This year, Tasneem Sarjoo celebrated Valentine’s Day in a way that felt natural to her: by tackling a man at the knees, knocking him to the floor, thrashing her arms against his torso and pinning him to a wrestling mat the shade of Pepto-Bismol.
She had a feeling that the match had gone well. Really well.
“He’s going to ask me for my number,” said Ms. Sarjoo, 22, a receptionist who lives on Long Island.
The two met at wrestling speed dating, an unusually rowdy singles event held on Saturday night in a warehouse in Brooklyn. More than 100 partygoers ages 18 to 24 showed up to flirt and put each other in headlocks in front of a chanting crowd. The tone of the evening fell somewhere between “Love Island” and “WWE SmackDown.”
There was some early confusion about what wrestling speed dating actually entailed. Singles were instructed to get to know one another while milling about, and then ask a crush of any gender to step into one of the room’s three wrestling rings. (Size mismatches were no big deal, as the face-offs were not especially competitive or entirely serious.)
Posters around the room outlined an optimistic three-point itinerary: “flirt w/ everyone,” “wrestle one” and “leave in love.”
Ms. Sarjoo had met her sparring partner, Luiz Campos, a few minutes before they took to the mat. Both of them had endured countless conversations on dating apps that fizzled before anyone could make plans to meet up, and they wanted to try something new.
“After we started talking a little bit, I offered to help show her some moves, and we started to have some fun,” said Mr. Campos, 22, who lives in Manhattan and practices jujitsu.
“I wouldn’t have gone for his legs unless he told me to,” Ms. Sarjoo added.
The event is one of the more boisterous examples of a wave of themed singles mixers that have sprouted around the city in recent years. As online dating companies shed users and fortify their paywalls, young romantics have been congregating to jog, play board games and make PowerPoint presentations pitching their most eligible friends.
The event was the brainchild of Gael Aitor and Kayla Suarez, professionally rambunctious 22-year-olds who live in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. In high school, they hosted a podcast that became a lifeline for teenagers during the pandemic; lately they have been encouraging young people to put down their phones and meet up in person.
“It’s nice having that online community, but it’s important to recognize that online interactions only go so far,” Ms. Suarez said.
Last summer, in Los Angeles, they began hosting weekly gatherings for other Gen Z-ers that included a giant game of freeze tag and something called a “fight your evil situationship boxing rave.” Freshly arrived in New York, they soon hope to schedule a “douching sermon” in a house of worship in order to spread the gospel of adequate fiber consumption.
The search for a venue is ongoing. “We need to convince a church,” Mr. Aitor said.
Tickets to the wrestling event cost $25 for competitors and $15 for those who just wanted to hang out. The room was thick with chunky chain belts and ironic crop tops, quasi-mullets and hiking sneakers. Consent waivers were neon and plentiful; between rounds, volunteers wiped sweat from the mats as wrestlers gulped water from their Nalgenes.
Early on, few people seemed convinced that they would meet their soul mates in the wrestling ring. But it wasn’t impossible, right?
Isabelle Gartner, 19, who lives in Brooklyn, demonstrated a wrestling move called a full nelson that she had learned moments earlier from a security guard downstairs. (She referred to him as her wrestling coach.) She had been dumped recently, she said, but things were looking up.
“All the hot Bushwick baddies are coming,” she said.
She was asked to wrestle by Eevee Mendez May, 18, a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology who tried her hand at hosting a meet-up for queer women last year. “The last 15 years have been defined by the internet, and people are sick of that,” she said. “We want to see each other in person.”
They strapped on ear guards and entered the ring. Ms. May had a significant height advantage, but Ms. Gartner was shifty, eventually knocking her opponent on her back and pinning her down for the win.
They agreed afterward that wrestling was a decent way to gauge physical chemistry. “She has a great leg hook,” Ms. May said.
Francesco Cremonini, 23, a lanky acting student, said he had assumed that wrestling speed dating was a joke when he saw it advertised online. But he found that the ludicrous premise made it surprisingly easy to approach people.
“Everyone knows there’s something kind of silly about this event,” he said, adding, “It doesn’t feel as weird because we all signed up for this, right?”
He grappled with Lorenzo Mendiola, 23, who works in advertising. The two wrestled to a draw, and kept chatting long after they left the mats.
Callie Holtermann reports on style and pop culture for The Times.
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