PHYSICAL RUIN IS part of this job description, and for the remaining weekend after Lit Up, Tracy Williams' open palm strike -- the evidence of a man physically beating up a woman while an accepting crowd looked on -- will burn a deep crimson on Kimber Lee's back. Depending on your vantage point, that handprint is either a token of honor and, perhaps, progress -- or a radioactive badge of shame, nothing but spectacle masked as progress.

Their match concludes after Williams locks his forearm around Kimber Lee's neck and yanks backward to submit her via a crossface; he keeps his belt, then gets booed for his efforts. A vanquished Kimber Lee staggers around the mat, raises her arms to salute the Kimber Lee chants, then ducks beneath the ropes to leave the ring. She hobbles along the path to the exit, clutches her jaw and steps through the thick black curtain that divides the public from backstage.

And there, on the other side, she stands up straight.

Kimber Lee, who goes by Kimberly Frankele when not in the ring, finds Williams and, like wrestlers do after every match, they huddle. They assure each other that, yes, they're both unharmed; yes, they both feel good about the how the match went. And then Williams explains himself, and that back slap.

"It was there," he tells Frankele. Her back was exposed; he seized an opportunity. "I'm sorry."

Frankele waves him off, assuring Williams that she would have done the same. It's their job as performers to leave safe spots open -- their chest, their back -- where opponents can deliver strikes carefully. "You're going to bruise," says Frankele of her chosen trade. "You're going to get hurt."

She laughs, because, really, she has been at this since 2009 and it's just one more bruise in a decade replete with them. And besides, she knows Williams. They both trained under the same mentor; they know the lines they can and cannot cross with each other. "He wasn't supposed to hit me in the back like that," Frankele says, then shrugs. "But that happens. That's a move that's not fake."

Spend enough time backstage, and a kind of governance emerges. Everyone is on top of everyone back here, and between the embraces and the pleasantries, it feels closer to a high school reunion than a space where they're prepping to batter one another. There's the women's dressing room, where an array of carry-on suitcases are splayed open. ("PRO WRESTLING IS NOT A CRIME" trumpets a sticker on one black bag.) The wrestlers' makeup, their costumes and their snacks spill out onto a faux granite countertop. There's the men's dressing room just across the way. And there's the hallway. In this sterile, narrow corridor that stretches the length of the convention center, the wrestlers conduct their pre- and postmortems. Before their matches, they hammer out the storyline and moves they agree they want to execute. Afterward, they dissect how those storylines and moves played out. They are forensic analysts in Lycra and sequins.

Walk through the hall in those final, harried moments before Lit Up begins, and you'll find them convening, two by two -- wrestler vs. wrestler -- like Noah's Ark. Frankele and Williams practice their steps, knowing their story arc is a simple one. Williams owns the title belt; Frankele will try to wrest it from him. "Boom!" Frankele yells, then pretends to whip her head back. She mimics a series of punches; Williams pretends to sustain the blows. "Boom!" Williams says, and Frankele pretend-staggers for a few steps.

Down the corridor, about 20 feet away, another pair of performers, Deonna Purrazzo and Matt Riddle, go through their own paces. Neither has performed in an intergender match before tonight, and they decide their action will lean into that inexperience. Purrazzo will be the early aggressor, needling Riddle to fight. Riddle, the former UFC fighter, will be hesitant at first, knowing the power imbalance, until she frustrates him so much he swings back and outmuscles her. "Maybe it's like this," Riddle motions, and practices kneeing Purrazzo with his right leg. She nods and pretend-lurches a few steps.

"It's like a live-action movie," Frankele says. "We're stunt athletes."