t get if she boxes in sanctioned fights. But she knows the dangers. She always boxes with gloves and headgear -- which pays the least.

“If someone dies here,” she said, “there is no one we can sue, because we’ve signed away everything.”

But she loves to fight. And she loves the show. She pulls at her top to reveal a new tattoo, a Moroccan princess at the base of her spine, wearing boxing gloves and a Moroccan flag. She got it after her first fight. “I feel like I’m a star here,” she said.

The third fight was a street fight -- no safety gear -- and things turned bloody. Dawn Jordan, a.k.a. Juicy, left the hangar with her head taped and blood dripping down her cheek. Her opponent, Thunderkat, sat outside, a sheen of sweat on her face, blood on her lips, on her hands, waiting for her $275.

“I don’t really like fighting,” she said.

But Marie didn’t want to open her shoulder bag of cash envelopes and pay up. Thunderkat won too fast. “You have to go four rounds,” Marie said, pulling her away from a reporter. “Your interview is over. Get out.”

Quickly, the squabbles over money in the alley became as heated as the rounds in the ring. Where were the cameras?

Inside, more blood was shed. Spectators said a second woman got her nose broken. A third emerged gushing blood. A man dressed in medical scrubs taped the girls up and sent them home.

No, Marie said the following Monday. No broken nose. But three people had to go to the hospital.

“It’s the first time we had stitches,” she said, smiling.