In the 1980's an older work-mate of mine (a very gentile chap, a former navigator on an Avro Lancaster during WW11) was telling me about how, when younger in the 1930's he had courted his wife. He mentioned that she had particularly liked back then, to be taken to watch the wrestling matches, held some 10 miles away in the nearest city. As this immediately struck a chord with my own fetish for ladies who enjoy male-on-male violence, i kept the chat going in the hope of getting more details from him about his fiancee and her behaviour at the fights. I said something like "it's strange for a woman to like that sort of thing and that she must have been the only lady there", and he replied "oh no, not at all, there used to be many ladies there besides her and they all seemed to be enjoying it all immensely". "Mind you" he continued "the matches then weren't like those of today (1980's), no, they were much more violent affairs, there were very few rules and the wrestlers often got quite hurt". "Did you ever see that?" I asked, prying a little more, "Yes, one fellow had his his back broken one night". Getting quietly excited and wanting desperately to know how his lady had been affected by this turn of events, I attempted to home in on his then girlfriends reaction to this event and said "crikey! did he! I hope Margaret (who was later to be his wife) wasn't there to see that?","oh she was there, the other fellow had had the chap over his knee and she and her friend had been cheering them on right at the moment his back actually went". It was quite a sickening sound but the crowd actually roared briefly until they realised". When asked by me if this had upset Margaret he said it had 'sort of'. I wonder though if it had indeed upset her or the other women present there that night as much as they would have made out it had ; perhaps they only, for the sake of propriety, feigned horror and sympathy when deep inside they may actually have been thrilled to have seen one skimpily-clad man do such a thing to another in front of their very eyes. Let us remember that women were more than eager spectators at much more gruesome contests between male fighters at the Flavian Amphitheatre in Rome around 2000 years ago.
All this was 40 years ago but i have never forgotten my workmate telling me of it. I myself met Margaret several times and always found her demure and respectable but I could not but help imagining her cheering wildly as a man's back was broken as she, amongst the excited crowd, looked on. Sexy and a little wicked. Both she and my old friend are dead now of course.