The Wrestling II

On Tuesday night, the streets of Edinburgh were briefly returned to the locals. What seemed like the entire apparatus of comedy put their month-long occupation on hold to assemble in the Pleasance Grand. The big attraction? The return of 2011's award-winning The Wrestling, a battle of epic proportions pitting flabby, graceless comedians against professional fighters and each other. Once again, it was glorious.

Over three bouts and two hours, Team O'Hanlon (clean-cut goodies captained by Ardal) eked out a 2-1 victory over Team Punishment (Tim 'Dr Pun Ishment' Vine's cheating rabble of badboys and bruisers). There is simply no way to give an exhaustive account of the night, such was the deluge of sham savagery, snappy trash talk and soap opera plot twists along the way – so here's a highlights reel.

Fight one saw Thom Tuck tear the sleeves from his cricket whites before suplexing his weedy nemesis Dan Cook into submission. In number two, gimp-suited pervert Tom Rosenthal slithered into a botched grapple, hanging off Dan 'The Hammer' Head's back. "It looks like they're giving birth to each other," squawked Brendon Burns, commentating in support of the heels' dirty tactics while his sugar-and-spice co-host Andrew Maxwell again led the chant: "Fair play! Decency!".

Half-time entertainment came from The Boy With Tape On His Face, whose Amelie-soundtracked, wordless whimsy would have created an awkward shift in tone… had he not suffocated villain Rishi Ghosh with a roll of the sticky stuff, then orchestrated a brutal pillow fight between two spectators.

Utter chaos broke out with the climactic six-man brawl (eight-man, actually), which spilled out of the ring and into the baying crowd. Angelos Epithemiou, in anorak and spandex, was caught smuggling a brick in his ever-present plastic bag. Double act Max and Ivan, who masterminded the night, eagerly battered each other. Max, who wrestled as a teenager, splattered one of the pros across the canvas with a jawdropping, high-flying assault (the Hurricanrana, if my childhood viewing serves). 

Puny roving reporter Matthew Crosby, having abandoned impartiality to join the light side, was perfectly mismatched against Team Punishment's almost spherical secret weapon The Bulk. And finally ring announcer Nick Helm, illegally incapacitated at the start, rose again (in Y-fronts) to smash his attacker through a table. His replacement Joe Lycett, whose catty asides were to wrestling's campness what Helm's bravado was to its machismo, got a passionate, beardy kiss as thanks for his stellar stand-in stint on the mic.

This was Hollywood stuffed into a gym hall, a big, dumb, glossy happening that reaffirmed the compatibility of wrestling and comedy. The OTT self-parody already at play in the "sport" has turned out to be the perfect fit for comedians' quick wits and self-destructive tendencies.

Sure, it had its flaws – an overabundance of cameos, and in-jokes that must have baffled casual viewers. But none of that overshadowed the can-do audacity behind it or the genuinely impressive physical feats on show. Nor did it matter to the masses, who roared for bloodshed and cheered for good and evil alike. 

This is precisely the sort of thing that should happen when the world's funniest, most ambitious minds gather in one city. Last time The Wrestling was a novelty, a stunt no one knew would work. Now it's on its way to becoming an institution, with the sequel having proved a triumph.