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Pics
| Tuesday April 9 2024 - KickSands, MineBuster and MainEagle | Visitors in town | |||||||||||||||
| It's 3 for the price of one! Julian_Chang (Previously known as KickSands (id 5185)), Dipper (Previously known as MineBuster (id 5188)) and MainEagle (id 1086) were visiting Montreal for the week-end. I thought I would be just a tour guide, but we ended up wrestling, I think partly because it was rainy outside. Being a party of four, we took turns triple tag-teaming each other. At one point, I was head scissored, body scissored and gut punched. I even got a very nice double-bearhug... I think my first ever, squeezed between Dipper and KickSands. 😅 The other guys weren't as cooperative as I was when they were being triple-teamed. I guess this really shows the inner jobber heart that I have while the others are showing that they can fight and persevere their way out despite being overwhelmed from all ends. I finished the night with a few light bruises, but the one that stayed the longest was a mark on my neck that actually looked like a hickey. The funny thing is that nobody gave me one.. it could have been a rear naked choke, an inadvertent squeeze, possibly some pressure point of some kind, everything gets lost in a four-way struggle and it's impossible to keep track of who did what. But who cares, right? You get to go home with a trophy! We should see it that way. 🥰 Dipper wanted to go to Arcade MTL afterwards. It's a nice bar where you pay for a one-day cover fee and you get unlimited access to arcade cabinets and gaming consoles. We ended up playing The Simpsons arcade game, we did some DDR, we also played Super Contra, Metal Slug 5, 4-player pong, Warlords (a game where each player protects their corner and deflect multiple fireballs) and we had two tournaments of Mario Kart Deluxe 8. You can tell that people drink and play because all the joysticks had buttons stuck with alcohol. 😂 I think MainEagle would have preferred to visit the city being the historical buff he is, but it was rainy anyway and he was being a good sport by going with Dipper's idea and joining us and watching us play. I did see him play Terminator 2 and Crazy Taxi as well, so I'm sure he enjoyed our outing as well. Dipper dominated the rankings though, showing us his l33t gaming skills. We are just one generation apart: I grew up with the NES and he grew with the SNES. They went to a burger joint after midnight, but it was time for me to get back. I hugged every wrestler and we parted ways. I get to keep in my memories a very sweet night of wrestling and gaming. 💖 I had a rematch about one or two weeks ago. We tumbled lightly again, trying to teach him how to avoid my scissors. I toyed with him a bit more this time around, knowing his skill level and his limits. I think he had a better time in this re-match. He was constantly worried about me not having fun previously, so I kept telling him this time that I actually really enjoy squeezing him. Some people are very squeezable and RobyC is definitely one of them. He has the perfect size for me to put my legs around his waist and I can squeeze gently to get a nice little submission. 😉 RobyC eventually stopped struggling at one point, realizing that I was keeping him down, pinned, immobilized and making fun of him and letting me enjoy being the heel once in a while. | ||||||||||||||||
Blog ID 364  | ||||||||||||||||
| Sunday August 21 2022 - Throwback Weekend | Some pictures | |||||||||||||||
| It's Throwback Sunday and we get to look back at some of my past matches. Reminiscing the wrestling ring, I am pretty happy and feel lucky that I was able to bring LumberG (id 250) at least once into the ring before it disappeared. You get to see his charming good looks 🥰 where he moans in pain in my bearhug! This was in October 2016. I wasn't able to post this picture back then, but I had his permission when I asked him last year. 😀 However, I should have asked again, because LumberG was actually surprised that I posted this pic when he ended up googling his online wrestling handle. In the end, he told me it was okay because you can't really recognize him and apparently he doesn't look like this today anymore. He actually lost some weight and got leaner. But yeah... back in 2016, the rules were stricter: I could post some pictures, but only if we couldn't see his face, plus I had to blur out his tattoos so he could not be identified. 😅
Next up, I will always remember the good time I had with The Rookie in San Francisco. I get to crush him in a bearhug with body scissors combo. These are memories that came all the way from November 2014.
But I'm not really known to dominate am I? Where's the jobber in me? How about one where I am in big trouble? Headlockmehard (id 2511) is about to win the match with a devastating head scissors! This is from Match ID 283 in March 2015.
Last, but not least, we have a nice, but strong mighty bearhug from The Crusher (id 1228). I'm cheating here, because this was quite recent.... 😅 but any reason is a good reason to put a pic with the studly Crusher. 😂 He gained a little bit of weight, for the better of course. I think he is about 275 lbs here.
I'll try to hold these throwbacks a bit more often. It also encourages me to go out and lock horns with random strangers. 🤣 | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 335 | ||||||||||||||||
| Sunday March 7 2021 - A wrestler that left wrestling... | Past matches | |||||||||||||||
| I'm still on the subject of past matches, but I do have a new match that will be coming up in a week or so. FightDure (id 1591) was a wrestler I have fought between 2011 and 2015. When I first met him, he was nearing 260-270 lbs and then took an operation about 3 years later to bring his weight back down to 200 lbs. I did told him that I did like him at his original weight, but I understood he did it for his self-confidence and for his long term health. Mind you, I still liked him when he went down. The good point for me was that he was much easier to beat at 200 lbs. Obviously, the jobber in me didn't mind being dominated by heavyweights.  We've wrestled each other maybe around ten times. It started with matches in hotel rooms in Montreal for the first two or three encounters, and then he gradually invited me to visit him in Trois-Rivieres where he was able to host me for a night. FightDure is a very nice and sweet host. He had in his house a room exclusively set up for a match. Unfortunately, about a few months after our last match in 2015, he went and found the man of his life and closed off all of his wrestling accounts on every wrestling network sites. Then I never heard of him ever again. Events like these reminds me never to take for granted the comradeship you build with the wrestling community and also to be thankful for the freedom and opportunity we have to wrestle around, while we still could without little to no fear.  All I have left from FightDure is his good sportmanship for letting me keep these memories. Originally when he was heavier, he was shy and insisted on wearing masks. When he slimmed down after his operation, he didn't mind that we see his face in the photos anymore. Can anyone say signature? I couldn't apply this when he was at 270. At 200, it was easy to close my legs and apply the pressure he so richly deserve for losing weight. You can somewhat view a clip of this (from a different angle) by checking out [  Clip ID 409. ]
It still doesn't mean that he can fight back and show his power by racking me around. You cannot deny that he is having fun with that smirk.
How about a camel clutch with full nelson and a fierce face for good measure?
Now I'm sure you are wondering, how was he before? Well, here are two pics when he was at 270 lbs: with that stature, his rack makes him look like a fierce opponent and the rack does look painful... but you know the truth behind this, without any real pressure, it's a walk in the park.
His bearhug looked equally as devastating because you can see a size difference. Mind you, I did recall that there was no difference in terms of arm pressure around my torso whether he was bigger or smaller.
If you're interested to see more of him at 270, well... our match from 2012 is still there: Match ID 128. I hope you'll enjoy, but then again, you might have already seen this match before. | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 306 | ||||||||||||||||
| Sunday May 24 2020 - Moving out.. | Blog entry | |||||||||||||||
After 20 years of living in the same place, my family has decided to move my mom out of her current house because it will be in her best interest on the long term. She is starting to become very old and pretty dependent on her children. We also have bad experience with her neighbors that we just can't seem to get along. The world isn't perfect.  I normally wouldn't agree on undertaking such a tremendous task like this during a planetary crisis, but sometimes, we need to take risks. Big moves like these are never fun, but sometimes, big risks can pay off. Going to a wrestling event is a big risk for example. I remember at my first event, I felt lonely, knew nobody, but I discovered that there were great people out there, willing to include me in their circles and help me experience and cherish the great world of wrestling and all its wonderful people. Events and memories like these inspire me to take risks elsewhere. It's a little fire that sparks and becomes big... it makes anyone want to try out all the flavor of ice cream, uh I mean wrestling, that is out there.  Again, stay safe and be patient, soon, we can all go and wrestle again. Thanks for checking out and reading my blog, I'll still continue to post minor entries on the months to come. | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 291 | ||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday November 12 2019 - Scissor Guy | Visitors in town | |||||||||||||||
| Originally from Toronto, I wrestled Scissor Guy (id 2294) four years ago, so I went and checked what I wrote and all I got was... two lines: "Iirish/Scottish lad from Toronto. Very nice and friendly guy. Still learning the ropes. We did mostly some play wrestling, clamped some holds and I showed him a couple of moves. " For some reason, I feel today that this description is insufficient to have a proper recollection of memories that dates four years ago.  What I should written is that he is a cubbish bearish guy and has some nice hair on his chest. The part about play wrestling is pretty accurate, although if I was to be a bit more specific, I'd say that the style he adopts involves slow-paced submission holds leaning towards promission, with perhaps a dish of sensuality on the side. He also has a nipple weakness with a firm, but not too firm grip and he likes to give (read, give only) light body punches. Despite his pseudonym indicating that he likes scissors, I guess he likes them... moderately. My scissors are probably too frequent and too hard to bear... so I eventually understood that I should apply less scissors and with a lot less pressure. Hey, he can give some good scissors too: he has pretty good legs, but yeah, I'd be glad to take any amount of scissors he can throw at me.  25 past opponents forward, Scissor Guy picked up some endurance, strength and experience. He has quite a few holds to try on, to counter and to attack. He even lifted me up in a fireman's carry, walked around the room and even bent down and up several times while having my weight on him. Very impressive. What is this exercise called again?  We wrestled and talked for about two hours and I was ready to give him some more scissors, but he did other matches yesterday and the day before so I guess he reached his scissor (and wrestling) quota.  I need to add him to my Toronto list the next time I get back there. | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 278 | ||||||||||||||||
| Thursday May 23 2019 - Scontca and NJW77 | Recent matches | |||||||||||||||
| Scontca (id 6823) got in touch with me a day before his visit to Montreal. I normally miss these sort of matches because it is a bit too last minute for me. I also didn't think he was serious because we did try to meet on February, April and June of 2017, but our conflicting schedules prevented us from initiating that match. However, the stars aligned themselves because we however managed to respect our engagement. Scontca tells me that we actually met 15 years ago. I went: - "Oh... I really really do not remember." I felt like a real idiot again.  He told me he was working out back then and he was disciplined, weighing around 130 lbs. As years went by, he let go of himself a bit and now he is at 170 lbs. No complains from me. He has the perfect slightly bearish shape in my honest opinion. He is definitely an avid fan of head scissors, but more importantly, figure four head scissors. Long held submission hold was the style we adopted. All things considered, I believe he is more of a jobber, but he was happy enough to show me his power by applying both head and body scissors on me. Very good leg strength! My head scissors specialty are always the rear ones, but Scontca took the opportunity to show me how to apply the figure-four head scissors properly without hurting myself. When done correctly, it is very similar to a sleeper. While we wrestled, I recognized some of the tattoos on his body. A little, yet very blurry, flashback hinted that we might have indeed met before.. but honestly, 15 years is way too long for me to get a clearer picture. I asked him what his pseudonym stands for, perhaps that could help me better unlock a few more memories. It's actually ScOntCa or "SC Ont CA". The first two letters represent a shortened form of his name, while the other two portions are indicative of his location: the province of Ontario (Ont) and the country of Canada (CA). I guess my equivalent pseudonym would be LbQueCa, although I personally find that just putting the city is probably better (LbMtlCa od LbMtl or LoserboyMTL). To this day, I still don't know his real name or his career. All I know is that he travels a lot and he seems determined to protect his privacy, probably because of his line of work. Meh... I'm fine with pseudonyms. Last thing I should note is that he can withstand pretty well leg scissors (which is very rare) and I think he enjoyed my nice good old bearhug. Sometimes, I wonder if I mix up people. I also wrestled NJW77 recently whom I've initially known as SamuraiWrestler (id 10716). I think this is Round 7 now. He comes to Montreal pretty often for business. Not that I have any complains about that. He is getting stronger or at least, he's getting skillful. I have to admit that I had a slight back pain from my last match, so his body scissor ended up being very effective on me. He also learned how to apply the leg scissors correctly with the kneecap, which is pretty devastating. I probably unleashed a big amount of decibels each time I'm on the receiving end... One thing for sure, he's as ticklish as ever. He did warn me not to touch his armpits and kissing his bicep actually tickles him too, but then again, he blames it on the current state of my beard. | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 246 | ||||||||||||||||
| Sunday May 19 2019 - Preferences | Passion for wrestling | |||||||||||||||
| In my travels, I've met people who use wrestling to be able to satisfy a specific condition or fantasy that they really love. I call it "preferences", just to make it look nicer than "fetish" or "fantasy". A friend once told me that a hardcore "fetish" is really a condition that you MUST fulfill in order to come. However, I think that most people are lighter on their requirements and they are flexible: they will usually still gain pleasure through variants or other means. I'm just listing some of these preferences now to recall some of my older memories. There's plenty more in this list, but I'll stick with a couple few for now. • Head Scissor Lovers: Perhaps this is the most common preference I've seen in many wrestlers. Some of my opponents only want to be held for a long period of time. Squeezing them tightly until they tap, or remain within the boundaries and limits of submission. Examples of wrestlers having this preference is HeadSqueezeKing (id 5553) [ Entries ], HeadlockMeHard (id 2511) [ Blog ], Headscissorsguy (id 9989), Kevin_Patrick [ Event ] and SubJobber (id 713) [ Pic ]. • Body Scissor Lovers: I could classify myself in this category. I absolutely adore scissors, but then again, I love racks, bearhugs and full nelsons with body scissors. EvilDark (id 1077) falls into this category, but often enough, you have variants where people prefer the side body scissors. • Gut Puncher and Gut Punchees: Pretty self explanatory. Marty (id 6169) [ Clip ] goes into this bucket, as well as AKRob. Despite the clips, I think both Marty and AKRob are more receivers than givers of gut punches. • Sleeper Lover: I get a lot of people who wants me to sleeper them until they are KO and I always them that I'll never do such a thing. When dealing with the extremists in this category, I make sure to release much sooner than anticipated. The last thing I want is someone to fall unconscious while I have this applied. For some reasons, I don't have any examples of wrestlers that come to mind right now... I'll try to think about it and re-edit this later. • Shoulder Riders: While this is not a wrestling hold per say, many look up to wrestling as a great way to be lifted and to be carried around. Shoulder rides are often used in tag team matches as well where one wrestler puts his opponent on his shoulder while the tag team partner jumps from the third rope and performs a lariat. Obviously, you don't see this often in our community, because we try to play safe and we don't have the training to execute such a maneuver. Anyhow, known shoulder lifters are Transporteur (id 5373) and John (anonymized)• Face Sitters: I'd admit this is the hardest preference for me to fulfill. I've never been really strong on breath control. Some pains are fun, but this is a sort of pain or restriction that is pretty uncomfortable... at least for me. I don't mind sitting on someone's face, but to have someone butt on my face is... something else. You can't please everyone, right? Nevertheless, most of the preferences I've listed here are easy to fulfill: wrestling is often an excuse to reach that desire. But you know what? There's nothing wrong with that. Just like a chemical or electric reaction triggered my love for bearhugs while watching wrestling on TV, I find it that the same applies to many wrestlers that I've fought. One wrestler would watch a WWE wrestler apply the face sitter and that's how he got his fondness for this hold. Another one watched a cartoon of a body scissor being applied and that was his catalyst. | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 244 | ||||||||||||||||
