Go behind me & take me down
Have i told this story before ? Maybe.I'll tell it again. Indulge an olde man.
When I was a young teenager, i trained to wrestle. This was meant to be at the digbeth judo centre but due to flooding we used the dancefloor at the Irish Centre. My then-mate Dave accompanied me for the first few weeks tilhe figured out he could spend his time in the bar with our mate Mike instead.
It was there i had my exam. I was paired up against glen who did double lessons so was very techncally proficient- if not creative. He'd wear white, i wore black, he got freaked out if i bled on him.
We'd only ever been taught to wrestle fof real - no one would smarten you up until you had proved yourself and were out there i guess. So it was on instinct alone that after a few failed push and pull tie ups and a clumsy attempt at a top wristlock/hammerlock, sotto voce i said "go behind me & take me down'.
That got things moving from the stalemate.
He didn't quite clock or bite and continued to work on me, rather than with me, including a bollock destroying Butcher's Lift.
He could wrestle but it turned out i could work.
He tried to turn me wuth a quarter nelson but i resisted. He tried again and i gave a little then straightened, trying to show soms defiance before rolling with it the third time.
I wasn't confident in having the power to kick out from a pin so i'd let him get 2 counts then at the last split second grab the rope or hang a foot on it to break the count and force a break.
At the end of the match, ( 2 3minute rounds IIRC ) as i rolled out the ring, we got called back in. This hadn't happened to anyone else.
The words are trainer said, IIRC, were something like "I iust wanted to say tgat was the best match j have seen by any wrestlers of that age"
Approval of the tutor - i'd pretty much peaked there.
The other little thing i did was shake hands before and after the match with my opponent. We'd not been told to do this but its a traditional thing and thanks to libraries ( remember them ? )i'd done a lot of reading up.
After that we moved to a more Japanese style of training where we were fodder for the older class, who i remember being very oily. The judo centre also had no bar so my traing was soon knocked on the head. There wasn't much opportunity in UK wrestling at that time other than holiday camps and All-Star shows or going to the continent for German touraments, unlike the burgeoning UK circuit now with a direct path to the WWE / NXT:UK
That's my wrestling tale.
When I was a young teenager, i trained to wrestle. This was meant to be at the digbeth judo centre but due to flooding we used the dancefloor at the Irish Centre. My then-mate Dave accompanied me for the first few weeks tilhe figured out he could spend his time in the bar with our mate Mike instead.
It was there i had my exam. I was paired up against glen who did double lessons so was very techncally proficient- if not creative. He'd wear white, i wore black, he got freaked out if i bled on him.
We'd only ever been taught to wrestle fof real - no one would smarten you up until you had proved yourself and were out there i guess. So it was on instinct alone that after a few failed push and pull tie ups and a clumsy attempt at a top wristlock/hammerlock, sotto voce i said "go behind me & take me down'.
That got things moving from the stalemate.
He didn't quite clock or bite and continued to work on me, rather than with me, including a bollock destroying Butcher's Lift.
He could wrestle but it turned out i could work.
He tried to turn me wuth a quarter nelson but i resisted. He tried again and i gave a little then straightened, trying to show soms defiance before rolling with it the third time.
I wasn't confident in having the power to kick out from a pin so i'd let him get 2 counts then at the last split second grab the rope or hang a foot on it to break the count and force a break.
At the end of the match, ( 2 3minute rounds IIRC ) as i rolled out the ring, we got called back in. This hadn't happened to anyone else.
The words are trainer said, IIRC, were something like "I iust wanted to say tgat was the best match j have seen by any wrestlers of that age"
Approval of the tutor - i'd pretty much peaked there.
The other little thing i did was shake hands before and after the match with my opponent. We'd not been told to do this but its a traditional thing and thanks to libraries ( remember them ? )i'd done a lot of reading up.
After that we moved to a more Japanese style of training where we were fodder for the older class, who i remember being very oily. The judo centre also had no bar so my traing was soon knocked on the head. There wasn't much opportunity in UK wrestling at that time other than holiday camps and All-Star shows or going to the continent for German touraments, unlike the burgeoning UK circuit now with a direct path to the WWE / NXT:UK
That's my wrestling tale.