Professional fighters pummel each other with pillows in 'the original combat sport'

A new organization in Boca Raton, Fla., says pillow fights are not just for kids anymore.

The Pillow Fight Championship has been holding matches since last fall, in hopes of highlighting pillow fighting as a professional combat sport.

CEO Steve Williams says it can surprisingly get pretty rough in the ring.

"We had our first TKO, technical knockout, in the second round of this championship," Williams told As It Happens host Carol Off. "Nobody was ever expecting to see [it] … It was historic."

Williams told Off all about how the event went down after it aired last week on Fite.tv. Here is part of their conversation.

What kind of a pillow [do you use]?

Your home pillow is really the same thing we're using. What's different is the pillow case. 

The case itself is specially designed out of ripstop nylon and it has six straps. It gives you more control of the total pillow. You swing it around and you [can] kind of change directions with it faster. 

It's designed for fighting. It's not your home pillow where you just sort of grab onto the excess material and start swinging, you know?

This one where there was a TKO … maybe that's the best one to just describe what happens when two pillow fighters get in the ring.

It kind of depends on the fighter. 

We notice the boxers tend to be a little more wary. They'll scope out their opponent a little bit more before they go in and they start hitting.... The jiu-jitsu fighters will go right in and they tend to get a little bit close and they just start duking it out. 

It's a lot of offence and there's some chaos that happens when the fighters are sort of rapid firing, you know, trying to score points. 

You have to hit it in the head in order to get a point. There's no points for body shots or leg shots. Now, we did have one fighter that got his legs taken out from underneath him, and that was a three-point score. That's actually the first leg takedown we had, which was really exciting to see.

So far, everybody's been mostly very serious fighters. Some UFC fighters that are active, some past, and women as well. Istela Nunes, who is [the] UFC champion out of Brazil, she won the women's match and, boy, she put on a fight and a show.

It's not just pillowfighting. It's hardcore. It's the most exciting and thrilling sport that I've ever seen.- Steve Williams, CEO of the Pillow Fighting Championship

Is it just a novelty that might eventually wear off? How is it different from any other kind of fighting? 

Well, it's not just pillow fighting. It's hardcore. It's the most exciting and thrilling sport that I've ever seen.

Everybody says the same thing.... The fighters can't wait to fight again. The people that watch, they want to come back. And it's a good time. It's not like anything you've ever seen, and it's not a sport for the weak of heart to fight either.

What does it feel like to get walloped in the head with one of these pillows? Have you experienced that?

If anybody comes to my office, they get whacked. That's the first rule of the house. 

I do the whacking before they leave, so they get to feel it. But I also let them hit me. It's just a kind of fun thing.

But does it hurt? Do you have a cauliflower ear by now?

At first, it knocks you. I mean, I'm not taking head shots. The head shots hurt but …  it doesn't leave a bruise. There's no blood. But it's probably right on the verge of really hurting a lot. 

Is there a strategy? I mean, is there a trick to really wielding a good pillow?

The thing is that every fighter, every opponent fights a little differently, so you have to figure [it] out. 

It's total chaos, and out of that chaos comes some order. And the smarter fighters will figure out what that order is and they'll start taking advantage ... repetitively pummelling their opponent in the head one way or another.

So you want the Pillow Fight Championships, the PFC, to turn into a big thing. But I just want to point out … that in Toronto we have something called the Pillow [Fight] League that ended about 10 years ago. And they tweeted last fall that you are 17 years late to the party and our championship belt is nicer than yours, they say. 

Well, we're happy for them, but we're a different type of pillow fight. 

Pillow fighting was probably the original combat sport, you know? Neanderthals did it. We're sure of it.

Whoa, whoa. Neanderthals had pillows?

I'm sure they did. Maybe a goat, you know, a dead goat filled with hay. They were sleeping on something [and] it wasn't a rock. And I'm sure somebody got whacked with it. 

We believe that this was probably one of the first combat sports, or let's say, something to train with before you do go into combat ... and there was a lot of combat back then.

Right, but maybe not with pillows. Maybe with spears or something.

Oh yeah.

So what do you hope to do with your Pillow Fight[ing] Championship?

We're taking it worldwide. I mean … we've got social media on our side. We've had about a billion and a half views [of] our content over the last really few weeks. We've got offers all over the place, [including] Hollywood Studios. 

We're here to stay … and you'll see a lot of pillow fighting in the future. 

Written by Mehek Mazhar. Interview with Steve Williams produced by Chris Trowbridge. Q&A edited for length and clarity.