Masked women who shed their mild manners

It's a gray Sunday afternoon on Harvard Avenue, but inside the lair of La Gata Negra, the warm light of battle shines bright. There are no screaming fans at this hour, just Mistress Cheetah and Conqueror Worm, demonstrating a few moves for two recruits.

"You were twisting my arm, I think," says Worm, as Cheetah tries to pull Worm's spandex-clad limb out of its socket. Then, turning to the novices, Worm says: "Finally, I struggle to get her in a choke hold, and we do this."

"This" is a blur of knee-high boots and elbow-length gloves that ends with both women slamming onto the futon that serves as their wrestling mat, Worm in position to deliver crippling blows to Cheetah's neck.

"And then it's AAAA-WWWWUUUUUAAAAHHHHH!!!" yells Worm triumphantly, as the recruits laugh and cheer. "So that now you have a choke slam."

Choke slams, reverse crabs, Canadian backbreakers -- it's all in a day's work for La Gata Negra, an all-female, all-masked wrestling league. Founded by two veteran burlesque performers, LGN came about when Worm and Cheetah (full name: Mistress Cheetah, the Mean Mistreatah) got to talking about wrestling while backstage at a go-go dancing gig. Some modern female wrestling is good stuff, they agreed, but all too often it devolves into something -- well, something less about wrestling than the often surgically enhanced physical attributes of the wrestlers.

"And it's just so frustrating to see that," says Worm, her expression hidden behind a full-face death's-head mask. "I didn't see out there what I want to see, so I'm like, 'Well, I guess I have to do it myself.' "

"I have always been an athlete and a gymnast, and I'm also a performer, so it seemed to me to be the perfect marriage of performance and athletics," says Cheetah. "You just put your costume on and you're a different person, it gives you the excuse to be a whole new character."

"And just be obnoxious," says Worm.

The pair debuted to rave reviews with a controversial bout at the Rock City Prom this past fall. Mistress Cheetah seemed to be winning initially, but the referee, who had been temporarily knocked "unconscious," failed to count out Conqueror Worm, who then turned the tables and pinned Cheetah for the victory. Word of the new league spread quickly, and after careful consideration, the first recruiting class was welcomed into La Gata Negra in December: Renee Desar of Beverly and Leigh Calabrese of Gloucester, who play the cello and the musical saw as two-thirds of The Sob Sisters, specialists in songs of the 1920s. While that gig involves some amount of costume and character work, La Gata Negra allows for -- indeed, requires -- a more thorough transformation.

"In life I'm a very mild-mannered, kind of meek person," says Desar, 30, who works as a veterinary nurse by day. "The campy aspect of it I really like, but also the fact that it might be neat to put on a mask, no one would know I was, and I could be mean and nasty and all of that."

While she's new to the wrestling scene, Desar has already spent a considerable amount of time thinking about her wrestling character, El Gekko.

"A green suit, I'm thinking of having suction-things on the fingers, and a mask with red sequin eyes," says Desar, as Worm and Cheetah laugh and shout encouragement. "Also, I want to have a tail attached with Velcro that would get ripped off, and I could beat someone with it, and then it would magically regrow when I come back."

Is she concerned that her wrestling persona might start intruding into her real life?

"No, I don't think so," says Desar. "But I have told everyone at work, and my male co-workers are psyched. [One] guy really wants me to break a chair over somebody."

Calabrese, also 30, hasn't made quite as many specific plans, but says that by practicing in her everyday life, she's more than ready for masked heroics.

"I've rescued kitties; if I find a spider in the house, I place it outside, I don't crush it," she says. "So, yeah, I guess I've got the seed planted of superhero in me."

"Basically, we want to be superheroes in real life," says Worm. "When do you get the opportunity to become a walking, breathing, comic-book hero or supervillain?"

Or are they really superheroes who pretend to be mortals who pretend to be superheroes? Their mortal identities don't do much to clear up this confusion: By day, Mistress Cheetah is Ama Allara, a personal trainer and Pilates instructor who runs Rock City Body, a movement studio that serves as LGN's headquarters. Conqueror Worm, meanwhile, punches the clock as Carrie D'Amour, a mild-mannered computer whiz for a health-care company. But Worm frequently trades her skeleton suit and wrestling boots for tassels and opaque underwear to become the burlesque performer Miss Firecracker, while her trainer and manager, the Grim Reaper, is the decidedly ghoulish illustrator of band posters, album covers, and children's books known as Mister Reusch.

So what's real here? For now, they're not saying as they continue to train, study Japanese and Mexican wrestling videotapes, and cultivate new wrestling characters, including The Irish Triplets (Mary Catherine, Catherine Mary, and Sister Mary Catherine); La Hornita (Hornet Girl); Pretty Polly the Pawtucket Pirate (complete with limericks); and the Bad Habits (a group of evil nuns). And while this might all sound like a bizarre fantasy world, both Worm and Cheetah are quick to point out that there's a lot of reality behind that fantasy.

"Wrestling is real, in the sense that it's work, that you're doing moves, you're doing a choreographed dance with another person," says Cheetah. "But at the same time, it's fake -- people get caught up when they're watching it. They know it's not real, but there's that suspended disbelief when you're watching the match."

"It's one thing to drop-kick somebody," Conqueror Worm points out. "It's another to pull a dropkick this far from somebody's face at a perfectly timed moment, and stay in character as you're doing it. I'm in awe of professional wrestlers."

La Gata Negra will be grappling once again at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline at midnight Friday as part of a benefit featuring music, comedy, and wrestling. Tickets are $15. Proceeds go toward stopping violence against women and girls. For more information, go to www.lagatanegra.com. Will Kilburn can be reached at wkilburn@globe.com.