| Sunday February 17 2019 - The Hulk | Memories | |||||||||||||||
| Sometimes, there's a memory that's hidden deep within your thoughts that would just resurface now and then. While I was in the subway, something like that came back to me: I remember a match I had about 7 years ago with a fellow under the pseudonym JB. His style was a bit different, but then again, we all have differen styles or tastes. I think he was younger than I was. He was bigger, taller than me and I remembered he was definitely hairy. He had this scenario: He would be this mean bad guy that would use his bearhug against me. However, the bearhug would give me power. The more he would bearhug me, the angrier I would become. I would be so angry that I would become The Hulk, act like him and hulk him out of the bearhug, taking revenge by bearhugging him in return. However, if he reached and grabbed... uh... my groin, I would lose my powers and I would turn back to a powerless human. Then he'd proceed to bearhug me again and the great circle of The Hulk would loop forever. He shared me this idea he kept pushing over several months. When we finally met, he was too shy to enact the scenario. Still, doing the effort to meet it's one big step out of that cocoon. One person's scenario, style, or preference may look weird or strange for one, but to me, each of those differences are a great way to explore. I'm not unfamiliar to superhero wrestling and yeah, you may think I'm weird, but I do enjoy that element of super weakness or super strength as you may have seen in some of my wrestling scenarios. I try to be open as much as I can because many scenarios are easy enough to realize and yet, so many people hide them in shame, while there is nothing to be ashamed about. Just for fun, I tried sending him an e-mail because I think it would be fun to retry this, but to no surprise, the e-mail has been deleted due to inactivity. Life is short. Explore your fantasies or at least, share them with someone else. | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 232 | ||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday December 11 2018 - Boston | Recent matches | |||||||||||||||
| Before leaving for Boston, I met on Thursday Ben (id 4427) again for a rematch. The hotel room we got was not ideal. They gave us two double beds in a cramped room. Technically I could put the bases up on the wall and the mattresses on the floor like I always do, but we weren't sure if the bases were movable and Ben didn't want to go through all the hassle, so we opted for wrestling on the elevated bed instead. We obviously had to be careful and it made me realized that it's not as fun. It's like living in constant fear that you'll fall in a pit. Anyhow, Ben took a rather more aggressive stance and I've toned myself down a bit to give him a chance. You know the saying that a beginner should wrestle with an experienced wrestler to avoid injury? I noticed that when Ben started doing moves on me that could have been dangerous if I didn't had any prior training defending myself. Lucky for me, I resisted some of the holds or made it very difficult for him to pull it off. I suppose I should let him know that some of his moves were a tad dangerous, but I wanted him to be a feel free trying to pull out as many holds as he can to practice, because it's a good way to learn if someone can shield or block them. I think next time, what I can do is pause him in a give and take session and show him the proper way to do a given move. Nevertheless, we had a good amount of fun otherwise. Our session was a bit longer and it was nice to see that he built up more stamina. I chose the TownePlace Suites near the Logan Airport/Chelsea in Boston as my location. I felt the prices were reasonable for the given space and my friend that told me that the prices are indeed better than in downtown Boston. However, being at the outskirts of the airport and in East Boston, the area around the hotel isn't very nice: It's full of petrochemical buildings and industrial factories, but who cares? I didn't come anyway to explore the area. I just need a good amount of space to wrestle. I met with Zeev (or Romeo (id 3164) on bearhugger) on Friday after my arrival to Boston. I was still caught in a mild dizzy spell from my flight, butI took an Uber to Lynn anyway because Zeev have wrestling mats available. Zeev is quite a nice and handsome guy. When we locked horns, I knew I probably could manhandle him easily. He did tell me to tone it down though because he prefers to have the advantage. I was glad to agree because of my jobber heart. We did submission with promission. I told him that he could be harsher on his holds on me and to hurt me a bit more, but it was a bit of concern for him, so I then told him to take it easy and employ any intensity that he prefers. Zeev eventually found a handful weaknesses on me and was able to pin me down and make me tap a couple of times. He had this chicken wing move while he is on top of me when I'm facing down: you are technically screwed. You just can't do anything. On the other hand, I didn't think I could scissor him, but that worked well. He's very squeezable, but I understood that he wants the pressure more on the moderate side. Not a problem. We hugged it out a bit more, I locked him down a couple of times, watching his eyes (and beard) and smiling at him as he struggles. It was an absolute blast wrestling him. Nip play was not listed on his profile, but I understood it has a little bit of effect on him. I was going to get back to my hotel afterwards, but Zeev invited me out to a delicious Mexican restaurant. After our meal, we had to digest a bit. He suggested a bit of Zulu (Chicago Fire, The Conners) to digest and he invited me to spend the night with him. I actually slept better than I thought, but he felt I was restless. The next morning, I returned to my hotel and slept further in preparation for my next matches. All in all, I connected very well with Zeev. When I return to Boston, I'll put more time aside for him so I don't have to hurry back. Zeev's schedule is also very busy and he often travels for work, so I was quite lucky to get some time with him. He is originally from Mexico. Zeev told me that cameras are distracting so I respected his request and left my camera at home. Nothing though will remove the fond memories I had in my match with him. Steve came over on Saturday morning. That's the Steve I met during the Clash twice and that doesn't any profiles on any wrestling personals, networks or sites. Steve is definitely a bigger jobber than I am. He doesn't need to do anything to get the Biggest Jobber award a the Clash. He started leading the match just like any great jobber would get an early advantage, and I would later on turn the tables around. Still, while I had him in a headlock, I had to ask to make sure:"So, should I be this agressive heel that ignores even your face rakes and your futile attempts to escape and fight back? Or should I be this nice and tender jobber that just follows your lead, getting crushed and punished in every of your moves? You get to decide, Steve. Or maybe you just want to stay down so I can manhandle you. To me, that looks exactly like what you want."It ended up being some good back and forth. He's very easy for me to lift in a bearhug, a rack, a knee backbreaker. On the other hand, Steve is well-versed with his pro moves, keeping me in check and in control whenever he felt like it. I tend to stick to pro fantasy with no pressure at all when I'm with him, but he didn't hesitate to tell me to put a medium-size amount of pressure. Steve was also nice to comment the match, doing a double role of being both the wrestler and the announcer in our match. While he held me down in one of his submission holds, he'd say something along the lines: - "Oh no! Loserboy is in trouble! Can he take it? Or will he submit?" Then our match got a little bit more intense and charged afterwards, but Steve told me to resume it on my blog as such: "It was a nice match." I also learned from him the experience that led him to remove his online profiles and that he once held a public match. He's much braver than I am for sure. Before he left, he asked me if I would come to the Clash next year. I usually do every other year and since I've been to the Clash in 2018, I would probably skip 2019. He announced that 2019 may be his last year at the Clash. He asked if the Wrestlefest was an option and I replied that my family has decided to go for a family trip in the South at the same time the Wrestlefest in NYC is being held. 2019 may be calmer for me since I did most of my wrestling trips this year already.Steve commented that he's a bit of a gear collector and that he needs to get rid of some of his speedos because their colors are fading away. I panicked: - "Hey! I'm also a gear w****. Don't throw them away! Give them to me!" As such, Steve kindly gave me two speedos.   I think both speedos are showing too much of my junk, but then again, that's the definition of speedos... Steve actually wanted us to use the BG East ring while we are in Boston since that is where the company holds their headquarters and films many of their matches. However, Steve did the preliminary follow-ups and the ring was not available for renting. He was a good sport to wrestle me anyway, because I do recall him telling me that he no longer wrestles in a hotel room. Once you tumble in a spacious and formidable ring, it's very hard to go back to tiny and crampy hotel rooms. No wonder why the custom officer at the Vermont border asked me if I ever break anything. MCIC was an unscheduled match between 3 pm and 6 pm. This was such a last minute and short interval to work with that all the wrestlers I tried to reach out for a match declined because of the limited time availability. So, I simply ended up listing "Boston" as my location for December 8 in Meetfighters and luckily, MCIC pinged me and asked if he can come. He always carry his gym bag in his car and had gym shorts and compression shorts with him, so he was ready to tumble on short notice. He is a mix of Italian/Syrian/Irish/English/French, which is a very nice mix. He considers himself as a mutt, but I was thinking in my head: "Wow, mutts are handsome." He's lighter than me, weighing 150 lbs (I'm leaning towards 160 lbs), but he is one tough cookie! He did races such as Tough Mudder, Spartans Race. It builds up his endurance by ten fold! MCIC and I went into full all-out submission. It's been quite a long while I didn't do competitive submission on this level. He knew what he was doing and you can feel he is very experienced. Don't ever let your guard down against MCIC because he won't hesitate to use his arms to make you submit. He went for that armbar you see in MMA matches, but I wouldn't let him, but he had me with ease in a reverse headlock, and man, IT HURTS! I could catch him in a leg lock, a body scissors and eventually a leg scissors that could make him tap... BUT his body and his style works like some sort of self-learning defense system. The more I would lock on him these holds, the more he'd be able to defend himself from them. Eventually, he could counter my leg locks by hardening his legs and power me out easily. He learned to harden his body to resist my body scissors and nothing left was working on him anymore... except for that illegal leg scissors on his leg with my kneecaps. My scissors were weakening and he was getting stronger by the minute. I later learned that he was toning it down for me. He even purposely let me put that leg lock so that he can show that he can now power out of it and also because he liked the feeling of my leg locking his leg. That does mean that the real MCIC is much more powerful than what I had encountered. He was curious and wanted me to try something else. "What pro moves do you like to apply?", he asked. I gladly applied the rack, the full nelson body scissors, the reverse Indian Deathlock, the full nelson camel clutch. Despite being full sub, he did some pro as a young kid, but deep his heart, as he grew and fought opponents, full out sub was his main and favorite style. MCIC actually countered the rack once I put him down. He immediately locked on me a sleeper, a choke.. actually he does that often when we stand up to take a break. Very sneaky, but I love it. An hour passed and I got winded out very fast, but he was just getting started! He would pin me down, look at me with a very big grin, occasionally letting me put a body scissors on him. I'd squeeze him with all my might, and he would still be there with a big grin, able to resist it without any problems and then he'd look straight into my eyes and say: - "Nope. Doesn't work anymore. Nice try though". His cockiness made me furious, but also made him more charming in our particular fight. Hairy chest, nice salt and pepper beard, MCIC is so dreamy for me. He matches very closely my wrestling style. He had this fierce look and smile when he wrestles you and knows that he has the advantage or knows that he's going to win. It's as if he was saying through his looks: "You just wanna make me tap in that scissors of yours, but you can't. You don't have the strength for it anymore. I'm smiling because I can take it. Better save your energy for I will put you in holds that will make you squeal and regret your actions." We were closely even matched at the beginning, but I ran out of stamina very quickly and he easily dominated me afterwards. I was sweating crazy while he was chill. Don't let size ever fool you, this smaller guy was able to beat my a**. Another dangerous move of his was that frontal arm choke simply by pushing his arm against my neck, but he'll do it moderately. I'm a bit ashamed to say it, but when he applied this while he was on top of me and smiling at me, I actually got a hard on... Anyway, overall: MCIC has a very effective wrestling style that is hard to defend. His neck choke from behind and his sleepers are equally strong weaponry in his arsenal. Talented and experienced, remarkable and unstoppable, infinite stamina and deadly arms all makes him one of the toughest and fiercest opponent I have ever faced. Yet, he is a very nice and sweet guy that will look out after you. Moderated and controlled aggressiveness makes MCIC a very safe and fun wrestler to tangle with. I quickly asked him before he was ready to leave if I could take a picture with him. A little selfie.  That beard... it really REALLY makes me melt. He kindly allowed me to take a few shots and then I later realize I possibly could have asked him to let me record the match, but again, I was a bit too shy to ask him. I'll try it next time, because I definitely want to wrestle him again. I hoisted him in a big nice goodbye bearhug and he did the same: but he lifted me at the legs level and lost balance. We both fell backwards, but luckily, no one was injured. - "I guess I got carried away", he laughed as he stood back up from the fall. After he left, I slapped myself on the forehead because I still don't know what the acronym MCIC stands for today. However, we kept in touch through MeetFighters and he eventually told me that his online handle represents a truncated version of his name. My last match of the day was with Tonyboy. His style was more into the sensual area of wrestling with grabs and all, and some cuddles, but we wrestled a bit of promission and he'd let me make his life difficult by putting him in an arm scissors where I could play with him. His bearhug is quite strong. He is definitely a powerhouse and can easily break holds. Body scissors have no effect on him because I couldn't close them. Leg locks work up to a certain extent and leg scissors are still effective. At this point of the night, the recurring pain on my right shoulder has started coming back, so we took it lightly. Too much wrestling. Because of this, I had forgotten to put him in either a rack or fireman's carry. I was very thankful though that Tonyboy made it a relaxing night by easing up on the wrestling. We also watched together a YouTube video with Ivan Putski bearhugging Superstar Billy Graham. It's one of his favorite matches of all time. We commented on the part where Graham just raises his arms, reaching for his head to express the pain of the bearhug, but not without flexing his muscles. I offered Tonyboy to stay the night, but he had to leave after two hours. We had some good fun nonetheless. I'm getting old.. three matches in one day is no longer something I can do. I'm so sore and so tired. Sunday was a day reserved for Wrestle123. He came two months ago to Montreal and I've decided to return the favor by visiting him in Boston. He's the main reason of this trip and I simply extended it in order to meet additional wrestlers. Wrestle123 picked me up at my hotel and drove an hour north of Boston to his place in Derry, New Hampshire. It's a nice small town of 30,000-40,000 people. He has a big house where he has a huge space, wrestling mats and a gym. Apparently, a couple of Wrestle 4 Hire matches were filmed in his basement. Since we didn't take any pictures last time he was in Montreal, he strapped on a nice blue speedos, kneepads and boots so we could take some good ones in his basement. Apparently, he always wrestles in singlet, but since I told him I do like his hairy chest, he kindly wore a speedo just for me. We had three cameras set up, my Nikon, my Panasonic and Wrestle123's Sony. The Nikon was switched between videos and 1/2 second interval photos while the other two were set to videos. I managed to put a fireman's carry on Wrestle123 who told me that he was around 297 lbs, down from 350. I was however unable to put a proper rack, I felt my shoulder had not recovered and couldn't take any more weight or damage. He did his research on leg scissors and found a way to be immune to them. Full nelson body scissors works on him, but with only with the extra power given to me with wrestling boots, otherwise, I would not stand a chance. I always think that my boots have the following properties if a futuristic science fiction device could secretly read the benefits, bonuses and attributes a wrestling gear can give to a wrestler. I was worried for Wrestle123 because he seemed winded, so we took a few breaks in between our shots. Speaking of shots, here's my typical signature on him:
Being so tall, I asked him if he can pick me up in a bearhug... which he did.
