'Knockout Revue' pleases audience but upsets others

The live entertainment Wednesday night at Crowbar did not take place on stage, but in a boxing ring set up on the dance floor.

Crowbar's usual entertainment, a live band, was replaced by the Hollywood Knockouts Female Revue, an event that included strippers, lap dances and women's boxing.

"I have never seen anything like this before," said Thomas Myles, a Philadelphia resident, who attended the revue. "I'm up here for a conference and decided to come expecting to have a good time," he said.

The entertainment, which started about an hour late, began with an emcee who encouraged the crowd to start a wave while chugging whatever alcohol they were drinking.

"Alcohol is the fuel for our sports spectacular," he said.

Shortly after the wave, a woman dressed as a cowgirl appeared on the dance floor and stripped down to a g-string while the crowd cheered her on. She was followed by more women who wandered through the bar giving dollar bill-waving spectators private shows.

While most of the crowd was enjoying the view, some spectators hung back in the shadows observing.

"I'm not sure about this yet," said one student majoring in business logistics, who refused to give his name. "My roommate dragged me here," he said.

But the shyer audience members were the minority, especially when the main event -- boxing -- began.

The crowd on the second level of the bar pressed against the railings and craned their necks to get a glimpse of the "sports spectacular" below.

Two men in the crowd each paid over $20 to win the job of ringside manager.

The job entailed spraying down the women, dressed in thin, white cotton T-shirts and shorts, with cold water. The ringside managers were also supposed to coach the boxers.

"On your knees, baby doll," one manager said, "Back to your corners, baby dolls," another said. "Hey, sweetheart, take it easy."

These coaching tips by the ringside managers encouraged the women to push each other around until one fell down sending the crowd into a frenzy.

When one of the boxers was down, her opponent would jump on her and pummel her until the referee, "Mad Mark," would pull the overzealous fighter off her competitor.

Although the enthusiastic audience was made up mostly of men, several women were present at Wednesday night's fight and seemed to be having just as much fun.

One of these women, a scientist from Russia in town for a conference, said she viewed the fight as a show and found it very entertaining.

"I can see it's only a show, but a pretty well-performed one," Tanya Makalrova said. "It's very entertaining and the girls have many interesting tricks."

But not everyone shares the views of Makalrova and the crowd who paid eight dollars each to enter Crowbar.

Jill Dworzanski, co-director of Womyn's Concerns, said despite the fact that business at Crowbar may be slower in the summer, the managers should not display topless women as entertainment.

"I don't support what they did," she said. "It promotes drunkenness, abuse, objectification of women and the sexualizing of women," she said.

Dworzanski is not alone in her opinion about Crowbar's entertainment Wednesday.

Events like Foxy Boxing are part of a cultural phenomenon that encourages people to treat women's bodies as an object of lust, said Michael Johnson, associate professor of sociology and women's studies.

"We are embedded in a cultural phenomena of sexual violence and, although that event alone did not cause it, it does contribute to it," Johnson said.

The Center for Women Students and Women's Resource Center refused to comment.