Inside the all-FEMALE fight club: The secret Berlin group where women go topless to take part in no-holds-barred bouts that leave them bruised and bleeding
The women often fight topless, like male fighters would usually, with one combatant showing off bruises and marks from being raked by her opponents’ fingers
There are no rules in the all-female fight club, just grit and determination as women of all sizes and shapes pit themselves against each other in the ring.
Photographer Katarzyna Mazur has captured the East Berlin-based club in a series of no-holds barred portraits of the women, often battered and bruised, taking each other on in fighting gear or topless.
The private club has no official guidelines and does not have one particular fighting style and shows women – who are practising their sport unpaid, for the sheer challenge of combat – throwing off the preconceived notions about their gender to compete as equals.
The club was started in 2010 by female fighters Anna Konda and Red Devil, from Russia, as a place for women to come and fight.
Anna was very slim when she was younger, but is now much ‘bigger’ she told Vice UK but she said she could not keep her trim figure forever.
She said about her wrestling: ‘I don’t enjoy the pain of others. I enjoy my own power and having control.
‘I guess sometimes this can amount to the same thing for my prey.