8   +   5   =  

Last Night's Thumb Wrestling Championship Bout at the DMA Got Really Real, Really Fast.

A hefty crowd packed the Mary Noel and Bill Lamont gallery at the Dallas Museum of Art for the final installment of the PSWxEdu Workshop — “Sport + Persona in Performance Art” — yesterday evening. Despite the carefully crafted name, the event really boiled down to this: The DMA hosted the first-ever Thumb in the Eye Wrestling Federation's championship last night.

Yes: It was a thumb wrestling competition. With all the hoopla of a WWE pay-per-view.

At the event's start, ringside announcers Skip Lovetree and Johnny Flatiron Risotto introduced the night's contenders, Iron Sides and Keegan Arnold. The anticipation was palpable as a referee's careful inspections of both contenders' thumbs. And, then, after the traditional, “One, Two, Three, Four I declare a thumb war!” chant, the bout was underway.

And then the chaos began.

From the back of the room, crowd member Ryan Clarke loudly began expressing his discontent for Iron Sides and was met with aggressive responses from both the referee and Sides' entourage. With the referee distracted, an interloper named Captain Kaiser took the opportunity to take out Iron Sides and give Arnold a much-needed advantage. After a few stomps to Sides' guts, Kaiser mistakenly took a few seconds to bask in the glory of his mischief and Sides was quickly back on his feet with a bell in his hand — and he slammed that square into Kaiser's back, leaving the large man flat on the gallery' sparkling tile.

A ladder came out next. With Kaiser on the floor, Sides attempted to sneak up the ladder to snatch the hanging title belt for himself. But, just in the nick of time, Kaiser caught him, delivered a few backhands to the face then the two men tumbled down, splitting a table in half.

Seizing the moment — and with the referee finally with his wits after being thrown around by nearly everyone in the room — Arnold jumped on top of Sides to get the cherished three-count and earn himself title of the first-ever Thumb in the Eye Wrestling Federation champion.

The match was a crowd-pleaser to be sure. And, really, the competitors delivered a hell of a performance.

Captain Kaiser's intentions for the event were satisfied, at least. After the set, he explained the benefits of bringing together wrestling and museum culture.

“What's more fake than wrestling?” Kaiser asked, rhetorically. “Art.”


















4148_2

4148_3

4148_4

4148_5

4148_6

4148_7

4148_8

4148_9

4148_10

4148_11

4148_12

4148_13

4148_14

4148_15

4148_16

4148_17

4148_18

4148_19

4148_20

4148_21

4148_22

4148_23

4148_24

4148_25

4148_26

4148_27

4148_28

4148_29

4148_30

4148_31

4148_32

4148_33

4148_34

4148_35

4148_36

4148_37

4148_38

4148_39

4148_40

4148_41

4148_42

4148_43

4148_44

4148_45

4148_46

4148_47

4148_48

4148_49

4148_50

No more articles