When I left it for Wrestle123 to decide, he came up with this fierce head scissors.
And this non-standardized hold that I rarely see people apply on me. It's painful, but comfortable at the same time. I know.. I am full of contradictions.
We took it easy the rest of the time. Wrestle123 showed me an interested YouTube clip with Simon Sinek about Millenials. We also watched a movie called "Searching" featuring John Cho and "Airplane!" featuring Leslie Nielsen. His roommate Jordan joined us for supper at T-Bone. We then watched afterwards a TV series about R&B history and a few trailers on Kingdom Hearts 3. Jordan was pretty excited about it. The next morning, I was lucky to wrestle Jordan. This 22 years old kid has a ton of wrestling experience. He is also respectful and skillful, and is way WAY above my level. He practiced wrestling way back in high school and along the way, he also picked up and tried all the different types of wrestling you can name. In case you wonder, I don't think he has any listed wrestling profiles on any of the major networks. He doesn't need any to get or have matches in my opinion. For our match, he displayed on to a screen a timer. I think it was 3 sets of 2 or 3 minutes round with a one minute break between each match. - "This is how you need to it when you wrestle someone that's faster and bigger than you.", he said. We started standing up and he understood as I locked up that I needed to be down. As such, the following sets, he started by kneeling down to accommodate me. As I locked on to him, I did feel that he was going easy on me. This was still definitely a full all-out submission match anyway, at least for me. I can't really speak for him. I think I was a bit easy for him. I was already worn out after round 1. I knew there was nothing I can do, none of my leg work would cut it. Starting round 2, I was only defending myself, trying to delay a submission. In round 3, I struggled and there were many times he could have made me tap, but he was very kind with me and never applied more than necessary and never applied his holds to the point I needed to tap. He started going after my legs to immobilize them and to make me submit. When the screen rang the last round, we shook hands and said it was a good match. I did wish we would wrestle longer, but we both knew that if we did, he would have overpowered me easily, so it was a nice and respectful way for him to end it without a humiliating defeat for me. I had to be sure and I asked him after our match if he went easy on me. He replied that he always use the first round for "Data Collection", to get a pulse of his opponent, know his style and determine in the rest time between the rounds what moves he needs to do. I'm sure if this beast went all out with me, he would have crushed me like a bug. - "Thank you for giving me the time of the day to wrestle me", I said at the end of our match. Jordan is a very busy guy. Our match was at 7 am, but he woke up before for training and then he had to head to work at 8 am. Jordan's dream is to become a wrestling coach and he definitely has the talent and the making for it. He is definitely a real and passionate wrestler, not to mention incredibly strong and incredibly friendly. Probably one of the toughest, but also one of the nicest opponents I have faced. Wrestle123 kindly gave me a lift back to the Boston Logan International Airport. On the way, Wrestle123 spoke to me a bit about developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Sophia robot that can answer philosophical questions and one day become cognitive and conscious. I was a bit wary about it because I was thinking that somebody could just simply type out the answers behind her programming, but Wrestle123 believes that we have already progressed very far in AI. I asked him if he was worried about it at all: I've heard that in a few decades, AI would do everything better than humans. This would mean each of us losing our jobs, especially those working in Information Technologies. In the contrary, Wrestle123 is very excited about the advancements in AI. My conversations with Wrestle123 are quite interesting. He is very knowledgeable, stays up to date with the current trends and developments of tech, analyzes things in a very meticulous and insightful style. Wrestle123 is full of wisdom: in both wrestling and in life. After an hour, Wrestle123 dropped me off at the International Terminal. I held his hand firmly and thanked him for everything. I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to hug him at an airport. My flight got delayed by one hour. As we approached Montreal around 5 PM, I took this shot from the window of the plane (cell phone shot, by the way, so mediocre quality):  The purple lights on the bridge is a project that was built last year to illuminate it for Montreal's 375th anniversary. The green towers to the left are the Desjardins centers that are partially hidden behind the thin layer of clouds are landmarks of my childhood. Those towers also somewhat define the downtown area as you will be able to identify the other skyscrapers to the left of it. If you click on it, you'll get a better view. Anyhow, it was nice to see Montreal from this angle. Yet, in some way, this nostalgic view kinda reminded me that my time in Boston was too short. Wrestle123 suggested that I should stay longer at his place the next time I come back. If I ever want to be able to reach the many wrestlers that are in the area, something tells me that I need a minimum of a week in Boston followed by a week-end at Wrestle123's place. Time will tell.  I know, I should have taken a shot from Boston instead. Heck, I didn't even go to the downtown core! It didn't really matter since I already did a tour about a decade ago, so it was something I was happy to pass anyway. Boston wrestlers are pretty nice: I scheduled four matches, and I received a total of six because of two unscheduled last-minute or referral matches. | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 214 | ||||||||||||||||
| Thursday November 22 2018 - WatlerG | Recent matches | |||||||||||||||
| WalterG (id 2846) was in town just before my trip to Burlington. He's an avid gutpuncher and gutpunchee... In fact, he can handle those way more than I do. I met him for two consecutive days and my belly felt sore after day one. His rock hard abs could take much more punishment, even on day two. That's usually what happens when you are passionate on a specific hold. He likes to be gutpunched, and I like to be scissored. We both have great endurance... in our own respective fields. I asked him to be nice with both his gut punches and my nipples, because they were getting sensitive. He was happy to oblige, but I was mean in return. I kept punishing him in leg locks and body scissors, which he can't take as much and as many as gut punches, obviously. My multimedia collection tells me that our first encounter dates back in June 2013, followed by another meet in January 2014 where he also met Marty (id 6169). WalterG reminded me that I was his first wrestling match ever when he met me in 2013. He wasn't sure about wrestling and my match with him would help him define whether or not it was something he would pursue. Luckily, he enjoyed the experience and he continued to travel to meet many wrestlers. His return today showed to me that he has learned a lot since and has acquired so much skill and endurance. I felt a bit of shame not remembering that I was his first match, but very touched and honored at the same time that he'd pick me. That's a lot of pressure when you're the deciding factor: it's as if you're the one that's going to determine if you're going to scar someone for life, or make him embrace and love the sport/hobby. This is why this journal or this blog is important for me: it's useful to have an archive to look back. Something that helps me reconstruct and recall memories from my past matches. More often than not, wrestlers send me a message and I feel very silly not remembering the details of my previous encounters with them. Of course, since Walter's first match with me is in 2013 and I did not start this personal blog separate from the main site since 2015, it's harder for me to track and recollect memories, but now, I have a blip on the radar to remind me in the years to come when I will be typing his name in the search bar to bring up this entry. Anyhow, WalterG went through an online system to rent a nice and cozy apartment in the heart of downtown that gave sufficient space for wrestling. We were however wary about our surroundings because the walls indicated that the apartment adjacent to ours could probably hear us. Regardless, we traded a couple of blows and bearhugs. We locked horns in quite a few competitive bouts. He had the upper hand manipulating arms while I dug up a few dirty tricks or two with my legs. He even gave me some great food to re-energize. After two consecutive days of three hour sessions followed by a friendly nap, I gave him a big hug and we parted ways. I thanked him for traveling from Buenos Aires, Argentina all the way up to Montreal, Canada in a cold winter week at -17° Celsius on a 5-way connection flight, touching multiple cities and airports just to get here. I just wish there were more wrestlers that would understand and acknowledge all that he's been through to make it to Canada and that they would make some time to be with him. Spending time with wrestlers is a way to recognize all the effort they went through to have a match with you. | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 209 | ||||||||||||||||
| Wednesday June 6 2018 - Clash XXII: Atlanta Clash of the Titans 2018 | Wrestling event | |||||||||||||||
| My 3rd year at the Clash of the Titans has come to an end. Another year, another memorable event where I met great wrestlers and made new friends. I mentioned about a week or two ago that I would take it easy at the Clash. Truth be told, it actually went the opposite way. Thursday May 31 2018 Fun4Us (id 8822) was my designated driver this time around. I was quite spoiled. I reduced my role to a co-pilot or navigator holding my phone in GPS mode to guide us between our hotel in Mableton to the event's venue in Austell, which are suburbs or counties west of Atlanta. Both areas are about a half hour drive from Atlanta when there's no traffic.  We arrived at the venue at around 8 pm and the ring was already set up. The first people I see are the commissioner Big Joe, Harley, Kevin_Patrick, TampaChaser (id 11434). I immediately gave them all a big hug. Even though I barely interacted with Kevin_Patrick and TampaChaser two years ago, we've talked as if we were lost buddies and suddenly found our way back. We've instantly recognized each other and I'm sure we've both wondered and told ourselves why we didn't spend more time to get to know each other two years ago. Luckily, I won't be repeating the same mistake: I'll be catching up with TampaChaser later on. LatinJock4_U, Steve, BigJohn and Viper (known at the event as Armani) were also around that evening. JackBouvier and Destroyer (id 2190) joined in an hour or two later. Shawty (id 520) accompanied us and took on the mats for a few sub matches. He preferred staying on the sidelines, so he avoided the ring because he wasn't ready for it yet. Fun4Us, Kevin_Patrick, TampaChaser, LatinJock4_U and Viper climbed onto the ring and started doing a round-robin tag match. I watched them in awe wrestle each other off for a good half hour and then took a deep breath: I wanted some of the action so I've decided to join in. Well.... little did I know that I became the jobber to pick on. That's what happens when you're small. The guys wouldn't let me tag out and they were just using me as a practice dummy. No, I'm not complaining. On the contrary, it was very exciting. According to Fun4Us, it allowed the wrestlers to break glass and go all out. When things calmed down a little bit, I was lucky enough to get some private time with LatinJock4_U. We tossed each other around and I was able to lift him up in a rack. He instantly turned to me and asked me how to perform this move. It didn't take him long: he learned it instantly and easily grabbed and picked me up as if I was a light little feather. Previously, I thought of LatinJock4_U as a very intimidating wrestler. I was looking at the pics before meeting him and I was telling myself that this is a guy that probably would not wrestle me. I was obviously wrong as LatinJock4_U is probably the nicest and most open wrestler at the event. This guy is really incredible. He is absolutely humble, well-versed in pro, always willing to learn and has an exceptional personality. I would even say his smile brightens up the warehouse. I also got some time with Steve. Now this guy is hard to find because he doesn't believe in online profiles, so he is not registered anywhere. He goes mostly under the pseudonym Jet Fan. Steve did sub wrestling in his previous years, but switched entirely to pro after an injury. He likes almost every hold in pro and loves to be the jobber. Ironically, for my match against him, I turned out to be the jobber. That's also because I have trouble chaining my moves as a heel and Steve honestly goes from one move to another without even breaking a sweat. His arsenal is infinite. He really knows what to do to get the momentum going in a match. I believe I also managed to squeeze a bit of time with both JackBouvier and The Punisher (also known as The Destroyer or The Crippler). Both of them are also great heel: all I had to do was follow their lead. Near the end of the evening, I spent some time showing TampaChaser (id 11434) how to apply the torture rack. He was really eager to master this hold. Unfortunately, I turned out to be a very bad teacher because my instructions led him to hurt his shoulders. This hold is easier said than done and performing it can be very dangerous. TampaChaser has a big shoulder frame and the way he positions his arms may have been a bit awkward for the rack. We've told ourselves we need to repeat and practice this somewhat complicated and convoluted maneuver another day. I eventually switched gear to have my first sub match. Lucky me, I was up against Viper (Armani). I later learned that this guy is a black belt, Muay Thai fighter. He is probably one of the toughest sub wrestler I have ever faced. To say that Armani kicked my ass is a big understatement. This guy is so far ahead, he is such a competent and formidable opponent that I don't have the slightest chances of winning against him. Armani didn't hesitate to play a few pranks by toying around with me. I really enjoyed my time with him, but I eventually stopped the match a bit prematurely in order to conserve my stamina. I know I've always said not to look back and not to have regrets, but I really would have love to spend more time wrestling him. A very charismatic, entertaining, dauntless and sociable guy. If you want to become a better sub wrestler, make sure you wrestle him. You can learn a lot from this expert submission wrestler! Fun4Us, Shawty and I stayed at the warehouse until Harley and Joe kicked us out at 11 pm. It seems that Thursdays has become the best day to wrestle people at the Clash. Why? Well, because everybody is at their top notch shape, they are ready for action and no one has injuries. Friday June 1st 2018 The following day, I did the mistake of starting the day with sub matches. I had 3 sub matches and they've drained me drastically. I quickly became significantly tired for the remainder of the day. Then again, had I scheduled my sub matches in the afternoon or evening, I would probably have collapsed. I started my sub matches with Wildwoolly (id 4258), an opponent that I have completely underestimated. In fact, all sub wrestlers at the Clash are usually all very good. WildWoolly had a defensive stance, but he knows how to chain up his moves and take advantage of mistakes you make in order to make you tap. Very talented and very nice guy off the mats. Next up, I had a re-match with Scottilla (id 3020) whom I have wrestled twice previously at the Clash and maybe another two times at the Wrestlefest. This fifth time, he still beats me pretty easily. Hey, he was an Olympic wrestler, I've never had a chance anyway... His skills, wisdom and his wrestling experience way surpasses mine.I also had a short sub match with LatinJock4_U where I tried showing him my ankle lock. It was probably the only match I could get someone to tap, but then again, this was the first time he was doing sub, so it was quite unfair for me to go full power on him. LatinJock4_U got pretty excited and he suddenly had this strong urge to learn more about submission wrestling. This guy has so much energy and is so passionate about trying new things to explore. A really awesome guy all around. Later in the afternoon, Timnbama showed up and he immediately took charge of the pro tournament. That also meant that he sacrificed his wrestling time to manage the matches and give instructions to each wrestler part of the tournament. Believe me, this is no easy task. This wasn't planned either. Joe had to step out for the remainder of the event and Harley initially panicked, having to manage the tournaments all by himself. Timnbama sided with Harley and gave him all the help he needed. This is why in my book, Timnbama has a wonderful and marvelous heart. Traveling all the way to help out Joe and Harley. I initially registered for the Pro Tag Team Tournament with Fun4Us, but later during the day, I was surprised to see the return of J. I wrestled with J two years ago, also at the Clash. We were in a handicap match: three of us against the Mighty Mongo. This year, J asked me if I can be his tag team partner and Fun4Us kindly freed his spot. J and I went on the ring to do a practice match and wow... J pulled off moves that I could never have pulled off. He went from ropes to ropes, bouncing from one to another to do stunts and maneuvers that require a lot of flexibility. Seeing him work out the moves was really mind blowing. J chose our tag team name: it was "Big Things Come"... from the full expression "Big Things Come in Small Packages". He explained to me that it does 3 stuff: - We are small, but we do big things - It has an innuendo - I can't recall the third one... I know, I'm terrible.  