I'm sitting in Starbucks--attached to Barnes & Noble--on the north side of Atlanta. Knowing this city a little bit, I'm guessing that some wrestlers are not far away from me here. Atlanta seems to have a lot of them listed in the sites. But I'm not able to meet anybody on this trip, as I'm traveling with a friend. This friend, however, would be a great one to wrestle with, and it was difficult to sleep in the same room with him last night and not say, "How 'bout we wrestle a couple of falls before we turn in?" I tried to work just the word "wrestling" into our conversation throughout the evening--not as easy as it sounds--but got no reaction. I feel certain that it's not one of his interests. Still, he'll always remain one of my dream matches.
At some point, I'll return to the chronicle of my wrestling history, but today I'll just say that I'm missing a friend that I had locally--not in Atlanta, which I'm just visiting, but at home. He contacted me through this blog a couple of years ago, and we got together several times afterward. Last winter, however, after we'd been meeting to wreste for just over a year, we decided to explore a little more eroticism in the match. I'd done this before with other wrestlers, but I'd forgotten how I felt the first time one of my matches took on a more erotic tone. It kind of freaked me out for awhile. I wish I hadn't forgotten this. Like I said, my friend and I decided to let the eroticism of wrestling play out a in this particular match. We mistakenly let it go too far. He didn't seem terribly freaked out as we finished up the match and parted ways, but that was the last time I saw him. He has responded to an email or two since hasn't done even that in several months.
I could kick myself for letting this happen. I should've known better. For years and years I'd wanted a local fried to wrestle. Not only was this guy a friend, he was just the kind of wrestler I enjoy wrestling--big and strong, interested in similar holds and types of matches, interested in similar questions about what wrestling meant to us and why.
Anyway, I wish we could get together again. When I sensed that our last match had made him uncomfortable, I hoped that he would eventually be back when he'd sorted things out a bit. I felt certain that he would, but he hasn't. Now I'm thinking that he probably won't be back.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Saturday, January 7, 2012
With my car fixed and running well, I headed west out of Ohio into Indiana. In Indianapolis, I checked into a motel with some good wrestling floor space and called my good friend Larry. He came over and we wrestled for a long time. This was probably the best match we've had. I was a little more experienced than when I'd met him previously, and he was in good health.
One thing wrestling can be to men--when it's not tensely competitive or just a prelude to sex--is play. Larry likes to play. He's a longtime fan of professional wrestling and has even done some that--as a wrestler, I think, and as a commentator. The first time we got together in Atlanta, he showed me a lot about pro wrestling holds, how they work over one another without really working over one another, how they sell the holds to the house.
So this day in Indianapolis we had some good floor space and we were playing, but mixing in a little catch-as-catch-can with our usual pro approach. Part of the play was to imagine that we could be a tag team and imagining how that would work. We also did scenarios for a singles match against one another and how that would work. Larry loves my head scissors, so we came up with a finishing hold for my persona that would be sort of a figure-four-head-scissors-sleeper hold. We played with that, incorporating it into our scenarios, and had a good time. We were playing.
At times our wrestling evolved into more of a submission style. This was something Larry hadn't done in a while, and he really seemed to enjoy it. If I'm not mistaken, after our wrestling that day, he began to move more toward a give-and-take submission style and enjoying that, as opposed to all the performing involved in pro wrestling.
So, could a head scissors be a finishing hold? I think so. In a couple of pro matches I've seen--one on TV and this one on youtube.com--I've seen it work. The TV match was sometime in the '80s, and I was traveling and watched it in a motel room. At the end of the match, one big fellow wrapped his opponent's head up in a figure-four head scissors and won the match when his victim seemingly was knocked out by the hold. And in this youtube.com clip, one wrestler uses a head scissors to win a submission out of his opponent.
As I said, Larry loves the play of wrestling, but I think he would say that nobody he knows loves it as much as our mutual friend GRIZZ. This guy wrestles and wrestles and wrestles. And wrestles. He uses the same hold used in the clip, and he calls it--usually in all caps--the QUADROPLEX. Here he is about to get a submission out of me with that hold, so I can understand how the head scissors could be used to win a match.
I'm beginning to plan another one of these wrestling tours for this year, and I'm hoping that Larry and GRIZZ will be part of the tour. I've developed a great group of friends through this love of wrestling, and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on them again!
One thing wrestling can be to men--when it's not tensely competitive or just a prelude to sex--is play. Larry likes to play. He's a longtime fan of professional wrestling and has even done some that--as a wrestler, I think, and as a commentator. The first time we got together in Atlanta, he showed me a lot about pro wrestling holds, how they work over one another without really working over one another, how they sell the holds to the house.
So this day in Indianapolis we had some good floor space and we were playing, but mixing in a little catch-as-catch-can with our usual pro approach. Part of the play was to imagine that we could be a tag team and imagining how that would work. We also did scenarios for a singles match against one another and how that would work. Larry loves my head scissors, so we came up with a finishing hold for my persona that would be sort of a figure-four-head-scissors-sleeper hold. We played with that, incorporating it into our scenarios, and had a good time. We were playing.
At times our wrestling evolved into more of a submission style. This was something Larry hadn't done in a while, and he really seemed to enjoy it. If I'm not mistaken, after our wrestling that day, he began to move more toward a give-and-take submission style and enjoying that, as opposed to all the performing involved in pro wrestling.
So, could a head scissors be a finishing hold? I think so. In a couple of pro matches I've seen--one on TV and this one on youtube.com--I've seen it work. The TV match was sometime in the '80s, and I was traveling and watched it in a motel room. At the end of the match, one big fellow wrapped his opponent's head up in a figure-four head scissors and won the match when his victim seemingly was knocked out by the hold. And in this youtube.com clip, one wrestler uses a head scissors to win a submission out of his opponent.
As I said, Larry loves the play of wrestling, but I think he would say that nobody he knows loves it as much as our mutual friend GRIZZ. This guy wrestles and wrestles and wrestles. And wrestles. He uses the same hold used in the clip, and he calls it--usually in all caps--the QUADROPLEX. Here he is about to get a submission out of me with that hold, so I can understand how the head scissors could be used to win a match.
I'm beginning to plan another one of these wrestling tours for this year, and I'm hoping that Larry and GRIZZ will be part of the tour. I've developed a great group of friends through this love of wrestling, and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on them again!
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