1-1 at Mock Tournament (That Means I Won A Match!)
I went 1-1 at today’s mock wrestling tournament. That means I won one match and lost one. Every Friday the team has a mock wrestling tournament where they simulate an actual wrestling meet. We bring our singlets and headgear and everything like we’re going to a meet and we have a wrestling tournament against our teammates. It’s mental preperation and is used to cure competition anxiety, which I suffer from chronically.
There were three mats with score cards and everything. Coach drew up weight pools and we all had bout sheets. Before we started the tournament, coach ran us through the warmup procedure of what we would do at tournaments to warm up. We partnered up and wrestled a live match, 1-1-1 (one minute periods). I took him down with a leg trip but he had me in a wizzer so he was able to get behind me even though practically my entire body was behind him except for my shoulder. Must remember that move. I got pretty worked but your first match is always supposed to be your worse.
Everyone was getting paired up and I was anxious to find out who my first match was, I was excited all the way up until I heard who my guy was. You know that one guy on your sports team who just came out on walk-on’s looking for some self esteem, is kinda funny looking and kinda gross at the same time? The slow guy who stands too close to you when he talks (which is only when you’re by yourself) and breaths too hard when he’s tired? Every team has one, and I had to wrestle that guy. Nothing against him but this guy looks like Mario from Super Mario Brothers. Short, dumpy, with the mustache and everything. Gross.
I was wearing a singlet underneath my shirt and shorts (the one that Coach gave me from high school that he’s never getting back), but like hell I was going to wrestle this harry weirdo in tights, he might like…enjoy it or something. So I kept my “clothes” on and went out to the middle of the ring to wrestle. The whistle blew and it was live.
This stocky guy started jerking and circling around like he’s getting ready to shoot or do something. We lock up and he stands up high since I’m taller than him. For some reason, I feel a move there and I fall back and flip him over me and he goes flying halfway across the mat before he circles to his feet. A pretty useless move since it didn’t really get us anywhere and didn’t score any points, but hey it looked pretty and it was there. Anything to get the other guy moving around or psych him out a little. First period ends, I go top.
What fucked me up in the Downey vs. Warren match in high school was the fact that in the midst of all the adrenaline and screaming crowd and ref, I lined up on the wrong side. It was the right side according to anyone else because everyone else rides on their opponents left side so they can utalize their strong right side to hold them down. I’ve found that since I suck either way, it makes my life a whole lot easier if I just line up on my opponents right side (the side that they don’t drill all their escapes on). Since I use my right leg more than I use my right arm, it makes it a lot easier for my right leg to be closer to my opponents legs than having to jump all the way acrossed their body to hook the leg in like i would do from my right side. It would throw wrestlers off when they’d be so used to all of their right-handed training partner’s lining up on their left side and here I come and line up on their right side. But for some reason at that Downey/Warren match that the entire school came out to support, I lined up on the left side without realizing it. The guy stood up, reversed me, and I got pinned in front of the entire school.
I almost made the same mistake today for some reason. The liveliness of the match did something and I almost lined up on the wrong side again. Luckily I stopped and remembered and got to the other side, where the guy couldn’t stand up, I hooked my right leg and then my left, got him in a half-nelson and came over the top of him for a pin in the first 10 seconds of the second period. That was pretty cool because I got my hand raised and everything. I won!
After I got up and went off the mat, the guy I warmed up with slapped me five and said sarcastically “I knew you had him.”
At least I won’t have to wrestle that guy again. It’s not like its that big of a deal that I beat him, everyone else beat him pretty quickly. But then again so did I, so what does that say about me I guess.
My next match was, of all people, Sean, who didn’t go as hard as he could have partially because he was bummed from losing his first match. This will be Sean’s fifth year wrestling, this will be barely my third. Whistle blew and Sean and I got after it. Sean’s good, very technical and knows what he’s doing. I’m being aggressive and focusing primarily on keeping my balance while trying not to get taken down. Sean didn’t take me down immidiately either. He attempted some shots which he missed and I reshot and we both scrambled to our feet with no points awarded. I was doing a lot better than I thought I would have. Sean did a leg sweep which I thought wasn’t working because it wasn’t moving me, I thought I was safe, but his persistence paid off and he didn’t let go of the technique, and once I moved he adjusted with me and it ended up working afterall. All the times I went top went to a stalemate because Sean just tripoded up and couldn’t get me off him, yet I couldn’t move him. He rocked me on bottom though, but there was one time where I did get him to go to his back. I couldn’t keep him there though. I lost like 7-3. Pretty bad but at least I didn’t get pinned and at least I didn’t get teched. It’s good to see my cradle escape still works. Sean can go easy or treat me like a girl or do whatever he wants simply because we used to be teammates. Nothing else matters.
When we start going over bottom stuff is when I know I’ll start getting better. I suck at bottom and have a tendancy to use 50% moves that get me reversed a lot (darn it). overall this mock tournament went pretty well and even if I didn’t win much, I think I at least won some people’s respect.
I also learned today that the bigger wrestler isn’t always the better wrestler. I saw tall, skinny guys pin stocky, buff guys and I saw wrestlers with puny arms beat up guys with huge bicepts. I saw little guys get their asses kicked all match and then come back in the end to pin their guy. It really was anyone’s game, the winner was truly unpredictable this time. Proof I guess that the wrestler with the bigger arms doesn’t necisarrily equal the wrestler with the higher score.
I broke a rule though, a cardinal rule today that I feel like an idiot for. I told a guy “good job.” You don’t understand, that’s really bad when someone a lot worse than you tells you good job, especially when you got pinned. The thing is that people who are good tell people who are not as good as them “good job,” commonly winner’s tell the looser good job, but to some scrub who walks on the team and tells a wrestler good job, that’s almost insulting, and I said it to a guy. Dammit! He stopped for a second too, you could tell I broke a rule. It was just one of those awkward things that hung in the air, and I’m afraid he won’t speak to me again.
After all the light guys were done on Mat 3, the assistant coach and the KOTC fighter squared up for a match. Me and one other guy ran it and we were all just dumb freshmen. I was afraid the KOTC fighter was going to come and eat me because I gave the other guy near-fall. It was fun though. The Team Captain, Brandon, is having a party this weekend that the whole team is invited to. Not sure if I’m going to go, I don’t usually do well at social events. But I’m thinking it might not be a bad idea to go out and get to know the team, let them get to know me a little. Worse comes to worse they won’t think any better of me than they already don’t, at best they might just think I’m okay. I’ll see, I need to force myself to go out on limbs.