Our first official tag team match was against Chip (id 1809) and Kevin_Patrick. J really had this under control and was able to lead the match. Kevin and Chip eventually managed to turn around the tables. I played a little bit of the bad guy by pulling out Kevin_Patrick's boot on one of the pins he had on J. Ultimately, J gave out the finishing hold that would put Kevin and Chip's tournament journey to an end and move both of us in Round 2. I actually wanted to lose, but Timnbama had other plans set aside for us: he instructed us to win against them. The heat was starting to have its impact. The Clash venue doesn't have an AC system and they leave the door of the warehouse wide open to circulate fresh air, but in the afternoon, the air can be warm enough to drench every wrestler in their sweat. Fun4Us and I eventually returned to the hotel to get an hour or two of rest in cool AC before eventually coming back to the venue. This is where I was very happy that he cranked the AC to the max. After several hours of heat, it feels heavenly to return to a fridge.  When we got back to Clash, the pro tournament preliminary matches were over for the day. We were able to force Harley on to the ring. Timnbama also climbed up to have his share of the fun. You should see the pounding that Harley received. It was a way for all wrestlers to thank him for holding the Clash event. I think he was quadruple-teamed. TampaChaser (id 11434) and I locked up on the sub mats, trading scissors and such. I did not remove my pro boots so he managed to lock in a scissor counter by putting his boots on mine. Ow. Now I can feel the pain that I usually make the others feel. Saturday June 2nd 2018 Many of the wrestlers came on the Saturday: I saw WGA-Rassler (he goes under the pseudonym Rex Moros), Wrestle007, ChicagoMuscle, PiledriverVA, H2oWrestler and JJ_Sparks (id 2445). Unfortunately, I was unable to wrestle any of these guys. I was caught up in both the single and tag pro tournaments and I was pushed in the later rounds despite my request to make me a complete jobber and to end both my pro entries on round 1 for both tournaments. I'll explain this later on. I was however able to slip in a very short sub match against Chicago Piledriver. I think this guy became an even better sub wrestler because he was able to get out of my moves pretty easily this time around. I never stood a chance anyway. Why is that the case for every sub wrestlers I meet at the Clash? In the afternoon, the great Rasslin_Bodybuilder (who also goes by MuscleBuffBoy) walked in and um... wow, this guy is really something. Handsome, humble and kind. I was initially supposed to heel him in a practice pro match, but after he got me in a clothesline, he simply said: "I guess I'll heel then." and he immediately took over control of the match. He went on to pound me with multiple consecutive moves and then pinned me to the ground. Had I known he was just staying around for a very short time, I would have spent more time with him. Then again, it's hard to distribute your time with all the many wrestlers that show up, especially on a Saturday. I initially registered to be part of the submission tournament, but I opted out at the last minute because I knew I was going to be pushed for round 2 for both single and pro tournaments. It was probably for the best since I needed to take it easy this time around. I wasn't at my top shape, but the guys at the Clash really pushed me to do my best in pro. However, watching the preliminary sub tournaments was shocking. I would not have lasted long because every sub wrestler there were so skilled. I have to say that I admired LatinJock4_U who has decided to join the sub tourney despite being his first time trying sub. My 2nd round of tag team pro match started right after the preliminary sub matches. Now, this is the reason why I should write down blog entries like this the same day, because right now, my memories are getting blurry. This match was supposed to be against Roscoe The Rassler and WGA-Rassler. WGA-Rassler ended up coming later in the afternoon, so LS_Powerhouse (id 4337) took his spot instead. We were instructed to lose this match, when suddenly, at the last minute, J made a pin and we were moving on to the finals of the pro tournament. I couldn't believe it. I have no idea what happened and when the decision was made, but I went along with it. Heck, why not? I honestly can't remember what else happened in this match or how this match turned out. I think J recorded it, so I'll have to ask him for the video.I did eventually exchanged a few messages to Roscoe a few weeks after our match and he mentioned the he appreciated me selling some of the moves he threw at me. He said that I was not stiff or fighting every move. He gave me tougher stomps and punches and I did not complain about it. Honestly, sub wrestling does help me build up a bit of resistance to withstand incoming attacks from stiff pro. My first single pro match started around 1 pm-ish. I think we were ahead of schedule. I was set up against JackBouvier. Timnbama explicitely told me that I need to win the match because JackBouvier is a bit injured and is already exhausted by the previous matches he have had in the past few days. This match went easy enough as JackBouvier lead the match as a heel, locking me holds, dominating the whole match until he was ready for me to finish it off. His instructions were simple: on his signal, I would go behind him and apply the sleeper and win the match. After his defeat, JackBouvier asked me if I can take a few pics with him because he loves pics as much as I do.
The image above is actually ironic because he is shown here sleepering me out, while in reality, he submitted to a sleeper. My guess is that he likes sleepers.
What a better way to punish a jobber with a bearhug? JackBouvier has many more images, but he'll be sending them to me gradually over the coming weeks. I saw J wrestle against Viper, who wore a Spiderman costume. I have to admit that this was the most hilarious match in the single pro tournament. J and Spiderman went back and forth for quite a while, but eventually Spiderman decided to finish it off by using his "web slingers". He used a spray can that spreads some sort of sticky pinkish substance, I really have no idea what it is. It was funny, weird, yet creative. It's a good thing to see the wrestlers show off some originality and add up some spice to their matches.Fun4Us also had his share of single pro matches. He faced JJ Hart, followed by Peter Parker (the non-hero version of Spider-Man or Viper (Armani)) and eventually lost to Roscoe. While some of the single pro matches played out, I sat down with TampaChaser (id 11434). I told him that I was very thrilled that we got to wrestle a lot more this time around. I also told him that, two years ago, I was intimidated by him. He's a guy in great shape, wrestles other big guys with ease. I didn't think he was someone who would wrestle smaller guys like me. Well guess what he said? He replied to me that he was intimidated by me because I carried all the big guys around with my rack. Lesson learned: I've always wanted to wrestle TampaChaser and I should have taken a leap of faith and interacted with him sooner. TampaChaser and Kevin_Patrick are extremely nice guys. They get along with everyone so easily and they are funny guys too. Viper and I had a short chat on wrestlers across the world: he travels often and he recommended me places to visit. He shot down Los Angeles by saying that there are lots of wrestlers, but virtually every wrestler he was supposed to meet down ended up canceling or not showing up. On the other side of the coin, he said that London, UK was the best place to meet wrestlers. People there are apparently respectable and they will honor the wrestling meets. That city has the highest rate of wrestling meetups in his book. My second single pro match was up against DCJobber (id 3247), a veteran of the Clash. DCJobber is billed at 250 lbs, so technically, I would need to lose this match with my puny 160 lbs. Big guys dominate smaller guys, right? Not quite. We were both tired. DCJobber wanted to lose the match and I wanted to lose as well. None of us wanted to go to Round 3. We asked Timnbama, our pro commissionner/organizer, if we could both lose our match in a double count out or double disqualification, but Timnbama told us no. He needed someone to take on Wrestlg to be able to close his brackets for the tournament. Ultimately, I volunteered to win the match. It's ironic: people usually want to win matches, but at Clash, people were yielding for others. The heat and exhaustion from mass wrestling are big factors that come into play. Well-versed in both sub and pro, DcJobber wants his matches to look real, especially in pro. So, I suggested that we rehearse our moves beforehand. DCJobber gave me precise instructions to follow near the ending sequence of the match: throw him on the ring, give him a kick on the stomach, throw him again and give him a real punch to the stomach and on the third throw, he would hold the ropes. Once he regains control, he'd jump from the first rope then onto me in some form of a splash. He then climbs up on the second rope and brags to the crowd. This was my cue: I would need to do a low blow from behind him, grab him in a rack an proceed with an airplane spin. Normally I wouldn't do an airplane spin at 250 lbs, but he gave me his trust as he wanted me to go full power, he wanted me to spin faster and drop with a stronger impact to reinforce his wish for realism. He sold it well and actually so well that I thought I've harmed him for real. He's an absolutely terrific wrestler. My tag team partner J was kind enough to take a video while I was in the ring. In the following racks I've extracted from the clip, I honestly look like I'm out for revenge trying to uh... strangle someone. Maybe I'm trying a bit too hard to be into character and get into that wrestling persona. I'm sure these photos alone will prevent me from meeting new opponents. My evil, scary and aggressive look will probably chase people away.
I can hear people saying: if you don't want your back broken in half, don't wrestle Loserboy. He is a serial racker. 
You can also check out Clip ID 339 for a short video sequence of the rack. I could not post the whole match because there was a couple of people in the background that do not want to be seen publicly on the web.I however took the time recently to listen to the audio track that goes along with this video and I just noticed that Jet Fan Steve was nice enough to be my personal commentator yelling at the top of his lungs: - "Oh! Oh no! Oh! It's his rack! He's doing it! Oh my gawd! The rack! Ahhhhh! He spins! HE SPINS!" I should personally hire him to be a commentator for all of my matches. So much excitement!  Anyhow, with DC_Jobber submitting to the rack, I went on to reach the semi-finals of the single pro tournament to face Wrestlg (id 4402). He told me I should win the tournament with all my racks, but I told him I couldn't go on. Exhausted and sweating like crazy, he graciously took the win to get to the finals because I really really needed my beauty rest. My match with Wrestlg was actually a refresher as we were doing both sub and pro in the ring (I suppose promission). He got me in technical holds on the mats and I was actually giving him punches to his abs for real. I've always considered him an elite in both pro and sub and that he probably likes it anyway. I've wrestle him twice before and he has always gave me that general impression. My first time was in NYC, we were just horsing around. My second match was 2 years ago, at Clash 20, in a sub match where he out-skilled me by a great margin. This time around, it's a pro match where we agreed that he should win. That technically means I've lost all my matches against Wrestlg. Eventually, Wrestlg was pitted against Roscoe The Rassler in the finals, who incidentally defeated Fun4Us in the other semi-finals bracket. In the final bout, Roscoe defeated Wrestlg to win the Single Pro Tournament. Here's what the tournament bracket looked like from what I can remember. The empty spaces are blanks I need to fill. With that many wrestlers at the event, it's hard for me to remember who had a match against whom.  Single Pro Tournament Bracket Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 = Quarter-Finals S1, S2 = Semi-Finals After an hour break or so, it was time for the Final Pro Tag Team Tournament match were J and I were matched up against the other tag team finalists: LatinJock4_U and TampaChaser (id 11434). Having spent most of my energy in my previous single pro matches, I've asked J to stand in for me for most of the match and thank goodness he had no problem doing so. J went on to punish TampaChaser and LatinJock4_U with his awesome flying moves and leet maneuvers. TampaChaser took control a bit, tagged out to LatinJock4_U and J was able to tag back to me. I really liked our finisher: it was an awesome tag team combo. I would pick LatinJock4_U in a rack, airplane spin him and kneel down. J would climb on the 2nd rope, put his fists together and land them on LatinJock4_U's chest. The momentum would flip me backwards to drop my opponent on the mats so I can do my pin... 1... 2.... 3 and we were pronounced Tag Team Champions of the Tournament. It was awesome. I gave J a great big hug and we did the same to our opponents. I suppose I should now change my nickname to Winnerboy. This is what I recall from the Pro Tournament brackets. You'll notice that I am also missing the names of 2 other team formations. The days went so fast that I forget who was in each team. As you can see, you only need to win 3 matches in the Tag Team Pro Tournament to make it to the end (as opposed to 4 matches in the Single Pro Tournament).  