Two of the gougist ladies of wrestling go at it at a recent performance by the Boston League of Women Wrestlers — performance art, if you will, at least as real as real professional wrestling and twice as loud. (Photo: Dan E. Pants)

There’s an old line about how women don’t sweat — they glow.

These women sweat. And they’re B.L.O.W.W., or the Boston League of Women Wrestlers.

In addition to sweating, they curse, grunt and bleed in gut-churning gushes from liberally applied blood packs, and they do it all to fast, loud, sneering music.

And they’re doing it tonight, upstairs at the Middle East.

The league’s history dates back to the millennium with a possibly apocryphal story about a man named Mucho Sexo, from a band named Sexual Fudge, being inspired by a real-life catfight to launch a women’s wrestling league. Sexual Fudge performed the hair metal background to hair pulling in the ring.

Now Mucho is gone, Sexual Fudge has been packed away and many of the great names from B.L.O.W.W. events of the past are retired, or at least missing from the wars in the Middle East. Instead of Coach Schwetty, Nurse Agony (a co-founder with Mucho) and Miss Ann Thropic, the club will see bouts between Pocahardass and Mary Nagdalene, Catie Cadavre and Vicious Velma, Maggie Mae Skrew and Susie Skrew, Sophie Sutre and Muffy Winters and Jean Claude Benet and the league’s champion, the yokelish Curdley Sue.

The squealing guitars and pounding drums that act as soundtrack for the night’s rounds are by Swaggering Growlers and Sasquatch and the Sick-a-billys, and the whole thing is called “Whiskey and Bruises” — a night of women’s wrestling, rockabilly and Irish punk.

Doors open at 8 p.m. for this 18-plus, $8 show. The club is two blocks from the Central Square T stop at 472-480 Massachusetts Ave., as well as on bus routes 1, 47, 70, 64, 83 and 91. Call (617) 864-east or go to mideastclub.com.