A mystical dive into Senegalese wrestling in the heart of Hochelaga

This story originally appeared on May 6, 2025 in URBANIA, an online magazine based in Quebec focused on pop culture and society.

“The joy of the traveler lies in not knowing what awaits around the corner,” wrote Nicolas Bouvier in his masterpiece L’Usage du monde. But sometimes, the greatest detour happens without ever leaving your own city.

That morning, I locked up my bike to a rickety pole in Hochelaga, convinced I’d be staying on familiar ground. “Nothing to get excited about,” I told myself. I had no idea just how disoriented that simple trip would leave me.

For the 12th edition of Senegal Month in Canada 2025, the Centre Pierre-Charbonneau opens its doors to a world that at first feels familiar. But soon, something shifts: a scent lingers in the air, reshaping the senses. Aromas from elsewhere drift in, a cuisine simmers gently. And suddenly, it no longer feels quite like Montreal.

I walk in at the same time as Boucar Diouf, welcomed with open arms, a star here as much as back home. Handshakes abound, smiles too. He multiplies selfies with the ease of a ambassador sans the tie, a bridge figure between the baobab and the maple leaf.

Today is wrestling day in Hochelaga. Forget church basements and taunts hurled from the top rope: here, nothing is theatrical. This is ritual, ceremonial, mystical. A sacred territory whose codes still escape me.

At the centre of the gymnasium, a large white-rimmed mat stands like an improvised sanctuary. Cushioned, it waits. All around, embraces are exchanged, along with a few words in Wolof that one can guess are courtesies.

Slowly, the bleachers fill up with an almost choreographed nonchalance. “Today, we’re on Senegalese time,” a security guard tells me with a knowing smile.

“The heart of the wrestling is the drums,” Boucar tells me. I set my things down beside the sabar—the percussion instruments everyone here simply call the drums. Around them, a circle of griots: musicians from father to son, sound-keepers of an ancient memory.

“The wrestlers come straight from Dakar,” one of them tells me, as proudly as if he were announcing the arrival of dignitaries. There, he explains, each fighter enters the arena escorted by his griots and his marabout; a kind of sorcerer, spiritual guide, and celestial guardian. Nothing ordinary about it. Are they here today? My eyes scan the room, searching for a singular silhouette, a trace of incense in the air.

A president, ambassadors, players from the national team: the elite are here. Draped in dazzling boubous cut from precious fabrics, they take up the front rows. Beside them, women in rainbow-colored dresses, adorned with gold, light up the VIP section with an elegance straight out of Dakar. In the middle of this tableau, I look very much like a drifter lost in too pristine a reception.

Where our North American culture insists on timing everything to the minute, here the gentle blur of beginnings punctuated with humour, improvisation, and dance wraps the event in a singular warmth. This delicious suspense finally reaches its peak: the wrestlers make their entrance, majestic, carried by the song of the drums.

Each wrestler bears a stage name and a nickname worthy of his aura. Here is Lirou Diane, “the Monument of Guédiawaye.” Then Amanekh, whom my neighbour introduces as “a great champion,” nicknamed “the Shark of Rufisque,” his chest draped with gris-gris, sacred cords that clatter against his skin like an invisible armour. Shells, ox horns: mystical scales to face the clash ahead. All around, cell phones miss nothing. The images are already crossing the Atlantic.

Father Palla Diop, from Lutte TV, provides commentary for the audience overseas. He too has made the trip from Dakar. The channel he represents boasts more than a million subscribers; proof, if proof were needed, that Senegalese wrestling is more than a sport: it is a national passion, a soap opera followed with fervour.

Before each match, the wrestlers coat their bodies with different substances. Among them is a fine, volatile white clay. “Kaolin,” I’m told. These gestures are not mere folklore: they protect against the ndëp, the evil spell, the invisible forces that linger. Sport gives way to ritual, the arena becomes a temple, and Senegalese animism makes its presence felt, elusive and intangible.

I quickly realize that Senegalese wrestling goes far beyond mere physical combat. It is a trial at the edges of the visible, where energy, spirits, and occult forces weigh as heavily as muscle. And in the face of this logic that eludes me, carried by the fever of the drums, I rediscover that beautiful incomprehension which is the very essence of travel.

There is an almost hypnotic pleasure in watching these giants sketch out their dance steps, blending grace and power with disarming ease. Special mention goes to coach Bakahry Sakho, an XXL-sized powerhouse, whose every move sparks a wave of excitement in the ever-louder crowd. The arena vibrates… and this is only the beginning.

Fascinated, and slightly disoriented by this esoteric ballet of bodybuilder physiques, I watch Dakar and Hochelaga blur into each other in a splendid haze.

In the crowd, I meet Fatou, who has been living in Longueuil for about ten years. She wouldn’t have missed this chance to pass on a piece of her culture to her three children who were born here. A little further on, two young men in tuques grow animated in turn: “Wrestling is the best of Senegal, better than soccer!” exclaims one of them, between bites of thiebou yapp, the meat-and-rice dish whose aroma had already caught me at the entrance.

I’m allowed to move freely, camera in hand, without constraint. Nothing here is rigid: everything breathes, everything opens itself up. In the stands, I meet Martine, who knows Senegal well through her work in the Francophonie. It was there that she fell in love with the country, and with that gentle, supple, almost dance-like way its people have of living. The same sense of wonder shines through in the words of two Montrealers, filmmaker Marie-Emmanuelle Boileau and journalist Gabrielle Brassard-Lecours, who came to present their documentary filmed at the heart of the world of Senegalese wrestling.

After the karate and Olympic wrestling demonstrations, it’s time for the long-awaited bouts of Swiss and Senegalese wrestling. They pit wrestlers from Africa against local fighters, a kind of cannon fodder offered to the fans. The clashes are brief, tense, sometimes over in seconds. All the Senegalese wrestlers win, with little surprise. Faced with the length of the gala, these flashes of grace are fleeting. But the essence lies elsewhere: in the ritual, the transmission, the encounter.

Women’s dances soften this surge of bodies and testosterone, carried by praises that weave an invisible thread between Montreal and Dakar.

At the percussionists’ feet, drumsticks pile up, snapped clean under the passion of the strikes. They are tree branches, nervous extensions of hands in trance. Within the band, a striking nonchalance hovers: an organic, shifting rhythm, from which men suddenly emerge, as if descending from the stands to deliver a splendid song before vanishing again. As though the music had summoned them… then released them.

Then at last comes the royal bout, the heavyweight fight, which ends in a blur of chaos, punctuated by a security intervention whose trigger I can’t quite grasp. As in American wrestling, the boundaries of the script waver: where does reality end, and where does the staging begin?

Boucar, both a seasoned fixer and cultural interpreter, flashes me a reassuring smile. Nothing unusual here, quite the opposite. The absence of scuffles would almost be suspicious. “Each wrestler will provoke, tease, mock the other to heat things up,” he explains. “He puts forward his neighbourhood, his region. It’s theatre: it fuels the show, it makes you want to come back.”

Dances, cries, a satisfied crowd. Security zigzags from one brawl to the next. You don’t really make sense of it all—and perhaps that’s the very essence of travel: the moment when your bearings falter, when certainties fall silent.

Just a couple of pedal strokes from home, I’ve crossed an ocean.

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