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Tuesday April 25 2017 - TrustRant
The notion of trust is crucial when you wrestle someone. You can trust them on various grounds: a common first indicator is to agree on a "safe" word, especially when doing submission wrestling. The plea for a safe word like "Stop", 3 taps on the mats or a random word like "Red" or "Peanut Butter" are usually a good way to start.

When I start a match, I often start it defensively to let my opponent attack first. It gives me an idea of his strength and aggressivity. It allows to me to gauge my counter-attacks based on his style. Sometimes, I would let my opponent put a submission on me first to get his reaction when I tap out. How safe is he? How fast does he respond to a submission? Does he break immediately or does he keeps on the pressure?

I've spoken previously that some holds such as the Torture Rack requires the opponent's trust, because his insecurity could cause imbalance and consequently cause injuries. I like to call this one cooperative trust. Some moves can only be pulled off if both work together and both know what they are doing.

There are other holds like a simple Headscissors or a complex Reverse Indian Deathlock that could have other significant repercussions if say, the opponent doesn't release the hold when you ask him to do so. I mean I've known this through the Surfboard, where one of my opponents took a long time to release me and he would keep on the pressure after I asked and yelled at him to stop several times. That's usually a sign that you should never wrestle him ever again.

Taking pictures and videos requires a different form of trust. When you do this, you need to agree on the terms. Is it okay to distribute, to keep only for ourselves, should faces on the images be blurred? Should someone wear a mask to preserve his identity? Usually, your opponent is trusting you a lot when you ask him for pictures, so it's your duty to make sure that he is very comfortable with the idea and that every precaution is taken to protect him.

Unfortunately, I've seen a few cases where trust is one-sided. A particular opponent would ask me if it's okay to take pictures, but he tells me that he would be the only one to keep them... meaning that he would not provide me a copy. I suppose that in the least, he is telling me this in advance so I can determine if pictures should be taken or not. But really, trust usually has to go both ways. If you don't trust someone to have a copy of the pictures taken together and for them to keep a copy, then might as well not take any pictures at all. That way, you won't end up offending your opponent.

You can still be a good sport and tell him that it's okay, if it really doesn't bother you. Most people would accept this one side deal because they don't want to alter, affect or break the wrestling relationship between the two. And I have to admit, this is myself included. I would shut up and wrestle, let them take pictures which I know I will never get a copy.... and in the long run, there is this grudge that builds up, that digs it's way through me and creates a long-term silent rift between me and my opponent. Yeah, now that I look back, I probably should have said "no". It's unfair, but I suppose this is a minor trust issue compared to the other ones I've listed above. In between having an injured shoulder for life or not having pictures, I'll take the latter.

In another separate case, I had a guy pretending to want to take pictures and when comes the moment to take some, he brushes it away or refuse to take some. In fact, he was using his desire to take pictures just as a bait and to get me to wrestle him. I'd prefer if he was direct and told me he didn't want to take any pictures in the first place and I would still have wrestled him. Be honest. That's pretty important in my opinion. If you don't want any pictures, be upfront about it, don't lie about it.

One of the worst case scenario I've seen is people promising me to send the pictures they have taken with their camera and then they never do so in the end. So yeah, this is very deceptive and it's the worst kind of way you can show your trust (or mistrust) to someone. I've heard of common answers after the facts such as "I had to delete the whole content of the memory card because I had to take family pictures and I have to show my camera to my family." Then, when you tell them that there's software to un-delete files and to recover images, and that you're actually offering them to reverse the deletion on their memory card, they actually shut up and never talk to you again because they never wanted you to have a copy of the wrestling pictures in the first place. Wow. Selfishness at its best.

Anyway, if you do happen to take pictures, be punctual and be responsive, send your opponents the entirety of the content taken together as fast as you can. It's a gesture of courtesy, a way to express your appreciation of their cooperation with you. The first thing I do when I return home from a wrestling match is to plug my memory card on my computer, put the files on the Dropbox, MS OneDrive, or Google Drive and send a link to my opponent. If I do it now, I won't forget it and I won't risk pissing off my opponent and losing a wrestler. Also, do yourself a favor, let the person who is more comfortable with information technologies deal with this. While I don't mind getting multiple e-mails and individually download my pictures, e-mail has the same security guarantee than an online private file-sharing server that will allow your opponent to download them in one shot... or without even touching his computer.

In order to save space and reduce transfer time, I often resize my images before I share them. However, this is a detail that needs to be discussed with your opponent. Some wrestlers are very picky with photo quality and they would like to have the originals even if they are 5 MB each and even if they are at a 6000 x 4000 pixels resolution. Most people I've dealt with prefer their photos at 200-300 KB with a resolution of 1200 x 800 pixels (or 800 x 600).

By the way, the bad events I've listed happened more than five years ago (some more than 10). I'm just sharing them so that you guys are more cautious about it and hopefully don't share the same bitter experience that I've felt in some of my past matches.

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