Tag Team Pro Tournament Bracket After another short AC break back at the hotel, it was time for the Battle Royale. I've decided to skip it out again, but the Battle Royale was actually quite entertaining. You had a feeling you were watching a Survivor show where everyone decided to form alliances to decide who would get booted out and in what order they should be kicked off the island... uh I mean... wrestling ring. Staying under the radar was the key and outwitting your opponent was crucial. Roscoe and Steve were on the microphone and they had a strong influence on who gets to be kicked out as the wrestlers on the ring seemed to agree with them on their decisions. Being booted out of the Battle Royale was based on a few criteria: - If you are a newbie, your chances of being kicked out were pretty high. - If you previously won a Battle Royale, your chances to survive were lower. Sensational Danny actually won the Battle Royale quite a few times in the past, so he was definitely targeted quickly. - If you are a heavy wrestler, everyone will likely team up against you. Bigger means harder to push out of the ring, so you were perceived as a threat. At times, the wrestlers outside the ring were chanting "Boring" because the wrestlers in the Battle Royale spent too much time negotiating or discussing who should be kicked out next. There was 4 referees for the match, one for each side of the ring. If 50% of your body was outside the ropes of the ring, then you were out. Harvey and Timnbama were on the south side, Kevin_Patrick guarded the west side, H2oWrestler monitored the north side and I was donning the ref shirt on the east side. I think there was nine wrestlers in the ring and the booting order was: Fun4Us, LatinJock4_U, Sensational Danny, JJ_Sparks, WildWooly, BigJohn, JJ_Hart and DCJobber became the ultimate winner... When two wrestlers remain in the ring, they can make the other tap via submission. DCJobber managed to put JJ_Hart in a move where he couldn't breathe, so he had to tap out. I think I missed one or two other wrestlers in the Battle Royale, I can't remember whom they were. Timnbama entered the ring at the last minute when DCJobber came out. They joked around, playing and bending the rules by mentioning that in a Battle Royale, you can enter the ring whenever you want, but the last man standing in the ring is the winner. Timnbama entered the ring just as DCJobber walked out. In theory, Timnbama becomes the winner of the Battle Royale. This is why later on, he received the Zucchini Award, which is usually given to those who do the silliest thing. In any case, he was given the Battle Royale Winner Award anyway. Around 6-7 pm, a feast was given to the attendees, you had cold cuts, deviled eggs, fried chicken, fruits to help everyone recover. Fun4Us was very sweet to do the extra mile to get the chicken. Shortly after, Harley climbed onto the ring with his trusty laptop and announced the winners of the various awards for this year's Clash of the Titans. Awards Best Jobber: Jet Fan Steve Best Heel: Viper (Armani) Zucchini Award: DCJobber (id 3247) Best Dressed Wrestler (Diana Ross Award): Wrestlg (id 4402) Shittiest Referree: Fun4Us (id 8822) Newcomer of the Year: Fun4Us (id 8822) Sponsors Award: Fun4Us (id 8822) Lightweight Sub Champion: LatinJock4_U Middleweight Sub Champion: Viper (Armani) Heavyweight Sub Champion: UWillTap (id 9117) Titan Sub Champion: ChicagoPiledriver Final Sub Champion: Three-way tie: Viper (Armani) + UWillTap (id 9117) + ChicagoPiledriver Single Pro Champion: Roscoe The Rassler Tag Team Pro Champion: Big Things Come (Loserboy and J) Battle Royale Winner: DCJobber (id 3247) Best Match: Armani + UWillTap (id 9117) (29 minutes submission wrestling match - it apparently beat the previous record of 26 minutes) Most Improved Wrestler: Loserboy Most Inspirational Wrestler: LatinJock4_U Rookie of the Year: LatinJock4_U Wrestler of the Year: LatinJock4_U  Not everyone showed up for the group pic because of privacy concerns. Missing in this image is Viper and ChicaoPiledriver. Jet Fan Steve was a good sport and joined us anyway, but I blurred him out because he usually does not want to appear online. For multiple award winners, I've decided to put only one of the awards. Otherwise, the image would be over-cluttered with captions. Yeah, LatinJock4_U pretty much racked up the best awards. That's telling how amazing this guy really is. That being said, my friend Fun4Us had his own share of awards: Shittiest Ref, Sponsors Award and Newcomer of the Year. Shittiest Ref may look like a lousy award, but it's actually nice to have it. Some years, this award is sometimes transformed to best ref. Harley said that it was impossible to get Fun4Us off the ring. Fun4Us was definitely very intense and energetic. He reffed almost all the matches and he wrestled intensively by reaching out to almost every wrestler at the Clash. He got along with everyone, he roughed it up or toned it down whenever it was needed; Fun4Us showed me that he has a lot more wrestling passion and adrenaline in him than I do.  As everyone started to leave after a day charged of wrestling, Fun4Us and I stayed behind with the very few that remain to enjoy a bit of casual semi-sub, give and take and some light pro wrestling. I was able to put a few holds on JJ_Hart to experiment and I also managed to put some on UWillTap (id 9117). After locking my leg scissors by cheating with my kneecaps, I realized that there was absolutely no way I can hurt him. It's as if I was trying to squeeze a piece of brick. UWillTap could only grin at my futile attempts. He went on to wrestle Fun4Us and took care of him without any effort. I don't think anyone can beat UWillTap... except perhaps maybe Viper, but then again, both had wrestled to a draw. Had they not both declared this, I would have been curious to see who would last longer and who would emerge victorious. If there is one thing I learned in this match is that a submission match can be paused if both wrestlers agree that the sweat from both wrestler needs to be removed. I tried to get JJ_Sparks (id 2445) to come onto the ring, but the heat really didn't agree with him. I told him that we were lucky this year: the heat this year was actually less worse this year than the two other times I was at the Clash. Fortunately, JJ_Sparks did have a few matches. I saw him go against LatinJock4_U in a non-tourney match. Timnbama finished his work managing the pro tournament, so I was able to spend a little bit of time with him. I asked him if I can get him in a standing rack again... actually, all my previous racks on him were kneeling down, but since I felt so comfortable with him, I really wanted to pick him up standing. Fun4Us kindly took a shot of us. I was worried prior to the trip I could no longer pull stunts like this, but Timnbama is such an calm and nice guy to lift that he made it very easy for me to carry him.
This cuddly bear is full of surprises. In one of his non-tournament matches, he drank from a water bottle, kept it in his mouth discreetly until the moment came: he spurted the contents on a wrestler rushing towards him, just like on TV. He took advantage of this to regain control of his opponent. I really wish I had more time with Timnbama, but we were both spent from a full long day of wrestling. I still managed to be his boot boy by tying and un-tying his laces for his wrestling boots. It was my personal time with him... Later in the night, I was doing my usual body scissors, ankle lock and leg scissors on TampaChaser and he got excited, asking me how to apply that ankle lock. I switched back and forth with Kevin_Patrick on whom I locked on head scissors and body scissors. I then realized we shared a very similar mind. He loved to be squeezed and asked for more. He apologized for been greedy and I told him that it was pleasure to crush him... He explained to me the experience of the near submission sequence: everything starts becoming bright, you see the lights, you are about to pass out, but you tap at the very last second to stay conscious. That's exactly how I would describe myself the joy of being in a body scissors near submission. Honestly, I could squeeze Kevin_Patrick all day... except I don't have that much stamina to keep him that long. I need extra rest between scissor sessions. I have to admit, he can take quite a beating... or a squeezing and will definitely come back for more. Sunday June 3rd 2018 Most of the wrestlers have already left on the Sunday. Many have been exhausted, had to take an early flight or were injured in the previous days and couldn't come back on Sunday. By the way, by injury, it could simply be muscle pain. On my end, I only had a stiff right shoulder. I suppose I got lucky. No scars this time around. Nevertheless, I had a casual match with Steve. He showed me an interesting combo: I had to throw Steve into the turnbuckle, then I bend down, he hops over me, goes to the other side of the ring, bounces back and launches a drop kick! I can't do drop kicks, but Steve is so good that he pulls them out with ease. Mind you, one of his drop kicks did land on my groin, but I pushed myself back enough to reduce the impact. Thank goodness. Steve also told me he found my blog very amusing.. you know all the teddy bears I've been posting. I told him I use it mainly as a journal so I can remember my past matches. Fun4Us told me that I should post my stuff on MeetFighters' blog or on Facebook, but I prefer to keep this in my corner, without popping notifications in people's faces. If people want to know what's going on with me, they can casually check anytime they want. Facebook is a bit too mainstream for me and I can't control the notifications being sent if I create blog entries in MeetFighters. We also had a tag team match with Fun4Us being on my team and Steve and DCJobber as our opponents. I was out of energy and tagged often to let the big guys have fun. I also recall putting Fun4Us in a kneeling rack (I had no energy left to lift him) and lock him in a nice and tight full nelson with body scissors to thank him for accompanying me in this wonderful trip. Did he submit? Of course, he did. Nobody, not even the great and powerful Fun4Us can withstand the devastation of my signature move.  WildWooly, BigJohn, JJ_Sparks, Fun4Us and I all helped out Harley around 3 PM to dismount the ring, remove all the equipment and clear/clean up the venue. Fun4Us felt that JJ_Sparks should have been given the Sponsors award because he was also there on Thursday to set up the ring and do the initial setup. Dismounting the ring is a lot of work and a bit dangerous, this is why we should stay behind to help out. According to Harley, the final count of attendees for the Clash event of this year was around 42. As with every year, about 10% of the roster ends up canceling for various reasons (more than 42 registered, but ended up not showing up). That being said, I consider this year an excellent success for the Clash. Again, Big Joe, Harley and Timnbama are the real heroes. Setting up an event like this is no easy task. These guys do it with so much love and dedication. There seems to be no boundaries for them. These guys are showing us that their wrestling passion is above all of ours combined. I spent the remainder of the day with Fun4Us, we chilled out and took it easy. We went and watched at the movie theater "Solo: A Star Wars story". Meh... mediocre and unmemorable movie. I was waiting for Emilia Clarke to unleash her dragons with her "Dracarys". I will always see her as the mother of dragons. Anyhow, we ate at Golden Coral and we've also put back some order to our hotel room which we had previously transformed into wrestling grounds. Fun4Us had no expectations prior to the event. He told me that this was probably one of his best trips. So many wrestlers, so many matches and so many memories. We both made new friends that we will both cherish forever. We parted ways the next day: we drove back to the airport, returned our rental car. He went on to take his domestic flight while I strapped my bag to get my shuttle for the international terminal back to Canada. Notes My rotation for the Clash is usually once every two years, but Fun4Us might return next year. I enjoyed it very much, but I did explain to him that for my next time, I would want to stay on the sidelines and perhaps do sub only. The awards are supposed to be for the new Clashers: it's a way to welcome them in our family or our community. I get enough ring time and the spotlights should go on to the newcomers. The Clash needs new blood. LatinJock4_U was the perfect example, and we need other great guys like him to keep this event going on and growing. Fun4Us shared with me the history of the Clash. In its starting years, it was a closed and reserved event and it took a while before it was open to everyone. It is perhaps one of the few events today where everybody can mingle together and socialize rather than shut oneself off in hotel rooms in private matches. Of course, you will always have people who will prefer the latter. Not everyone gets along with everybody, but at Clash, everybody does a great effort to include everyone without having any hiccups or discrimination. The Clash is your chance to integrate with the wrestling community and to participate, shine and have fun in the ring with other great wrestlers that think alike, sub or pro. By the way, I do have lots of photos taken at the Clash. It's just that a big chunk shows Fun4Us in action. You know what? Fun4Us has always told me that he'd create his own blog. Now's your chance to nag him to create this new blog and ask him to include these pictures. Mwahahahahah. I'm evil. Last we spoke, he already created a few entries using MeetFighters' blog interface, so make sure you check them out. Now that I think of it, the reason why I don't have that many pictures is because I would ask Fun4Us to take shots of me, but most of the time, he was busy reffing or he was reffing my own match. Another point I'd like to mention about the Clash is that the event and the tournaments allows you to match up with new people and with wrestlers you wouldn't get to wrestle one on one normally. The board of the Clash decide who goes up against whom and you don't get to decide, but their picks are usually excellent match-ups. At the venue, wrestlers will usually tone down or remove their restrictions and they will cooperate with you to make the tournament work or just to be of good sport. I'm thinking of leaving my camera in my bag for most of the time the next time I come to the Clash. I should only bring it out when a wrestler specifically asks for it. I may have made some wrestlers uncomfortable by walking around with a camera and taking as many shots as I did (95% were shots that were not of me). Not everyone wants to have their picture taken. Stuff I could bring next time I brought a first aid kit just in case and it turns out it was quite a bit useful. I however had insufficient waterproof adhesive tape for bandages, so I would need to pack an extra roll or two for next time. These are useful when you have a cloth around one of your limb and want the cloth to stay in place. There was requests from many people for Advil, so a bottle of that would have helped along with perhaps a bottle of Aleve for muscle pain relievers or maybe a few Salonpas or IcyHot patches. Just writing it as a reminder for me to pack these along for next time. Better safe than sorry. While I'm at it, I think a tube of Polysporin can also be useful. Thankfully for me, I didn't get any injuries this year. I had muscle pain on my right shoulder, but that was my fault: it was caused by bad positioning for one of the racks that I delivered. I may have lost a bit of balance while I was holding my opponent and I may have jerked the rack too abruptly: it caused weight to shift harder on the right shoulder. That being said, the rack is definitely a dangerous move... don't try this at home. I also had a little bruise on my right elbow due to rug burn on the base mats of the wrestling ring. I thought the fabric would allow friction without pain, but it's just not designed to let you slide or being pulled while you're down on the mats. To mitigate this, JJ_Hart suggested that I get elbow pads to go along with my knee pads next year. Finally, I think I've hit something outside of the ring while I was walking in the warehouse. It must have being a scratch or a cut from a prop or something, so I had to apply a little band-aid on the middle part of my left leg. That would have prevented me from getting that rug burn and scratching it for a few days. Other than that, I was still in great condition after the event, minus the fatigue from over-exerting myself lifting bigger guys and wrestling quite a bit more than my average habit. The solution is to probably slow down on trying to show off racking guys that are twice my size.... but I can't stop it! I love racking guys! It also makes unusually great pictures. How often do you see smaller guys racking big guys? | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 193 | ||||||||||||||||
| Saturday November 25 2017 - Uncommon holds | Some pictures | |||||||||||||||
| I'm uploading today images from uncommon holds... meaning holds I rarely post online. Not because I don't want to post them, but rather because I'm a bit unoriginal and usually post the same stuff... you know, my typical bearhugs, scissors, racks, you know them. So to make things slightly different, take for example this Figure-Four Leglock. I locked it on MustangCowboy (id 11699) since it's his absolute favorite hold. He actually reversed it, so I'm the one who's supposed to feel the pain.. at least, I have to try to sell it. I think I'm smiling so no, I'm not really doing a good job. It's a bit hard to sell it if this hold actually tickles me and makes me laugh.
You usually don't see me put a Schoolboy Pin... well, actually I did post one previously, but just one. This pin is courtesy of RochesterRasssler from Globalfight. You guessed it, that's his favorite hold.
The Reverse Indian Deathlock is actually a common hold with me, but I don't usually post this because it's hard to get the right angle for it. Needless to say, I am quite happy with how it came out with MarcWrestler (id 3658). I also like the expression I'm using. Now I'm halfway there to become the heel that many want me to be.
Last, but not least, here's VinnyDevine (id 3389) in action with Ted's Diabiase finisher: The Million Dollar Dream, also known as the Cobra Clutch. Vinny also posted this on his Globalfight profile so I felt it was safe to post it here.
