Wrestling is all about nerve. Stage presence, trash talk and storytelling almost trump athleticism in this heavily-scripted theatre. Teenager Joelle Hunter, a pseudonym for Gheeda Chamasaddine, already cultivates a strong image as the Arab world’s first female pro wrestler. She’s the classic underdog; a 5’4’’ woman — who, despite her diminutive stature, choke-slams men triple her size; not to mention she’s a Muslim from Saudi Arabia sporting crop tops and fishnets.
But there’s more to Joelle than shock value or teen rebellion. The 17-year-old or ‘Bloody Bunny’ as she is known to her Twitter followers, sporting tongue ring and labret piercing just beneath the lip, with glossy ringlets tucked firmly behind a black plug in her ear, hopes to be the face of a new generation of fiercely independent Muslim girls growing up in an increasingly cosmopolitan United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Expatriates make up 84 per cent of the diverse population and yet, the UAE is built on an undeniably conservative, Islamic bedrock. Hence, when a woman throws Arab men around the ring, it is considered ‘a little outrageous’. She agrees: “We have our traditions and our culture and my sport is a little bit odd to be honest, because this girl walks out and beats guys up, and the Arab culture is that the man is always the masculine figure and you have to listen to what the guy says.”
Dress codes
Although her single mother Nihaya Haimour initially expected Joelle to grow into a ‘girlie girl’, she now watches World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) shows with her only daughter and sews her costumes — albeit as ‘plain’ as possible and a world away from the hypersexualised WWE ‘Divas’ such as Michelle McCool shown on the Middle East’s recently launched 24 hour programming schedule. “My ring attire is very basic. I don’t have anything fancy because I respect the law here,” says Joelle. “In America, you’ve got girls with everything out and to me, that’s not what I’m trying to portray. I want to create something different. That’s why my attire is very plain. It shouts out, ‘hey look at me and not my body’.
“Actually, my mum made my outfits for me — except for the fact that I bought shorts. Honestly, I had so many old clothes in my wardrobe that I don’t even wear anymore, so I made most of them into my crop tops. It’s hard to move in the ring with a lot of glitter and sparkles so you gotta wear something that helps you avoid wardrobe malfunctions.”
Joelle’s feud with ‘The Vigilante’, 19-year-old Michel Nassif from Lebanon, is ramped up for the gym’s low-budget fight nights “and I want to take her down,” says Michel, aware of the story he’s promoting. “The way she fights, she fights like a man. If I go into the ring now, I can do any moves and she can take it. That’s good. But if you want me to be honest, many other people found it hard to go in the ring with her. I on the other hand didn’t, because she’s getting a lot of media attention and it’s putting me in the picture as well.”
The setup is undeniably amateur, but as Joelle jumps between the ropes and roars “come one” before performing a sequence of strikes, strength-based holds and throws and acrobatic jumps, she is utterly convincing when pinning her hairier, weightier opponent to the floor. The fighting style is submissive, she says. “Kind of similar to mixed martial arts, but you choke them or put them in submission so their arm is crunched all the way to the back as if it’s about to break. So you’re basically torturing them slowly until they’re like ‘okay, okay stop,’” she says, laughing.
“You’ve (also) got the powerhouse, where you lift and throw people around. So, you typically get very big guys like 200 lbs (90 kg). You rarely find girls that are powerhouses, but there was Chyna (two-time WWF Intercontinental Champion); she was huge. You’ve got high fliers, who basically drop off the ropes, and then you’ve got people mainly in the ring. Lastly, there’s dirty, where you claw people in the eyes and give them low blows. That’s for bad guys.”
One of the guys
Thirty-one-year-old Caleb Hall is Joelle’s world-class coach, hailing from Kentucky and trained by WWE legend Rip Rogers. He says the 20-strong male squad didn’t bat an eyelid when Joelle walked into the gym 11 months ago. “The other guys are happy to train with her and just treat her like one of the guys and most of them don’t go easy on her. A few of them hold back and I say ‘hey treat her just the same’ and they do,” he says.
It was a bit awkward at first, admits Joelle: “I didn’t know anyone and I thought, like when I walked in, there would be other girls in there, they’re gonna be mean. But everyone was surprisingly very supportive — there were no girls, it was all guys.”
Despite dreams of flying to America — WWE does not stage any female events in the UAE, due to anxiety about cultural insensitivity — Joelle’s first priority is to find other ring sisters. “I have bigger responsibilities right now, in creating a female fighting division. Because if I leave Dubai behind without a girl’s division, then that’s unfair; that’s me being ungrateful. I feel like it’s my duty to create the female wrestling division here.” “You can be anything you want, no matter what your gender is,” she says to me as I leave. “Nothing’s impossible.”
