I was reading through one of the Seattle weekly alternative papers, The Stranger, today and came across the “The Stranger Suggests” column where they recommend different things to do on upcoming days.  For today (Sunday, July 22) they recommended the “Cardboard Tube Fighting League” with the sub-title “Ridiculous Sport”.

I checked out the CTFL website and it piqued my interest.

I had some time to kill before the battles began so I headed over to Shorty’s (a clown-themed pinball bar) to play some pinball.  I really wanted to order their “Hangover Special” (a hotdog, a Bloody Mary, an Alka Seltzer, and a cigarette for $7.50), but instead I just ordered a beer and pumped about a pound of quarters into some pinball machines.

At the appointed time I drove a couple miles up the I-5 turned left after the erotic bakery and down the hill to Gas Works Park.  I signed a waiver and was handed a cardboard tube.  I was one of the first people to arrive, so I got to watch other people show up.  At first it looked like only about ten people were going to participate, but in the space of ten minutes about forty more people showed up (many just observing).  I’d estimate that about 40 people competed.  A couple of guys showed up with cardboard armor, bubble wrap helmets, and folded carboard “daggers” (the daggers weren’t allowed to be used during competition).  One of the guys had built cardboard armor to fit over one of his arms.  He said that it made him a “cyboard”.

Overall the demographic was fairly hip.  Everyone got the joke and were participating more or less ironically.  The guy who organized the event, Robert, relayed a story about how he used to work downtown for a deli.  He had to wear a giant Rueben sandwich costume and dance around.  On the same block was a woman who was dressed as a hotdog for, presumably, a hot dog joint nearby.  Her costume included a baby hotdog which she cradled in her arms.  He challenged her to a costumed dance-off one day, making the phrase “you’ve been served” a triple entendre, but it turned out she was legally blind and the food dance competition in the street never happened.  A hotdog and it’s baby getting run over is never in good taste. [Pun intended]

Reporters were there to cover the first-ever cardboard fighting tournament.  There were two from the Seattle Times, one from the North Seattle Herald, and possibly others.

Waiting for the event to start was nerve wracking.  I was beginning to feel anxious in the calm before the battle.  I wanted to get out there and kill.  While I waited I prepared my weapon.  I labelled one end of my tube “Peace” and the other end “Love”.  For my first battle I would hold the tube at the Love end and strike my opponent with Peace.  I was ready.

The rules to cardboard dueling are pretty simple:

  1. You are given one cardboard tube which you can’t wield by the center (you have to hold one of the ends).
  2. You may not stab your opponent with your tube.
  3. You are allowed to switch the end of the tube you’re holding.
  4. You can not use your hands or legs to break your opponent’s tube.
  5. You are finished when your tube is broken.  A tube is broken when it hangs at greater than a forty-five degree angle when held out horizontally by the end.

Competition was broken into four rounds.  The first two rounds are one-on-one duels.  You have to use the same tube to compete in the second round so if you nearly destroy your tube in your first bout you’re pooched on the second one.  A typical battle lasts 30 - 240 seconds.

Opponents were selected at “random”.  It was pretty obvious they were pairing people off in the order they signed the waiver, though.

My first battle was against a girl named Jen.  I had a couple of ideas about how to use my tube to my advantage: I figured if I could strike with the part of the tube closest to my hand against the part of her tube farthest away from her hand I’d get the most leverage and ultimately a kill.

I shook Jen’s hand before the battle and told her “it’s a pleasure to defeat you.”

With a wave of the judge’s hand the battle was on.  In my head I could hear the Star Trek dueling music. 

Jen was being passive and keeping her tube out of harm’s way.  She made a few careful swipes, but for the most part she was waiting for me to make a mistake.  Having nothing better to aim for I wacked her in the arm, side, hip, legs, and shoulder.  Each strike yielded cheers from the onlookers.  I had to be careful how hard I hit her so that I didn’t break my tube.  I was enjoying bludgeoning Jen with Peace, but eventually she became frustrated and began to hold her weapon in front of her and try to hit me back.

I saw my chance and took a good hard swing at her tube.  I used the center of Peace against the end of her tube and… I nearly broke my weapon! Play was paused by the judge and I was asked to perform the “dead tube test”.  My blade was adequately rigid to allow the battle to proceed.

From this point on I had to be very careful and could not be as aggressive.  I switched my strategy into trying to get Jen to swing her tube harder than she should so that she might bend it on her own.

My strategy worked.  As she made an aggressive swipe and I was able to tap her weapon as it passed and break it enough to score a kill.  Victory!

I had made it to the second round.  I got Jen to sign my tube underneath where I had written “Peace”.  She wrote “You Suck!” under her name.  Vanquished foes can be colloquial.

It wasn’t long before I was paired up with my next opponent.  A chick named Kim.  I had dispatched my first opponent with Peace, but I switched ends I was holding.  My plan was to see Kim fall to the crushing pain of Love.

The referee signaled for us to start and I was quickly immersed into the fog of battle.

Kim was another passive fighter.  She was guarding her weapon behind her back.  My tube was in rough shape and her’s was in relatively good condition.  I employed the same technique I had used against Jen.  I wacked Kim in the ass a couple of times with Love.  She started to fight back and we had a battle on our hands.

It’s hard to estimate time when you’re fighting for your life, but I think our bout lasted about a minute.  Sadly, my Love was not good enough for Kim and she left me holding a flaccid tube.  I was out of the competition.

The third round was set up as two separate skirmishes between three competitors in a free-for-all-last-person-standing arrangement.  Everyone that remained was given a new tube for this round. 

The three-way battles actually didn’t work in my opinion because they rewarded competitors who shied away from the battle and let the other two damage their tubes as they competed.

The two winners of the three-way competitions faced each other in a final final battle.  They were provided with new tubes and cardboard shields.  The battle was between a 15-year-old punk rock girl wearing a crinoline skirt and another chick wearing jeans and a T-shirt (women seem to be exceptional at this sport).  After some hacking and slashing the punk rock girl was dispatched and we had a winner.

The next tournament, in a month, will feature a Braveheart-esque battle where all participants are broken into two teams and will charge across a battlefield in order to clash in the center.