The way someone wins a dumpster match is that they force their opponent into a dumpster, and, then, the winner closes the lid over the loser. Case closed. We have a new champion.
Most of the time, the loser gets tossed, unconscious, into the dumpster. The most humiliating way to lose is to be forced to crawl into the dumpster so that the winner can close the lid to keep the garbage in the dumpster.
There are variations on the most humiliating way to lose that make it even more humiliating, so most people would rather either win or be tossed unconscious into the dumpster. Especially for what happens next.
Once the winner is declared, the audience gathers around the dumpster and pounds on the sides, hooting and yelling unkind words the whole time. Nobody would want to be awake for that.
Then, a brass band will start playing and everyone but the loser will join in a parade, dancing around the neighborhood with the winner dancing behind the brass band and shaking everyone's hand as the parade winds down the middle of the surrounding streets.
The parade gives the fight's loser the chance to crawl out of the dumpster unobserved, to go home, get cleaned up, and live to fight another day. The parade also gives everyone else something to celebrate. If there is anything a New Orleanian loves, it is something to celebrate with a parade.
A New Orleans dumpster match is like cockfighting, but it's legal.
Everything is legal if the police don't catch you, of course, but NOPD takes an easygoing live-and-let-live approach to organized dumpster matches. Unlicensed gambling is illegal in Louisiana, but no one has ever been arrested for placing a friendly wager between friends. It's like horse racing. As long as no one gets shot, the police don't pay too much attention to dumpster matches unless they really get out of hand.
Dumpster matches rarely involve gunplay. That wouldn't be sporting. While blunt weapons are allowed, barehanded wrestling techniques learned in high school and martial arts learned from the street are the most common forms of combat.
In New Orleans, dumpster matches are a longstanding tradition, like red beans and rice on Mondays, or, praying in seven churches on Ash Wednesday.
In one dumpster match I was lucky enough to see, one lady pulled the wig off another lady and she threw the wig in the dumpster. The wig-less lady was so upset she jumped in the dumpster to get it and the other lady closed the lid. That was behind the Family Dollar on North Broad Avenue. Lucky for the loser, that dumpster is always mostly full of cardboard and plastic instead of food like the dumpster matches that happen behind restaurants.
The second of five dumpster matches I've seen behind Five Happiness, the Chinese restaurant on South Carrollton Avenue, was a doozy. The kitchen had just emptied a few five-gallon pots of spoiled lo mein in the dumpster when Jacques knocked Jamie's head on the pavement and knocked Jamie out. Into the dumpster Jamie!
The smell of all that old lo mein and the other trash woke Jamie up and he scrambled out of the dumpster covered with the stuff. He looked like a swamp monster.
If you've never been to a New Orleans dumpster match. Ask around. Maybe your Uber driver will know where to take you.
After a really good dumpster match, a good place to go is Dat Dog, either the one on Magazine Street, the one on Freret Street, or the one on Frenchman Street. It just depends on what neighborhood you're in.
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