But there’s more to Joelle than shock value or teen rebellion. The 17-year-old or ‘Bloody Bunny’ as she is known to her Twitter followers, sporting tongue ring and labret piercing just beneath the lip, with glossy ringlets tucked firmly behind a black plug in her ear, hopes to be the face of a new generation of fiercely independent Muslim girls growing up in an increasingly cosmopolitan United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Expatriates make up 84 per cent of the diverse population and yet, the UAE is built on an undeniably conservative, Islamic bedrock. Hence, when a woman throws Arab men around the ring, it is considered ‘a little outrageous’. She agrees: “We have our traditions and our culture and my sport is a little bit odd to be honest, because this girl walks out and beats guys up, and the Arab culture is that the man is always the masculine figure and you have to listen to what the guy says.”
Dress codes
Although her single mother Nihaya Haimour initially expected Joelle to grow into a ‘girlie girl’, she now watches World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) shows with her only daughter and sews her costumes — albeit as ‘plain’ as possible and a world away from the hypersexualised WWE ‘Divas’ such as Michelle McCool shown on the Middle East’s recently launched 24 hour programming schedule. “My ring attire is very basic. I don’t have anything fancy because I respect the law here,” says Joelle. “In America, you’ve got girls with everything out and to me, that’s not what I’m trying to portray. I want to create something different. That’s why my attire is very plain. It shouts out, ‘hey look at me and not my body’.
“Actually, my mum made my outfits for me — except for the fact that I bought shorts. Honestly, I had so many old clothes in my wardrobe that I don’t even wear anymore, so I made most of them into my crop tops. It’s hard to move in the ring with a lot of glitter and sparkles so you gotta wear something that helps you avoid wardrobe malfunctions.”
Joelle’s feud with ‘The Vigilante’, 19-year-old Michel Nassif from Lebanon, is ramped up for the gym’s low-budget fight nights “and I want to take her down,” says Michel, aware of the story he’s promoting. “The way she fights, she fights like a man. If I go into the ring now, I can do any moves and she can take it. That’s good. But if you want me to be honest, many other people found it hard to go in the ring with her. I on the other hand didn’t, because she’s getting a lot of media attention and it’s putting me in the picture as well.”
The setup is undeniably amateur, but as Joelle jumps between the ropes and roars “come one” before performing a sequence of strikes, strength-based holds and throws and acrobatic jumps, she is utterly convincing when pinning her hairier, weightier opponent to the floor. The fighting style is submissive, she says. “Kind of similar to mixed martial arts, but you choke them or put them in submission so their arm is crunched all the way to the back as if it’s about to break. So you’re basically torturing them slowly until they’re like ‘okay, okay stop,’” she says, laughing.
“You’ve (also) got the powerhouse, where you lift and throw people around. So, you typically get very big guys like 200 lbs (90 kg). You rarely find girls that are powerhouses, but there was Chyna (two-time WWF Intercontinental Champion); she was huge. You’ve got high fliers, who basically drop off the ropes, and then you’ve got people mainly in the ring. Lastly, there’s dirty, where you claw people in the eyes and give them low blows. That’s for bad guys.”
One of the guys
Thirty-one-year-old Caleb Hall is Joelle’s world-class coach, hailing from Kentucky and trained by WWE legend Rip Rogers. He says the 20-strong male squad didn’t bat an eyelid when Joelle walked into the gym 11 months ago. “The other guys are happy to train with her and just treat her like one of the guys and most of them don’t go easy on her. A few of them hold back and I say ‘hey treat her just the same’ and they do,” he says.
It was a bit awkward at first, admits Joelle: “I didn’t know anyone and I thought, like when I walked in, there would be other girls in there, they’re gonna be mean. But everyone was surprisingly very supportive — there were no girls, it was all guys.”
Despite dreams of flying to America — WWE does not stage any female events in the UAE, due to anxiety about cultural insensitivity — Joelle’s first priority is to find other ring sisters. “I have bigger responsibilities right now, in creating a female fighting division. Because if I leave Dubai behind without a girl’s division, then that’s unfair; that’s me being ungrateful. I feel like it’s my duty to create the female wrestling division here.” “You can be anything you want, no matter what your gender is,” she says to me as I leave. “Nothing’s impossible.”