I absolutely wanted to make a post today because it is a symbolic post for me. It is the last day I am making a blog entry from my old apartment. I'm now moving on to a new place. Almost all my boxes are ready. It's a new milestone in my life and it's a good time for me to reboot and to start over. No worries, this blog will remain unchanged and I will still continue posting new stuff. Be-Bear (id 2910) came to me and said: He gave me a long and warm embrace, and through this hug, I saw the 8 years we've been together as boyfriends, as exes, as friends and finally as roommates. All the great moments we've had together slowly passed through my mind: the cuddles, the fun times, the match, the trips, the laughs we've had together... We both would have wanted this to last longer, but we've both agreed that it is best if we both part ways and move on with our lives. But these memories will forever be imprinted in me. Hey, I even have this cliché pic we took in Mexico to remember him.  Be-Bear had a wicked sense of humor and his personality matched mine very well. In the least, we part on good terms and he suggested that we see once every two weeks to hang out. Sometimes, life is about making the hard, but the right decisions... | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 165 | ||||||||||||||||
| Friday September 22 2017 - Deadman vs Loserboy | Past matches | |||||||||||||||
| Deadman was probably one of the lightest opponent I've ever fought. He was 5'10" and 123 lbs. I had a good 27 lbs over him. He also was a few years younger than I was. I was only 25 years old when we captured these pictures in 2005. It was during a time where I was still very concerned with my privacy, so it was important for me to use wrestling masks. Being this way back, my memories are starting to fizzle, but I did remember that I already have good leg strength, so we mainly played with pro fantasy leaning a bit towards stiff pro. I would sporadically apply on Deadman some pressure just for the fun of it. Considering his size, I had to be careful to gauge my strength so I would not hurt him by accident.
You can already have a pulse of my jobber side since I asked him to perform all these counter-attacks.
And what greater way to finish it out with this magnificent victory stance?
We've wrestled a couple of times and then he moved farther away in the surburbs of Montreal and I've never heard of him again. He was in a relationship though and his boyfriend didn't wrestle. As the years go by, I do hope that he reaches out for his wrestling passion to try and explore it a bit further. He's a nice fellow, a cute young guy who has a lot of potential. He also had the charisma and the wrestling persona for it. You can still view this bout by checking my old matches or just jump directly to Match #11: Loserboy vs Deadman. Those pages remind of the good old times with my l33t (but now somewhat obsolete) HTML skills. | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 155 | ||||||||||||||||
| Monday January 16 2017 - Trent1978 | Recent matches | |||||||||||||||
| I had a match with Trent1978 today late at night. We apparently wrestled back in perhaps June of 2014, but Trent is telling me that it may have been more than 5 years ago. I feel like a complete idiot, because I did not recognize him at all. I don't remember wrestling him, but I did write a nice recommendation. I don't have any pictures and I don't think he would have wanted any though, and his profile doesn't show his face pic, so that does make it harder to try to bring up memories that I lost. To make matters worse, he sent me a couple of face pics in private and I still couldn't recognize him from any previous encounters... Now I really feel awful!In any case, we wrestled sub. He had very good leg techniques, splitting my legs apart and bringing me near submission. He has firm scissors and he was able to hold me down very often, preventing me from applying any holds. My scissors fortunately worked well on him, while I was able to withstand his own scissors. I did on a couple of occasions toy with him in my scissors, but in revenge, he did make me tap in two holds. Note to self: don't let him sit on top of me. He has a bit of a hairy chest and a little beard... two of my weaknesses. I should remember him this time around. We had a great time, we connected well, we were moderately even-matched, although I did try to give him a few chances in my scissors. I showed him that he can use his elbows to break out of body scissors, something which I later regret a bit ha ha ha... By the way, Trent1978 looks way better in person than in his pictures... and he told me that I looked better now than a couple of years ago.. Awww, he's very sweet. | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 102 | ||||||||||||||||
| Friday June 24 2016 - Back to the roots with bearhugs! | Archives | |||||||||||||||
| After having exceeded all my quota of torture racks in my last few posts, I think it's time I go back to the roots and put up a couple more bearhugs. I was browsing into my archives again today and dug up a few memories from April 2012 against Elrac (id 692). I have yet to write a story for this one.... it would go into chapter 3 since I've already posted 2 previous matches with him.
The second bearhug below comes from the NYC Wrestlefest in 2014. That year, they held it in March to accommodate different wrestlers. They've since switched it back to February. This is one of my better bearhugs because it was taken by a photographer during my open room event. You see me trying to give all my might against the famous GrJobber (id 180).
There are 2 elements of interest in the picture above: you can see GrJobber selling it pretty well by holding my arms trying to break away from the bearhug. It does make a nice pose. Second point to note is that I should have cleaned up the room a bit... If you take a look at the background, you can actually see several bed sheets, some snacks, a black t-shirt, more junk, but more importantly, you'll see that I brought C-Cub (id 800) with me during the travels. Yes, it's just a plush toy or a teddy bear... You can laugh all you want. I usually try to stage the area and put all my things on one side before I take pictures, but sometimes I don't bother. It does make a difference when you do it since these elements can be quite distracting and it'll save you the trouble down the line when you have to crop and edit the picture to remove the foreign objects. This third and last picture at the bottom of this post is pretty recent. It was taken just about 6 months ago, back in December 2015. I was getting bearhugged by someone who preferred to stay anonymous.
He was a very charming guy by the way. He was donning my blue trunks and black kneepads. They were perfect on him. You obviously can't see it in the picture, but this guy also sports a very nice beard and a very hairy chest.... hmmmmmmmmmm...  | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 73 x 1 | ||||||||||||||||
| Wednesday June 22 2016 - About Be-Bear... | Memories | |||||||||||||||
| In my travels, Be-Bear (id 2910) comes into conversation pretty frequently. He's quite a handsome bear and looks like a terrific wrestler... so I feel that I should probably write something down to make it clearer for anyone taking the time to read my blog: Be-Bear was my boyfriend between 2009 and 2012. Our relationship ended on good terms. We are no longer together, but we are still good friends. Now to break the biggest bubble: Be-Bear never actually wrestled. Yes, we did had a match... or should I say, a photoshoot, but he did it only for me, which was absolutely very nice of him. It was more of a pretend-match. Love makes you do a lot of nice and wonderful things and I am eternally grateful for all the nice gestures he did to make our relationship work back then. I'm sorry to break people's heart. I know a LOT of people would wrestle him more than they would wrestle me, but I don't think he enjoys it. In fact, I previously encouraged Be-Bear many times to wrestle, especially when I show him that there are a lot of cute guys out there that are lining up for him, but if it's not his thing, then I shouldn't be forcing it. He's also very monogamous and that includes no touching around other... uh.. wrestlers, which kinda explains why we are no longer in a relationship. That also means that I probably will never be able to create a sequel for our initial match... In any case, this also means that Be-Bear probably won't reply to any messages you send him.. I am not wiping his profile because it has a very big sentimental value for me... even though everything you see there it's just a bunches of zeroes and ones. Besides... who knows? Maybe he will have a change of heart... maybe he will fall in love with wrestling in a distant future or in an alternate reality... | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 72 | ||||||||||||||||
| Sunday June 19 2016 - Great week-end :) | Recent matches | |||||||||||||||
| In spite of carrying with me a minor left shoulder injury since my return from Atlanta, I've decided to go forward and have 2 matches this week-end. The thing is that I don't think it was anything in Atlanta that caused the injury... it was something I got after my return but I can't pinpoint what it is (badminton, maybe?). In any case, the injury is actually more of a minor pain/nuisance than anything else. It's nothing that would bar me from wrestling and having fun. True, it's almost 2 weeks now and it's taking a lot more time than I projected to heal, but it is heading the right way and it looks promising. I am evaluating full shoulder recovery in one more week. On the bright side, my right shoulder haven't manifested any pain since probably a year now. My wrestling encounter average is usually one match per month because wrestlers in Montreal are pretty scarce, but this month (on top of my Atlanta trip) is an exception.... heheheh. On Saturday, I met with Lumber G for our fourth match. We had to take this opportunity because I might not see him for a little while, his schedule will become busy. We had lots of back and forth, submission, promission and sometimes just pure pro fun. Intense as always. We're getting used to it now, but Lumber G actually surprised me by being a lot stronger than usual and taking the upper hand on many occasions. I really didn't mind it at all. On Sunday, I met with BeastMtl (id 10067) who I haven't wrestled since... 11 years ago. BeastMtl actually recalled this detail because I forgot how long it was. My memories are failing me a bit and this is actually why I hold this blog as some sort of diary I can look back in the future. After we locked up, I realized that BeastMtl has vastly improved and he has become a much tougher and superior opponent today than 11 years back! You should see BeastMtl's setup. He has a whole room dedicated to wrestling with nice wrestling mats! Wow! I so definitely want a setup like this... (when I settle down)! As for our fight, we were pretty much evenly matched. All my scissor holds were nullified because they wouldn't do a thing on him. In fact, I latched on him a leg scissors and cheated by using my knees and I ended up hurting myself by overdoing it. My knee either cracked or popped lightly. I stopped for a little while and was able to recover, but it was a bit scary. This was a mistake from my end. I should know better not to apply too much pressure. In any case, BeastMtl wouldn't budge on any of my scissors, so why waste so much energy and strength on it? On the contrary, BeastMtl's scissors were pretty strong and a lot stronger that I can remember. Had I stayed long enough, I would probably have tapped, so I positioned myself in such a way that it was uncomfortable for him and that he would have to spend a lot more power to maintain the scissors. The end result would be to tire him out...My match with him was quite challenging because it forced me to think of attacking him in a different way since I can no longer rely on my legs. I can still rely on them to hold him down, but I need to use something else to make him tap. Usually, in about 75% of my matches, my legs will do the work, but this wasn't the case here. Unfortunately, I ended up hitting BeastMtl's nose with my feet or legs while he was attempting to apply the small package on me. The small package is definitely one of my bad weaknesses.. I will try to avoid it all costs, but I made a maneuver that was too quick. We stopped there. When I left, his nose seemed fine... so I hope it won't leave a trace in the days to come. No matter how careful you tread, accidents can happen. I need to act a bit slower when my legs are in an upright position. This is one of those moments where I need to be humble and accept giving a submission to my opponent rather than attempting a breakout that can injure or hurt him. No matter my experience, I still have a LOT to learn. We were thinking about taking pictures, but after that little nose hit, I felt it was more appropriate to re-schedule the photoshoot for a different date, because yes, we agreed to both meet again. Hopefully, on a regular basis which we currently determined to be monthly for the time being. Both Lumber G and BeastMtl were actually very nice on upper body holds because I did told them about my shoulder and they both avoided it. Thankfully! I am currently limping a bit right now because of my knee, but I think this should go away in a couple of days.Overall, I had a great week-end. It's still sunny outside and I can't go bike anymore, but I'll take 2 wrestling matches anytime to replace a bike ride! | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 69 | ||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday June 7 2016 - Clash XX: Atlanta Clash of the Titans 2016! | Wrestling event | |||||||||||||||
| Wow.. I don't really know where to start, but I can say that the Atlanta Clash of the Titans (Clash XX) was the best event I have ever attended. My travel dates were between Wednesday June 1st 2016 and Monday June 6th 2016. The official Clash dates were from Thursday June 2nd to Sunday June 5th 2016. I made sure this time around to come one day earlier to leave enough time for me to recover from headaches I get from flights. I took a direct flight this time from Montreal to Atlanta, because I still remember my previous experience where I took a layover in Toronto before reaching Atlanta and that was just a pain in the a**. This is my 2nd time at the Clash (Clash 20 [2016]), my first Clash being 3 years ago (Clash 17 [2013]). Wednesday June 1st 2016: Flight from Montreal to Atlanta I got lucky this time again. US Customs was pretty straightforward. US Customs Officer: "Where are you going?" Me: "To Atlanta" US Customs Officer: "What for?" Me: "To attend a wrestling event." US Customs Officer: "You wrestle?" Me: "Yes, I do." US Customs Officer: "You're getting paid for this?" Me: "No, sir. I do it just for fun." US Customs Officer: "Have a good trip." Me: "Thank you, sir." These officers have seen so many travelers now and they are trained to tell when you lie or try to hide something, so now I just tell them straight down that I'm about to wrestle and they just let me go through pretty fast. After an uneventful flight, I took my rental car, placed my old Garmin GPS and drove to the Springhill Suites from Mariott in Lithia Springs. Mind you, the last time I drove a car was exactly 3 years ago for Clash 17. I settled down, had a shower, took a little bit of rest before tackling Kyo1989 (id 6980). Yeah... the event doesn't start until tomorrow so I decided to chip in a few local hotel matches. Kyo1989 is a wrestler with good submission skills. Warming up before the days to come is a good idea so a nice and friendly wrestling session was just what I needed. We did end up talking about anime and manga for quite a while after and then I headed to sleep in preparation for the first day of the Clash. Thursday June 2nd 2016: Setup and open ring THURSDAY JUNE 2 12:00 PM - SET UP (HELP APPRECIATED) 05:00 PM - OPEN RING AND MATS 11:00 PM - VENUE CLOSED I came to the venue I believe around 2 pm. I saw the Cut2MeDesigns sponsor and the very cute Larry. He was at his booth explaining the things he was designing and ready to lend an ear for any special and custom orders you'd want to come up with. The warehouse for the venue had this time around a LOT more prop than 3 years ago. I was kinda worried because I was wondering where everybody would stand and where the mats and the ring would be. Since there was nobody else around, I've decided to head back to my hotel. I picked up my messages and saw that AKRob arrived at his hotel which was only 5 minutes down the road (Quality Inn in Lithia Springs). Yep.. we had a brief hotel match which involved gut punching. I headed back to the warehouse I think around 6 or 7 pm and there was now a lot of people.. but everyone was still waiting.. the mats and the ring has not arrived yet. 30 minutes later, the first shipment came. I went down to the unloading area and I saw BuddySTL and BearLord. I actually did not recognize BuddySTL. Like many, when you see people in real life, they don't look the same as in their pictures.. in fact, BuddySTL is much more handsome in person than in his pictures. As he unloaded the mats, he shouted "Where are my hugs?" Hell yeah, I gave him a nice warm hug and then he recognized a friend beside me whom he promptly picked up in a huge lifted bearhug! I thought to myself: Â Â Â Â Oh... I guess I am not worthy of your bearhug. The reason why i didn't recognize BuddySTL was because I didn't recall seeing his ring name on the Atlanta Clash of the Titans blog so I wasn't expecting him to be at the event. Also to be noted that wrestlers attending the event occasionally use a ring name or pseudonym that is different from their online handle from Meetfighters or Global. Anyway, BuddySTL and Bearlord brought in 2 sets of mats. The first set was a thick blue and beige type of material where it was soft and safe enough to wrestle on. He donated those to the Clash so those would stay at the warehouse. (That was very generous of him!) The second set of mats were real black wrestling mats with a couple of yellow circles that delimited the edge. I guess these circles are mostly used in freestyle. A few moments later, a pickup truck arrived and you'd see three guys from Armstrong Pro Wrestling Tours unload all the material to build a 16x16 feet wide pro wrestling ring. It's amazing. If you've never seen a ring been built from scratch, then this will blow your mind away. Many wrestlers helped with the setup. After the base was setup, the three guys took care of the cables circling the ring, the corner posts and the other necessary attachments and adjustments that were needed to make the ring stable and resilient to impacts. They tested the ropes and landed on their backs several times. The bigger one of them was actually wearing pro wrestling boots and wow.. I would do anything to wrestle him, but that's fine, we had many wrestlers here at the venue that were more handsome than him. Once the ring was setup, all the wrestlers would just stand there and talk. What was going on?? I guess everybody was intimiated. Nobody wanted to be the first to climb into the ring. After a while, I've decided to put on my wrestling boots, knee pad, my blue wrestling trunks and my black wristbands. I was on a tight schedule! 