Bruise brothers

It's Saturday night at Tai Kok Tsui sports centre and half-naked men are tumbling around on the floor. In one corner 'Madness', a rail-thin man carrying just 50kg on his 165cm-tall frame, has his body contorted and is turned upside down, as he is wrapped around the back of a much larger opponent.

In another corner, two brothers grapple. The younger one wraps his arms behind his brother's back and flips him over his head and crashing to the floor. Elsewhere a man is stomping on a fallen opponent.

These guys are members of the Hong Kong Wrestling Association. Made up of 10 twenty-somethings, it is essentially a meet-up group for fans who practise professional wrestling for fun.

Professional wrestling has its roots in 19th-century American circus acts and is choreographed to give the illusion of a contact sport. In the US, where the shows are mass entertainment spectacles, it is a billion-dollar business.

Yet pro-wrestling is relatively unknown in Hong Kong and few have heard of the association, even though it has put on a dozen shows over the past couple of years.

'I explain to people that pro-wrestling is a male soap opera mixed in with magic,' association founder Ho Ho-lun says.

Buoyed by an infusion of more experienced wrestlers, Ho and his friends are staging their biggest show yet next week. Dubbing it 'Battle Winter', they hope the event at the Sai Wan Ho Youth Outreach Centre will help to attract broader interest with a bill featuring a couple of professionals from abroad, including Japan's Kanzaki Kazuya.