A few days after my Indianapolis stop, I was in Sterling, Colorado, to wrestle a fellow named John. We had been in contact for a while online, but I didn’t know a lot about him. He was a good size—maybe 5’11” and maybe between 230 and 260 and maybe in his late 50s, as I am now. He’d wrestled years before, during his time in the military, and, if I’m not mistaken, he’d helped coach in one or two of the high schools in or near Sterling. So, I expected him to work me over; that is, I didn’t expect to win any falls against him.

I remember being a bit more nervous about this than other recent meetings. In our pre-match scheduling contacts, he’d repeatedly referred to our “fight” rather than to our wrestling match. I’m not a fighter, and as I’ve suggested here before, I’m not really a wrestler in any real sense either. A couple of times during our long period of communication and planning, I’d stopped contacting him because of my fear that I was possibly putting myself in a position I wouldn’t be able to handle. But he would seek me out again, and we’d pick up with planning. After a while I was able to express to him my concern about his idea of our meeting to fight. He understood and began to change his tone. Eventually he must have convinced me that his fighting language was just that—language—and that we would indeed wrestle, because here I was in Sterling, Colorado, in a phone booth (remember those?), dialing the number he’d given me.

I don’t recall if he came to meet me and led me back to his place or if he just gave me directions. Either way, I ended up at a ranch-style house on a quiet street in Sterling, and inside I found another strange setting in which to satisfy my strange attraction to wrestling.

John’s mother was, I believe, in a nearby nursing home, and he was living in her house. I stepped through the front door into the living space of an elderly woman. The couches and chairs were well stuffed; the carpet was plush and, I think, light blue. The walls held portraits of family and shelves full of knickknacks. A console piano might have stood against one wall; if one didn’t, one should have.

John led me through this living room—I remember running my hand across the back of the couch as we walked behind it—and through what had once been a wide doorway to the back yard and into a room that might have once been a back porch, now closed in as a den. Then he turned right, and we stepped into another world.

A cage of chain link fence surrounded a 10’ X 10’ wrestling mat. The gate to the interior of the circle stood open to the right. On the left, shelves on the wall were lined not with knickknacks but with pairs of wrestling shoes and wrestling boots and wrestling headgear. Singlets of various styles and colors hung on hangers hooked into the chain links on the outside of the ring. A single small window low on the outside wall lit the room.

The space was intimidating, to say the least, and also surreal, considering the front rooms that I’d passed through. John said that from time to time he hosted underground fights there. Sometimes he had trained a fighter and brought another in from somewhere in the region for a fight. Sometimes two fighters found his place and booked it as a neutral meeting space. But the space offered no room for an audience and so was all about the fight.

I’m not sure I believed him, but such a scenario was interesting to think about. Certainly I couldn’t deny the room could have hosted such an event. But now it was hosting our wrestling match.

Writing at a distance of over ten years from the event, I can’t provide much detail about the wrestling itself. Intense is the best I can do. John was a good grappler, much more formally trained in freestyle wrestling than anybody else I’ve wrestled. In spite of his commitment to fighting, he graciously agreed to wrestle my speed to light submission, which I greatly appreciated. He was still too much to handle, but between my submissions, I learned some stuff from him about amateur-style wrestling.

Eventually we finished wrestling and training and talking wrestling. We dressed and went out for a bite—Mexican, I think—at a place where the people seemed to know him well. After supper, I left him and headed for Denver.

I thought about wrestling John as I drove south and west along I-76. One thing I realized—when remembering the sound of his breathing, for example—was that he didn’t seem to have a great deal of stamina and maybe not a lot of reserve strength either. If I’d been able to avoid his pinning combinations and submission holds, neither of which I could work myself free from once he trapped me, or if I could have held out in those holds a little longer, I might have been able to wear him down and make a better showing, maybe even have gotten a submission or two from him.

I’ve lost track of John, and I don’t know if he remains among the living in Sterling or if he is with Milo of Croton in the Underworld. But I remember him and the setting in which we wrestled.

P.S. – I was supposed to have a match in Denver, with a fellow I’ll call M-CO. I called off our meeting, which I remember almost immediately regretting, as we had talked about it for a long time. I don’t remember if a conflict arose between when M-CO and I could meet and when I needed to meet other friends in the Denver area, or if I was too tired and sore in body and spirit after John finished working me over, but now, over ten years later, I still regret missing that wrestling match and not being able to remember it here. Maybe one of these days, M-CO.