Remember Female Rollar Derby? Was it scripted like Pro Wrestling?

The Game Room
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Thanks for that. Yes, you would clearly need more space for a roller track than we would for a wrestling ring. That would limit where you could set up—I’m thinking a community skating rink, with the ice removed, for example. But hey, if it’s a hockey rink, you’d likely have tiers of seats to begin with. And a good point about the buffer zone.

We could set up a wrestling ring anywhere there was room for it, plus a buffer zone, plus five or six rows of seats on each side of the ring. So we could go into community centres, high school gyms, Legion halls, and the like.

A wrestling ring measures 16 feet a side, though the area defined by the ropes inside the ring is 15 feet a side. That allows the non-fighting member of a tag team to stand on the ring, but not within the ropes. Then, we’d have an 8 foot buffer zone, because wrestlers would occasionally fall outside the ring, and nobody wanted them to fall on an audience member. So as long as we had a 32 foot by 32 foot space, plus room for the audience, we were good. Fans were kept back by the threat of being thrown out if they violated that space (“… And we’ve got the guys who will be more than happy to literally throw you out”).

As an aside, I’ll add that a wrestling ring is a remarkable piece of engineering. Contrary to what many believe, the ropes are not stretchy, nor are they any kind of bungee. They really are inch-and-a-quarter thick hemp rope, wrapped in duct tape, and not stretchy at all. Rather, they, and the posts, and the cables (that can be “tuned” using a turnbuckle) under the ring are what give the ring its “give.” I’ve bounced off the ropes many times, just for fun, and though I’m no heavyweight, I can get some stretch out of them, thanks to the ring engineering. But try the ropes in a tug-of-war when they’re not in the ring, and you’ll find that they don’t stretch at all.

Anyway, enough of the hijack; I’m just interested in how the roller derby surfaces and pro wrestling surfaces and roller derby surfaces compare. Thank you again for the info; it is very much appreciated. Makes me curious about our local roller derby promotion—maybe I should check it out.

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That may be what’s responsible for most of the give, but even if you stretched the ropes between steel I-beams set in concrete, there’s no material known to man that won’t stretch at least a little in those conditions. When you have a rope pulled taut, and push on it from the side, the mechanical advantage is phenomenally huge (in fact, it starts out infinite). You’re going to be able to push the rope visibly to the side at least a little bit, no matter what it’s made of.

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I don’t think Spoons meant the ropes couldn’t be stretched, just that they weren’t made stretchy.

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Right. I suppose that under enough tension, the ropes would stretch. But they weren’t made stretchy to begin with, like a bungee would be.