8:30 pm was my limit because I had to pick up RickSF (id 8839) and Roodle0p (Also known as Lodiwrestler) at the airport. They were my hotel roommates for the remaining duration of the event. I think it was 7:30 pm so I had only one hour available to wrestle. Since nobody wanted to be among the first to climb up and you need two to tango, I've decided to pick up Harley, who is the co-host of the event. We took it easy, we exchanged a few holds and then I picked him up in an Torture Rack with Airplane Spin... ha ha ha. Harley wasn't expecting that so that was actually pretty mean from my end. It didn't take long before Steve (no, sorry, he doesn't appear to have any online wrestling profile at the time being) went on the ring. He had this nice hairy chest and yellow speedos and despite telling me he was a jobber, he'd kept heeling me because he didn't want to be racked... so I ended up using the Fireman's Carry with Airplane Spin instead on him. 5 minutes later, H2oWrestler (or FitWrestlerAbs on MeetFighters) and LSPowerhouse were in the ring too, all geared up! My encounter with them was brief because I had to scurry out. I think H2oWrestler had enough time to put on me the Tree of Woe. I lost balance on the ropes at one point and I couldn't stop laughing... I was actually afraid of falling. LSpowerhouse was looking at me when I attempted to run away because he was expecting me to tag out to dish some damage on Steve. Before long, it was already 8:30 pm. Just before I left, I gave a quick rack to Kevin_Patrick on the mats. I was really sad to head out, but I couldn't just leave my roommates at the airport. (I think I racked H2oWrestler too while I was in the ring, but this is where my memories are already starting to fade). Friday June 3rd 2016: Open ring/mats and First round of pro tournaments FRIDAY JUNE 3 12:00 PM - OPEN RING AND MATS 07:00 PM - PRO SEMINAR 07:00 PM - DEADLINE FOR ENTRANCE IN TAG TEAM TOURNAMENT(8 TEAMS ONLY) 08:00 PM - ROUND ONE MATCHES TAG TEAM TOURNAMENT 09:30 PM - OPEN RING AND MATS 11:00 PM - VENUE CLOSED Before heading back to the venue, I had a hotel match involving play wrestling, submission and 2 versus 1 with RickSF (id 8839) and Roodle0p. That already tired me out... lol. We then showered again and headed back towards the venue, not before first picking up AKRob and SactoWrestler along the way. 5 people was the maximum capactity of the Nissan Sentra car I rented. At 12:30 PM, the ring was already in use, so I started with sub matches on the wrestling mats. ChicagoPiledriver was waiting for me and in the first few seconds, he reminded me how tough a wrestler he is. Well.. he does have a weight advantange on me, but on top of that he has amazing technical skills. The only thing I can pull off on this guy is that ankle lock that everybody hates... and even there, it would take me three tries before pulling out a single one successfully for a tap. I also managed to do a bit of sub with Roodle0p and then I was back on the ring. I believe there was three different matches recordings between me and JackBouvier, Destroyer (id 2190) and Heel4You (id 10871). That being said, Heel4You (id 10871) already posted his match with me on YouTube: I have to admit that I just want to give an ankle lock to whoever who was filming this. Videos should always be recorded horizontally instead of vertically!!! Here's the one against the Destroyer (id 2190): The hilarious part on that video is around 2:30. I was doing a Fireman's Carry with Airplane Spin, but I was spinning so fast that I got dizzy and I lost balance... almost dropping The Destroyer. When I finally laid him down, I was still so confused and woozy that I had to stay on the ground for a little while. Silly me! I'm not sure if JackBouvier is willing to share his video. I'll have to get in touch with him. I don't remember when this moment occurred, but I'll just put it here for now. I saw a match between LSPowerhouse and Rough House Rodrigo. A beer bottle was used and shattered in pieces! At that moment, I panicked. I told myself: Â Â Â Â WTF!??!?! What is going on here? Has the wrestlers here become crazy or insane? Will there be blood? It took me about a full of minute to realize that the beer bottle was a prop. A 20$ empty beer bottle usually in sale to use as a fake during wrestling. An illusion :) It really got me good. When this bottle shatters, the small pieces caused by the hit of this prop do not hurt, they are not sharp, they look like glass, but they are harmless. Phew. What really made it even scarier was that Rodrigo sold the hit very well: he dropped dead on the mats and layed unconscious for 2 minutes... he of course, pretended to be unconscious. Thank goodness. The youngest wrestler attending the Clash was J [I've truncated his name to preserve his identity, he was very secretive about it] (He's 23 years old from California), a first time attendee at the Clash. (J also doesn't have any online wrestling profiles, he deleted them all because he doesn't really like hotel matches). Like many first attendees, J stood there sitting down watching people, but then he asked me if I could show him a couple of pro moves on the ring. Heck, I don't consider myself a pro expert, I just follow what others have shown me, so I've decided to show him some of the basics, but the thing is that this kid already knew pretty much everything and we would see more about it later. Anything he had missed, he would learn very fast and show his new skill with style! If I recall, I didn't even see J on the roster of the Clash Blog. You can actually ask the organizers not to put your ring name/first name/photo on the blog, so I assume he did exactly that. That being said, I had a discussion with Harley later on that there is a difficulty of attracting younger wrestlers to the event because most young wrestlers don't want their identity (even if it is a pseudonym only) to be shown and because they believe that the event is only attended by older wrestlers. This is exactly why Kyo1989 (id 6980) didn't attend the Clash. He didn't know that either J or Roodle0p was attending the event. It's sort of a vicious circle. At one point, I don't remember anymore if it was before supper or after supper, but BuddySTL put me up in a rack for a full minute!
I was in awe.. I was in ecstasy! Was it supposed to hurt? Of course not! The rack is designed to be spectacular, but if you don't bend, then it's as if you're lying comfortably on a bed. A move that is this fun is not painful for me! At this point, I still didn't know who was really racking me. I still couldn't connect the dots to tie him to his wrestling profile. I only knew him by his first name, but I had no idea who he really was. Around 5-6 PM, AKRob, RickSF, J, Roodle0p and I headed out to grab a bite because everyone was hungry. When we got back about an hour later, I saw Edinchattanooga (id 2616) arrive so I switched back to sub and had a bit of fun on the mats that were at the back of the warehouse. I'd call this the private mats because most of the wrestlers were near the ring close to the unloading bay, which leaves a bit more intimacy to those who were at the back of the warehouse. I was later able to do a bit of sub with Rough House Rodrigo, but I guess I was really no match for him because as soon as he was able to get behind me to put a sleeper, he didn't even bother putting it on me. I thought to myself: Â Â Â Â Â Well... I guess you didn't even need to apply the sleeper to show that you won ;) Instead, Rodrigo suggested that we climbed into the ring to do pro instead, but it was already 7 PM... yes already! We could no longer use the ring. BuddySTL climbed into the ring. Yes, he was the teacher/presenter for the Pro Seminar. He was the expert! The thing I remember the most from the seminar is to let the jobbers sell the moves for you. And when you sell, you need to show your face with the pain rather than bending down and hiding it... so, face up instead of face down. Pro wrestling is about giving the illusion that the hold or the maneuver is painful and real. BuddySTL actually went into a lot more stuff, but I couldn't stop admiring this cute wrestler... so yes, I really got distracted. Out of a one hour seminar, it's the only three things I could remember. 7 PM was also the deadline for pro tag team tournament registration, so Steve approached me to ask me if I can be his tag team partner. I told him that we should probably encourage J and Roodle0p to do tag team with us so they can actively be part of the event and use the ring. I manage to convince Roodle0p to join in while Steve convinced J to do a tag team with him. This year, I also convinced myself to register for the sub tournament and the single pro tournament.. but still not the Battle Royale. Both our teams got eliminated on the first round between 8 PM and 9 PM, but that's fine, I think both J and Roodle0p were tired anyway. When it was J and Steve's turn on the ring, J showed how agile, cunning, fast he was. He definitely was the shining star on the ring! Everybody loved him. He was amazing! Roodle0p and I were put up against JackBouvier and the Destroyer (id 2190). Roodle0p and JackBouvier started the match with a later a tag switch to the Destroyer. Roodle0p tagged me in and then I jobbered from there. Destroyer finished me off with a piledriver and that was the end of it. Both JackBouvier and The Destroyer moved on to the 2nd round and eliminated us. Hey... all official pro matches at the Clash are scripted anyway (you decide of the script) and it's decided in advance who will lose and who will move forward. Considering that I already hogged the ring for a lot of time, it was a good thing we lost. This gives the chance for other wrestlers to shine by being part of the tournament and those that move forward will have more ring time. At one point, BuddySTL mounted on the ring to do his tag team pro match and this is where I finally realized that he was THE legendary BuddySTL. How did I finally realize that??? He was wearing a singlet with "BuddySTL" written on it. Yes, you really have to put it out there, right in front of my face, so that I can get it. All this time! All this time I didn't realize that until now! That meant that I have been racked earlier by BuddySTL! It's like a dream come true! I've always wanted to wrestle this guy! If you actually check out his profile on MeetFighters, it's actually quite intimidating. He's a trained pro wrestler and worked for pro indies for 7 years! This guy is serious. We do wrestling just for fun, but this guy does it for real! He goes through the stress, the tension and the intensity of the fight, gets the cheers and the boos from a real crowd. He sells his holds, makes his opponent look good, plays the really bad guy gimmick and probably has to go on with the show and continue wrestling if he ever injures himself accidentally in the ring. On top of that, he's also a very good submission and NHB wrestler. He does mention he won't wrestle jobbers... and considering that my ring name is Loserboy, that pretty much nullifies any chance I have with this guy... but this guy is so nice, he picked me up and racked me for a full minute! It's incredible the image you make of someone when you look at their profile. I always thought of him as someone untouchable that could care less for the jobber/chaser type like me. Deep down, BuddySTL is a kind-hearted guy, a teddy bear, an absolutely amazing person. More on that later... After the first round of the tournament, everybody was tired so it was time to get back, but we had to stay a little bit longer: there was the Battle of the Pink (a 3-way match) and a grudge battle between Rough House Rodrigo and El Toro Blanco (El Toro won!). After that, I think it was 10 pm, so I missed one hour of open ring/mats but it would be unfair for me to make 4 other people wait just so that I can have more ring/mats time. Besides, tomorrow (Saturday) would be the day of all the tournaments (single pro, continuation of tag team pro matches, all sub tournaments plus battle royale), so it's a good idea to rest up. Saturday June 4th 2016: All tournaments SATURDAY JUNE 4 10:00 AM - CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST 11:00 AM - DEADLINE FOR ENTRANCE IN PRO TOURNAMENT 11:00 AM - SUB TOURNAMENT WEIGH INS AND SUB SEMINAR 12:00 PM - SUB TOURNAMENT PRELIMINARY MATCHES 01:00 PM - PRO TOURNAMENT PRELIMINARY MATCHES 02:00 PM - TAG TEAM TOURNAMENT ROUND TWO MATCHES 02:30 PM - PRO TOURNAMENT PRELIMINARY MATCHES 03:30 PM - SUB TOURNAMENT FINALS 04:00 PM - PRO TOURNAMENT FINALS 05:30 PM - BATTLE ROYAL 07:00 PM - AWARDS DINNER 08:00 PM - OPEN RINGS AND MATS 11:00 PM - VENUE CLOSED AKRob, J, SactoWrestler and I arrived with one car while RickSF, Roodle0p, Wrestlg (id 4402) arrived with another car. I had already weighed-in at 11 AM to enter the sub tournament. The scale calculated 152 lbs for me... my stomach must have been empty because I usually carry 3-5 lbs of food which would have driven my weight up to 157 lbs. Wrestlg and RickSF weighed-in near noon, but they were still in time to make it for the tournament. Harley, RickSF, Wrestlg and I were all part of the lightweight division and I was put up against Harley. Before the sub matches actually start, BuddySTL stepped on the black and yellow wrestling mats. Yep, he was also the expert for the Sub Seminar. Several wrestlers included myself went on the mats as his demoed several techniques. There was one most memorable part for me that actually made me forgot everything that he taught me (yes, I get distracted pretty easily): I was lying down on my back and he was kneeling down on top of me. A few drops of his sweat fell on me while he was teaching, so he interrupted himself and told me: BuddySTL: "Sorry, I'm trying not to sweat on you." I instinctively replied: Loserboy: "Oh, you can sweat on me as much as you want." At this point, BuddySTL stopped. He bended down and kissed my forehead. He just made the bear chaser in me extremely happy. Despite the distraction, I did remember that BuddySTL taught us how to break an opponent away from a turtle defensive mode. You put your head on your opponent's side you grab one arm and one leg and push forward. It's pretty effective. Noon ticked and my sub match was up: Harley and I locked in and we started to tangle. Harley was on top of me for most of the match until I was able to hold him with my body scissors while holding his arms to prevent him from breaking it. I was lucky here, body scissors were Harley's weakness and I was able to win this first round. Next up, I saw RickSF (id 8839) and Wrestlg (id 4402) go at it and this is where I knew that I would lose if I was put up against Wrestlg. Wrestlg had the upper hand for the entire fight. He was technical, he was aggressive, he was so good. He is up there at a much higher level than any of us. In fact, watching Wrestlg fight so well made me looked like a beginner. o_O Soon or later, RickSF lost the fight and I was now really put up against Wrestlg. Yes, he completely dominated the fight, he locked me one hold after hold, but despite that, even when some of his holds were nasty, he was being very careful and never did he harm me in any way. The moves were just uncomfortable, but never left any long term pain. He was just trying to wear me out.. after 5 minutes, I realized that I was just spending all my energy in this one match and there was nothing I could do to budge Wrestlg. He was way too overpowered for me. His strength and stamina surpassed mine and he could continue to torture me until I would be completely out.... I tapped. Wrestlg became the winner of the lightweight division. Wrestlg comforted me by telling me that I was a tough opponent, that I was really resistant, that I got something going on with my ankle lock, but that he didn't want to lose his pride. I won't go into details on the other sub matches and pro matches because I could go for very long. There was apparently more than of 250 pro and sub matches (both tournament and non-tournament) combined and so many of them were amazing. If I could detail them, this summary would become a novel.... actually, it may already be the case just with my matches alone I actually missed watching most of the single pro matches of the first round because I was busy discussing with H2oWrestler, J and Mighty Mongo (id 2645) about the turnout for our match. Yes, that was our single pro tournament match. It's actually a 3 vs 1 handicap match.. and can you guess against whom? Who else than the Mighty Mongo!!! Yep, H2oWrestler, J and I were pitted against the Mighty Mongo! That's awesome! Mighty Mongo was always a guy that I also wanted to wrestle and I was given that exact opportunity! You should see this guy in person, he is soooo nice, charming, sociable... you just want to cuddle him! We all threw in our ideas and at one point it was so messy, there were so many details to remember. When our match was up, I had butterflies in my stomach. The more details you try to cram into a predefined match, the more stress it adds and the more you'll forget about all the details. My match with Roodle0p was pretty straightforward, very few details, easy to remember: hence, no stress. This match was the completely opposite... but it went... uh... relatively well. J went inside the ring, ready to face the Mighty Mongo while H2oWrestler and I waited outside waiting for him to tag us. J tries to use his speed against the Mighty Mongo and eventually does a sideway jump but nothing can move the  Invincible Mighty Mongo! J is eventually caught up in a bearhug, but since the Mighty Mongo is so nice and forgiving, he releases J and J tags me in. I go in, try to do a clothesline but that obviously does nothing to the Mighty Mongo. I do a couple of high kicks to his chest, then throw in a few laughable gut punches and he pushes me back and I sell it by flipping backwards on to my back then on my stomach as a way to demonstrate his superior strength. This guy is too strong for me! Both J and H2oWrestler try to cheer me up: J: "Beat him up, Loserboy!" H2oWrestler: "You can do it, Loserboy!" ... Loserboy: "I... I can't! He's too strong for me!" I tag for H2oWrestler to take my spot. H2oWrestler doesn't have any better success than us so it was time for us to cheat. This is where everything... everything... became chaotic. StumpyStew (id 6633) was actually the referree for our match and we completely ignored him. At one point, I gave him an elbow thinking that it would give us more time to do illegal kicks on the Mighty Mongo, but StumpyStew got back up pretty fast. I'm surprised he never disqualified us considering that my move was pretty illegal. Who attacks an official, a ref right from the front? I suppose you need to attack from the back if you're planning to do anything illegal so that the ref doesn't know who attacked him... but in the heat of the match, you don't think about these details! We were supposed to set MightyMongo to be on his back so that we can do our successive pins, but MightyMongo was setting himself on his front so we would do dual boston crabs. We were thinking differently from what the MightyMongo was thinking because we had too many things planned. Eventually, MightyMongo picked it up and rolled on his back instead of his front so that we could do our pins. The pins were push up pin. J would pin, Mongo pushes him out. I'd pin, Mongo would push me out. H2owrestler pins, Mongo pushes him out and we would repeat this cycle 2 more times. We then rolled Mongo on his stomach where J and I applied a boston crab on him each by grabbing a leg, while StumpyStew tried to make us release it because we were still 3 in the ring trying to defeat the Mighty Mongo. His strength is so outmatched that he flipped both J and I and we both do a synchronized rollover... although I have no idea how synchronized that was...
