Check out the body scissors beginning at around 4:00. You get a lot of the variations in a single sequence.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Another Match Remembered
As I've been tracing the history of my matches wrestled over the past 13 years, I've gotten up through January 1998 (blogged 10/2/2008). Flawed as my memory has become after all the years and miles, here's what happened when I wrestled a big strong fellow named Ray.
He was coming through the town I was living in part time, and he contacted me via email. I checked out his profile. Wow! Here's a guy who was big and strong, a guy who had apparently won some kind of award for wrestling. At first I was quite excited about this potential match with a big guy--6'3" and 265. But as I thought about his experience and his size, I wondered if this was the right thing to do for a guy who was still basically a newbie.
At some point, Ray asked for my telephone number, and I gave it to him. He called and came on with a really strong sales pitch. Now, I'm not much on salesmen, so his rapid-fire delivery seemed like another negative. I was all ready to decline to meet him when he turned up both the friendliness and the pressure.
I buckled.
On the night that he was in town, I met him at his motel. I was nervous, but he was a nice guy and now that match was sold he was less pushy. We had a good chat and cleared our space for wrestling. He changed into his singlet--the first guy I wrestled with real gear--and I into my no-fly briefs.
From the moment the bell rang, he was all over me--strong wrenching holds, twisting me this way and that, working me into whatever hold he pleased. I seemed absolutely powerless. I've got some weight and a little bit of strength, but I was no match for Ray.
Thankfully he was a good man along with being a good wrestler. He released me as soon as I submitted to this hold or that--and I submitted often, once to a head scissors so powerful I thought the top of my scalp was going to pop off. He wasn't really a teach like some others have been, but he had a level of enthusiasm for wrestling that nobody I'd met so far could match.
It was this enthusiasm of his, I think, that also allowed me to experience something I don't believe I'd yet experienced--wrestling naked. Once we'd gone several falls--all of which he won handily--he simply asked if I wanted to wrestle naked. Without giving it much thought, I said, "Sure." So, we stripped off our singlet and briefs and wrestled some more. Everything went mostly as it did before, although I got him in one halfway decent head scissors. I was able to hold it for a few seconds, but then he was out of it making me submit to who-knows-what hold of his own. Wrestling naked seemed like no big deal, and so I've never been afraid to do that since, although it hasn't come up that often.
When it was over, we had a friendly parting, and I walked away glad for the experience but in no way anxious to take Ray on again . . . ever.
He was coming through the town I was living in part time, and he contacted me via email. I checked out his profile. Wow! Here's a guy who was big and strong, a guy who had apparently won some kind of award for wrestling. At first I was quite excited about this potential match with a big guy--6'3" and 265. But as I thought about his experience and his size, I wondered if this was the right thing to do for a guy who was still basically a newbie.At some point, Ray asked for my telephone number, and I gave it to him. He called and came on with a really strong sales pitch. Now, I'm not much on salesmen, so his rapid-fire delivery seemed like another negative. I was all ready to decline to meet him when he turned up both the friendliness and the pressure.
I buckled.
On the night that he was in town, I met him at his motel. I was nervous, but he was a nice guy and now that match was sold he was less pushy. We had a good chat and cleared our space for wrestling. He changed into his singlet--the first guy I wrestled with real gear--and I into my no-fly briefs.
From the moment the bell rang, he was all over me--strong wrenching holds, twisting me this way and that, working me into whatever hold he pleased. I seemed absolutely powerless. I've got some weight and a little bit of strength, but I was no match for Ray.
Thankfully he was a good man along with being a good wrestler. He released me as soon as I submitted to this hold or that--and I submitted often, once to a head scissors so powerful I thought the top of my scalp was going to pop off. He wasn't really a teach like some others have been, but he had a level of enthusiasm for wrestling that nobody I'd met so far could match.
