All images courtesy of @PFC
Pillow Fight Championship is the world’s first professional pillow fighting league featuring fighters engaging in intense, fast-paced and all ages-friendly combat sport that is generally contested in a boxing ring.
Combining entry-level combat with cardiovascular benefits (and with rules and regulations, as well as patented combat pillows), the sport is growing in recognition. In fact, Pillow Fighting Championships have been contested on ESPN The Ocho.
SDM caught up to Steve Williams, co-founder and CEO, to learn more.
Sports Destination Management: It sounds like there are two levels to pillow fighting, meaning both the competitive pro championships and the amateur event, in which anyone can participate.
Steve Williams: Yes, we definitely have the ability to create an immersive event, in which we do a training, and then anyone can get into the ring and hit their opponent with a pillow. That is what makes it so cool. Everyone gets happy and giddy because at some point in their lives, everyone has hit someone with a pillow and they remember it as being fun.
SDM: Do people move on to professional pillow fighting after that?
Williams: Well, we see it as a gateway sport. For people who are not fighters, per se, it is just fun but other people might get into boxing classes. Before, they might have had this idea that combat sports are full of bad guys but once they’re actually doing this, they see it as really fun.
If you take it a step further, you see that fight-or-flight is in our DNA. A gazelle is ready to outrun a lion within 60 minutes of being born, and everyone has seen animals play-fighting, the way dogs or cats do; that’s just practicing the skills that are in everyone. They need to be ready when it’s go-time.
That’s what makes pillow fighting so fun. It’s play-fighting. Nobody gets hurt and everyone has a good time. And today, you kind of need that. Everyone is so divided and political. It’s important to have something where you can just plain have fun and forget about everything else.
SDM: Well stated. Are there limits on the pillows used in PFC? These aren’t like bed pillows, right?
Williams: They weigh two pounds. When we started out, we used a three-and-a-half-pound pillow but even though rounds are short, only two minutes long, we saw that fighters were starting to get tired. We reduced it to two pounds and what we found was that it was a good weight for men and women.
SDM: Is this like boxing or MMA, where there is a chance of getting a broken nose or a concussion?
Williams: No, not at all. Our fighters don’t even wear mouthguards. I think we have had a few dislocated shoulders but that’s it, and both of those happened to people who had already dislocated their shoulders. Once you’ve popped your shoulder out, it can happen again.
SDM: How did PFC start?
Williams: I really have to give my brother credit for that. I was working on an MMA concept, something we could put on a truck and take to different cities, and my brother came in and told me MMA was not legal in all 50 states.
He had just come back from Burning Man, where they’d had fantasy pillow fighting. We talked about it for a while and I bought some ripstop nylon and gave it to a wedding dress designer I knew and asked her if she could make some pillowcases. By accident, I’d also gotten some melamine coated ripstop nylon sailcloth, and we found out that when you hit someone with it, it really makes a loud bang, which made it much more fun. We perfected the handle design and got a patent.
SDM: And now you’re on ESPN!
Williams: Not bad for a five-year-old sport!. We've done two events for ESPN and they just invited us back. Out of all the Ocho sports, we have the highest ratings.
SDM: Do you tend to piggyback your events on others that might be compatible with them, or do you do standalone events?
Williams: We do both. Our biggest event so far has been at the Disney Wide World of Sports venue. But it’s a good add-on for things like boxing or martial arts. I really do believe it can become an Olympic sport some day; you can actually look up the news stories where people are talking about that. We’re talking about doing an event after the Olympics, all the athletes from different sports trying some pillow fighting. It would be fun and sponsors would eat it up.
SDM: Is Pillow Fight Championship seeking partners, sponsorship-wise?
Williams: We are. Our agreement and all information is available here.