As giant men slam each other into the hard canvas of a wrestling ring, one woman stands beside them barking orders and keeping them under control.
There are about 130 professional wrestlers in New Zealand, but there is only one fulltime female wrestling referee.
Anna Wood has only been in the business for two years, recently celebrating her second “wrestleversary”, but has risen to become a recognisable face at pro wrestling shows across the country and embracing a new persona as “Lady Reffington”.
“The fans are actually very welcoming and sometimes I get chants,” Wood said at an Impact Pro Wrestling (IPW) training session, “when I come out for my first match, they’re going ‘Lady Ref! Lady Ref!’ ... I’ve given them permission to do that basically by being Lady Reffington.”
Watching wrestling used to be a way to unwind for Wood, who previously worked in theatre, film and TV, but she gradually found similarities between the industries.
“I could see behind the curtain with that performance background and I could just go ‘wow, this is stunt work, this is theatre, this is sport, this is basically spectacle, music, lighting, costumes’.
“It’s everything that goes into entertainment and performance arts just rolled up in this amazing package.”
Wood wanted to take on the character of a manager or announcer instead of a wrestler, in part due to a neck injury, but decided to be a referee because there was a shortage.
“I tried and I was terrible and I kept on being terrible for a while, it’s the first time in my life that I’ve been terrible at something and I haven’t quit and walked away.
“So that’s probably why I’m proudest of my refereeing more than anything else I’ve done in my life and eventually I clicked and the time when I clicked was actually when I started to perform.”
Wood felt the promotion she works with, IPW, were great at welcoming her, but noted there aren’t many women in the industry, and none in her role fulltime – apart from her now.
“It is a niche of a niche of a niche,” she said.
“There have been other female referees for some matches, sometimes a wrestler will be a special guest referee or sometimes somebody will jump on a match or two for a show, but in terms of New Zealand female referees, I’m pretty much it.”
Wood said female referees are becoming more prominent internationally, particularly in the United States, but felt they face more scrutiny than their male counterparts.
“They can be doing exactly their job and exactly what the male referee would do, but because they’re noticeable, it’s ‘I don’t like her face’, ‘why is she there?’, ‘she’s distracting me’.
“And if a woman being there is distracting you, then you’ve got bigger problems, maybe it’s not about the woman.”
She said she has faced issues at shows in New Zealand.
“Sometimes I get attention that perhaps is a little challenging, being one of the few women in wrestling at all and I think there’s a little bit of some people who just think she’s a woman but she knows about wrestling and their brain just breaks completely.”
Wood hopes, alongside IPW’s female wrestling division, to be someone young girls can look up to.
“One of the things that I love about being a female referee is seeing little girls who’ve been brought to the shows by their family and they’ll look at me and they’re like ‘you’re bossing the boys around and they have to do what you say’.
“And I’m like, ‘yeah well you come and see me in 10 years and I will train you and you can boss the boys around and they’ll do what you say’.
“So by seeing me in a role, maybe not wrestling but they can see a place for themselves within wrestling and once we get them to the gym, we’ll get them in the ring.”
She takes her role in the ring seriously and explained how referees are responsible for health and safety, but also keeping everything to time and ensuring the audience get what they pay for.
“Part of that I think is building rapport, that’s why I train, that’s why I’m here every Tuesday is because I want to work with as many of the wrestlers as possible, get to know them, get to know what their moves are, learn their body language, but also they’re learning me.”
Wood said her progression is tied to the New Zealand wrestling scene’s advancement, something she claimed to be growing as the IPW aimed to go bigger at its “Live in Hamilton” show, which saw 700 people attend last year.
“If I could get people to the live shows and ... if we could outgrow our venues, that would be my goal for the next five years is to see us having to look elsewhere because we can’t fit everybody into the halls we use.”