Fascinated today remembering an offhand comment by Dorota, that gladiatorial contests in the great Coliseum of Rome may well have had predetermined outcomes. I have few good images of the site out of my visit there but remember vividly a tour guide's descriptions of hundreds killed in various forms of combat each day, their bodies stuffed into the sewers. Absurd on one level but on another far-fetched.

In the latest (2 August 1999) Wrestling Observer Tadashi Tanaka writes of unspecified classical Greek murals which depict wrestlers executing moves which cannot be executed without the assistance of one's opponent.

More of the same, combat as more than a physical contest.