It was this enthusiasm of his, I think, that also allowed me to experience something I don't believe I'd yet experienced--wrestling naked. Once we'd gone several falls--all of which he won handily--he simply asked if I wanted to wrestle naked. Without giving it much thought, I said, "Sure." So, we stripped off our singlet and briefs and wrestled some more. Everything went mostly as it did before, although I got him in one halfway decent head scissors. I was able to hold it for a few seconds, but then he was out of it making me submit to who-knows-what hold of his own. Wrestling naked seemed like no big deal, and so I've never been afraid to do that since, although it hasn't come up that often.
When it was over, we had a friendly parting, and I walked away glad for the experience but in no way anxious to take Ray on again . . . ever.
Friday, May 22, 2009
An Observation
I often think that I can no more know God than I can reach up and scoop a snowball out of a jet trail.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Wrestling Drama
I don't know if this blog has any readers left. Life has been so busy of late that I haven't had time to post anything here. That is to say, "wrestling life" has had a more metaphorical meaning of late, and it has kept me on the defensive, trying to avoid a pin or a submission.
Today, however, with a lull in my "have to" work and some other future work not yet pressing, I decided to close my office door and try some writing. Oddly enough, I started looking at this one-act play I started some months back—maybe more than months. I've never written a play. I've seen several and I've read several, but I've never tried to write one. But over the years, the "scene" of to two strangers, known only to each other through the Internet, meeting in a motel room to wrestle has seemed to me one of the oddest things I've come across—and not only come across but participated in.
And in thinking back across the many such meetings I've had, I began remembering the conversations I've had with these men as much or more as the wrestling we've done. My friendly opponents and I have revealed some surprising things to each other over these years. At times I've believed that we experienced a greater intimacy with each other than I've been able to achieve with friends in the "real world." But my friend Mike (a friend and a friendly opponent) points out—and rightly so—that while I have experienced a certain level of intimacy with these men, the thoughts and secrets revealed create a broader sense of intimacy that is ultimately false. Sure, these men know things about me that nobody else knows, but the bottom line is that such intimate knowledge is, in reality, a very small part of what is to be known about me.
So, I thought I'd write a one-act play to recreate such a meeting and to play with some of the ideas generated by this tightly focused intimacy and what it might reveal about—and how it might affect—life outside that rented room. Being much more a writer of fiction, I could probably pull this off better in that genre. But I want to try writing this play simply because it's a play I'd love to see!
Today, however, with a lull in my "have to" work and some other future work not yet pressing, I decided to close my office door and try some writing. Oddly enough, I started looking at this one-act play I started some months back—maybe more than months. I've never written a play. I've seen several and I've read several, but I've never tried to write one. But over the years, the "scene" of to two strangers, known only to each other through the Internet, meeting in a motel room to wrestle has seemed to me one of the oddest things I've come across—and not only come across but participated in.
And in thinking back across the many such meetings I've had, I began remembering the conversations I've had with these men as much or more as the wrestling we've done. My friendly opponents and I have revealed some surprising things to each other over these years. At times I've believed that we experienced a greater intimacy with each other than I've been able to achieve with friends in the "real world." But my friend Mike (a friend and a friendly opponent) points out—and rightly so—that while I have experienced a certain level of intimacy with these men, the thoughts and secrets revealed create a broader sense of intimacy that is ultimately false. Sure, these men know things about me that nobody else knows, but the bottom line is that such intimate knowledge is, in reality, a very small part of what is to be known about me.
So, I thought I'd write a one-act play to recreate such a meeting and to play with some of the ideas generated by this tightly focused intimacy and what it might reveal about—and how it might affect—life outside that rented room. Being much more a writer of fiction, I could probably pull this off better in that genre. But I want to try writing this play simply because it's a play I'd love to see!
Friday, January 16, 2009
9 June 1932
Ed "Strangler" Lewis (trunks) vs. Dick Shikat (tights)
Part 2 of a 2-part match on YouTube
Thursday, January 15, 2009
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