E-Mail This Article to a Friend BLOWW jobs Rocking, and wrestling, with Boston’s latest sports entertainment franchise BY CARLY CARIOLI

In 1986, the World Wrestling Federation was in its golden age: Jesse Ventura was still tangling not with the two major parties but with George "The Animal" Steele, and the WWF’s Saturday Main Event featured the likes of the Iron Sheik and Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan and "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and King Kong Bundy. That same year, at the Riviera hotel in Las Vegas, women got into the act: a gaggle of former mud-wrestlers and calendar models went at it in spandex, and however briefly, a TV mini-hit called Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW) was born.

It should be said, right from the outset, that the Boston League of Women Wrestlers (BLOWW), which performs next Saturday at Man Ray, is nothing like that at all.

The other day, BLOWW co-founder Mucho Sexo called the Phoenix to explain. "What happened was my band, Sexual Fudge, was playing a festival in Southampton, sometime in the late ’90s. I had some bad deviled eggs, so I had to go to the first-aid tent, and I met a nurse who had no interest in helping anyone." This, by chance, was BLOWW’s other co-founder, who goes by the name Nurse Agony. "She was nursing a beer, I think. Then these two ladies got pissed at each other and a fight broke out. We had a flash and thought, ‘This is a good idea — maybe people would enjoy watching this on stage.’ "

Further investigation reveals that BLOWW had its roots in the Kalamazoo Precinct of Women Wrestlers, a DIY troupe that included such characters as Jane Gretzky, the Maneater, and Midge Vicious and tangled to the sounds of a live punk band called the Clap. By 2001, KAPOWW was gigging at Ladyfest and the Village Voice’s Siren Festival; it once played to a crowd that included Pantera’s Phil Anselmo. Besides the allure of a more provocative acronym, relocation to Boston also held out the promise of an audience that had already proved friendly to the likes of Kaiju Big Battel and Punk Rock Aerobics. "We’d seen Kaiju," says Sexo, "and what we wanted to do was be Kaiju’s cooler older brother who buys it cigarettes and porn."

The BLOWW set-up is decidedly lo-fi: the combatants perform on a wrestling mat, with Sexual Fudge, a hair-metal trio, performing the soundtrack. "I’ve heard us described as ‘butt rock,’ " Sexo acknowledges, but then — in true drunken-mogul fashion — he has trouble recalling most of his own song titles. "We have one called, uh, ‘Meatloaf in the Night.’ And there’s one called ‘Drag Queen’ that the kids seem to like. I’m not usually in the highest state of sobriety, so I’m not too clear on the set list."

Sexo is equally hazy on the names of BLOWW’s wrestlers, but with the help of Nurse Agony, I was able to piece together a partial roster. There’s Miss Ann Thropic, a beauty-pageant queen who’s lost her crown; Muffy Winters, a cheerleader whose perkiness tends to annoy her comrades; and a North Shore gal called the Skank. There’s also Gunnie Locks (or Guzzlie Locks, depending on who you ask), who "reminds us of Goldielocks," Sexo says. "She guns a beer before she wrestles. She hangs out in the woods with bears." She wrestles bears? "No, she sticks to the ladies for some reason. But she was raised wrestling bears."

Sexo continues, "We have a creative-writing teacher," referring, unfortunately, not to a script doctor but to a wrestler. "The last match was her against the volleyball coach of the school she teaches at — ah, what’s the name of it? The Bill Buckner Middle School up in, uh, I can’t remember where it is. But they were fighting over funding for their programs. Budget cuts and all, you know how it is."

David Kleiler, who hired the group to play a benefit for the Boston Underground Film Festival not long ago, gives the act a hearty, B-movie thumbs up. Sexo simply calls BLOWW "a three-ring circus of awesomeness. We’ve used enemas, but there’s no nudity, no mud or jello. It’s much kinkier when women just kick each other’s asses to rock and roll."

The Boston League of Women Wrestlers performs next Friday, June 4, as part of "Mondo Porno" at Man Ray, 15 Brookline Street in Central Square. Admission is $10; call (617) 864-0400.