Calling themselves “The Baddest Little Show on Earth,” little people emerged through plumes of smoke into a 12 by 12-foot ring as the Extreme Midget Wrestling Foundation visited Madison Wednesday. But while the rowdy Segredo’s crowd relished in the night’s entertainment, disability experts in the Madison area question the moral integrity of a performance that they say negatively exploits the disability.
Featured on shows such as The Best Damn Sports Show and the Howard Stern Television Show, the EMWF has been touring the country since 2000. The show features eight little people who perform in a similar fashion to the famous World Wrestling Entertainment.
“It was a childhood dream,” EMWF Wrestler “Nasty Boy,” said. “I watched it on TV since the time I could walk and talk and [thought], this is what I wanted to do with my life.”
While Nasty Boy said he enjoys the celebrity lifestyle wrestling provides, the Little People of America, a non-profit organization that provides information and support to people of short stature, is critical of the show. Local LPA representative Monique Conley said it exploits a disability that already draws negative attention to little people.
“Unfortunately, dwarfism is the last disability that is okay to make fun of,” Conley said in an e-mail. “Why not blind wrestling? Why not paraplegic wrestling? You never see that because it would be downright wrong and mean, but why is it okay for those with dwarfism?”
A little person herself, Conley said many people do not understand that individuals with dwarfism are at greater risk for spinal, neurological and orthopedic injuries.
But according to Nasty Boy, wrestlers who properly condition themselves greatly reduce the chance of sustaining injuries.
“We’re structurally built different [than non-little people], but … if you take care of your body, your body takes care of you,” he said.
Reflecting the wrestler’s opinion, UW-Madison McBurney Center Director Cathy Trueba said wrestling is an inherently dangerous sport for any participant and it should not exclude little people.
UW-Madison Professor Morton Ann Gernsbacher said beyond the physical risks, a major source of controversy involves the EMWF referring to themselves as “midgets,” a term she said circuses created in the 200 years ago to describe “freaks” who were not dwarfs, but were simply short in stature.
“For some people, such shows are a carryover from the 1800s; a time in which people with disabilities or notable differences were excluded from full participation in society,” Gernsbacher said in an e-mail. “Instead, one of the few avenues for livelihood was to appear as freaks in sideshow carnivals, which could lead to exploitation.”
Conversely, Trueba said despite her own opinions and others’ outside the little person community, the correct term for little people should ultimately come from within their own population.
Nasty Boy said while the LPA finds the term midget offensive, he and other EMWF wrestlers embrace the term not only personally, but also as a business strategy to attract patrons.
“Yes, it’s a marketing tool,” he said. “That’s what we are. We’re extreme midgets. We go above and beyond the call of duty. We do things that most people wouldn’t ever dream of doing.”
Tyler Nickerson contributed to this article.