To end this chaos, Mongo grabbed H2owrestler and pushed him into the corner post. J and I tried to combine our strength by each doing a clothesline on Mongo, but Mongo steps back, so this caused J and I to slam into each other and be dizzy. This was his final cue. MightyMongo picked up the both of us in his finisher: The Double Bearhug and he got himself a Double Submission! Mongo wins his first single pro tournament and moves on the next round while all 3 of us got eliminated. Wow! See why you need to keep things simple? lolI don't think anyone recorded this match.. and this was because J didn't want his face on the internet. I later learned that he didn't mind being recorded as long as the match is not released on the internet... oh well. At least now, all my official matches are done so I can rest for the remainder of the day by watching the remaining pro and sub matches (semi-finals and finals) and wait until the open ring and mats at 8 pm. On his end, Mighty Mongo went all the way to the final and won the single pro tournament. Yes, I get to see this strong and undefeated ox battle his way and tear apart each and every opponent he is put up against. I'm pretty sure Mighty Mongo took his name in context of the movie Blazing Saddles. I watched it as a kid and I couldn't stop laughing. I saw Slater Jackson (id 2707) and Buzz Jackson do their tournament tag team match. I promptly chased after Slater Jackson asking him for ring time, but he was a bit injured. I was bummed out. :( But then I decided to run and grab Buzz Jackson instead and actually convinced him to put a rack on him! Wooot!
I actually took a little risk here. Buzz Jackson was never in a rack before and he weighed 215 lbs. I usually kneel down when racking anyone weighing more than 200 lbs. I took the risk since an excess of 15 lbs didn't seem that bad, so I stood up anyway but I almost lost balance when I spun him around. Factor in that it was Buzz's first rack, I still should have been a bit more careful. I also managed to take a side-by-side shot with him, something I've been shy to ask for so far, but Buzz is a pretty cool guy.
Slater Jackson and Buzz Jackson are really amazing. They were known as the Full Service tag team. They had someone play their entrance theme on a big boombox and as they walked towards the ring, they had a giant notepad and a giant pencil and they started taking down the food orders of the crowd before making their final entrance towards the ring. Heck! We definitely need more stuff like this! It adds to the spirit and ambiance of the match! It makes it look like those real pro shows or your Saturday night wrestling on TV! But can you imagine how much equipment this requires? These guys were wearing white and red t-shirts with "Full Service" on it. These are custom designs! About half an hour later of tournament pro and sub matches, I was talking to LSPowerhouse after one of his official single pro matches and we discussed that we should wrestle some more, when suddenly, BuddySTL grabbed me into the ring and started teaching me some pro moves. Wow... I couldn't believe it: a 1-on-1 with BuddySTL!! I finally took the courage to ask him if I can rack him too. He didn't want to let me initially so I told him that I would kneel down to do it... a standing up rack would obviously kill me, but kneeling down, I could support the weight. If BuddySTL teaches sub and pro, and knowing that he did real pro matches in real pro wrestling tours, he knows how to position himself for a torture rack. And indeed, when he stood by my side and bent over, he positioned himself perfectly for the move. I was able to rack him... The number is somewhere between 280 and 300 lbs, and he was just great on my shoulders so I yelled out: - "SOMEBODY PLEASE TAKE A PICTURE!" Major Disaster was standing right in front. He took out his phone and took several shots!
Woohoo! I was really happy that I could rack BuddySTL, even happier than that earlier forehead kiss. When I put him back down, I asked him: Loserboy: "I thought you never wrestle jobbers." And he replied with something that will touch me forever. BuddySTL: "I only wrestle guys that are nice and respectful." It shows that the kind-hearted guy that BuddySTL is... a great wrestler trained in both pro and sub that has an amazing heart. He's for me a role model. BuddySTL showed me a couple more moves: we tried to do tougher stuff like the Vertical Suplex but I didn't have enough balance for that so H2oWrestler suggested that he tries the Indian Deathlock. Blackjack McQueen (id 3251) came in and showed it to me instead. Later on, Kieran Dunne (Goldenboy) also jumped into the ring and then I lost track of what happened. All I know was that there was 3 superstars in the ring.... and I got intimidated. Yes, Kieran Dunne was there. Both him and LSPowerHouse have already being performers for BG. I didn't think Kieran would want to talk to me, so I shy-ed away. Later, many wrestlers told me he was very nice to talk to. I left the ring. BuddySTL asked me if I was running away from him and I simply told him that I was taking a rest. I froze. I really did. I should have stayed in the ring, but I was speechless and too much was happening. I was happy, but I didn't know what to say, I didn't know what move to do. It's like when you meet your hero and you were waiting for this hero since your childhood and you finally meet him, but there's nothing cohesive that comes out of your mouth. Now that I think about it... there was so much more I could do.. I could have asked him to show me moves to tackle big opponents. BuddySTL loves to be heeled, he loves to be the jobber. I could asked him to show me other moves that I could pull out on him. When Blackjack McQueen and Kieran Dunne were on the ring, I could have asked to rack them also.... there are so many things I could have done, but I had to get out... I did run after Major Disaster and asked him if he could forward me a copy of the pictures ;) You know what? I still had a good 5-10 minutes in the ring with BuddySTL and I'll keep those memories close to my heart. Speaking of Blackjack McQueen (id 3251), I've always been a big fan of all the matches he posted. Seeing him perform at the Clash and advance through the rankings to reach the championships was mind-blowing! I really liked his style: he'd often yell after the owner or at someone outside the ring. That was the cue for the wrestler opposing him to do a surprise attack to either get the upper-hand in the match or to win the match. Blackjack plays this mean trash talk type of guy that everybody loves to hate, and he does it so well. It's his wrestling persona, his gimmick. It's the guy on TV everybody boos, that gets the upper-hand early in most part of the matches and everybody cheers when he loses in the end. We didn't have time to wrestle (also because I chickened out), but he did came to me and said: - "Next time, you and me, we have a match!" Blackjack is really an awesome guy! I also made this image of him: I thought he was untouchable, but Blackjack is very friendly. Moments later, it was time for the Battle Royale. I desisted again this year. Some thought that the Battle Royale is scripted, but it is not at all. It's each man looking after himself. The tricky part is that the Battle Royale involves both submission and pro styles. The rules were changed to ensure the security of all the wrestlers. If half your body was outside the edge of the ropes of the ring, you were out. A 3-count pin and a submission were also counted as valid ways to take out your opponents. There were three referees around the ring to make sure that everything goes well. I think there were 10 people in the ring and I saw Heel4You (id 10871) mount the ring. Heel4You didn't participate in any tournaments. It's his first time here at the Clash. And he took up the courage to go in the Battle Royale. And on top of that, he finished 2nd!! Okay, you don't get anything if you finish 2nd, but for a first timer, that's still incredibly amazing! Heel4You is a hero and a winner in my book. Even I didn't had the courage to go to the Battle Royale for both my first and second year here at the Clash because I felt that 10 people in the ring is pretty dangerous... but to be honest, everybody on the ring will watch out for each other and everyone will play very safe. The most used move is sort of pushing you to the edge ;) ... and even there, I couldn't find the courage to fight a Battle Royale while Heel4You did it with ease.The meal and awards ceremony came shortly afterwards. Here are the winners of the awards:  Best Jobber: JD Best Heel: Nighthawk Zucchini Award: Steve Best Dressed Wrestler: Slater Jackson Best Referree: Rough House Rodrigo Rookie of the Year: J Sponsors Award: Loserboy Lightweight Sub Champion: Wrestlg Middleweight Sub Champion: El Toro Blanco Heavyweight Sub Champion: Rough House Rodrigo Titan Sub Champion: Chicagopiledriver Final Sub Champion: El Toro Blanco Single Pro Champion: Mighty Mongo Tag Team Pro Champion: Full Service (Slater Jackson and Buzz Jackson) Battle Royale Winner: Sensational Danny Best Match: Chicagopiledriver vs BigChicago Most Improved Wrestler: Edinchattanooga Most Inspirational Wrestler: J Dan Roberts Wrestler of the Year: Blackjack McQueen It was no surprise to me that Blackjack won the Wrestler of the Year though, he really performed extremely well in the ring. You can tell he was experienced and he was the driving force in a lot of the brackets of the official matches for both pro single and pro tag team. JD, the winner of the biggest jobber, was actually a guy doing submission only. It was the first year they ever gave it to a guy doing submission (The award is usually given to someone doing pro). I actually thought the Zucchini award was given to the wrestler who came to the event and did nothing. Apparently, if you did something stupid or said something stupid, you can get this award too ;) Steve hurt his toe, but he did wrestle quite a bit before doing so. I was very glad to see J get the Rookie of the Year and Most Inspirational Wrestler awards. It was epic! J's performance in the ring was also outstanding and he really deserves both these awards. I loved it that the Full Service tag team, who actually look like a jobber team, managed to get the Tag Team Champion award! I had no idea that winners of the respective submission divisions battle each other. Imagine if a lightweight wins against a middleweight and a heavyweight wins against a Titan. The Lightweight would be caught wrestling the Titan. I'm wondering if this ever happened. The Monica Lewinsky award was no longer there. Joe explained to me that on one particular year, the wrestler who received this award got his feelings hurt... Since then, they no longer gave it because the point of this event is not to hurt people's feelings. Joe asked me if I was this person who got his feelings hurt, but I told him no. When I received it three years ago, it was kind of a compliment and I knew it was also a little joke just like the Zucchini award. For those who does not know, the Monica Lewinsky award is actually given to the wrestler who sleeps with the most wrestlers. I wrote "sleeps" in italic because it doesn't really matter what you do with them. If you were simply sharing the hotel room with different wrestlers every different day, then I'm sure you would also be entitled or qualified for this award. It's just for fun, really. The Sponsors Award was given to me and I was really speechless... They mentioned that it was given to the wrestler that helps sets up things for the event and that helps people get into the ring and mats. *blush* Honestly... I didn't think I helped that much.. but I did bring as many people as I could on the ring. The other perk with this award is that they would cover the registration fee for the following year. Honestly, I would still want to pay for my registration fee even if they paid it for me, just so that it's fair and equal to everyone. It takes a lot of money to run something like this. Renting a ring is not cheap. Ordering all the food and drinks to keep the wrestlers dehydrated and energized is costly. Organizing this event requires a lot of moolah. Also, at this point, the registration fee is very small compared to the costs of flight, rental car and lodging. This does leave me in a bind because I want to keep 1 year out of 2 for my personal leisure travels (in other words, wrestling), and 1 year for my family. This award kind of pushes me to come back next year rather than waiting for 2-3 years. All I can say for now is that I'll do my best to return next year. It's too early anyway to plan anything for Clash 21. Seriously though, with everything that has happened so far.. I really really REALLY want to come back next year! More-so for the Clash than for the Wrestlefest! I'm actually spending the best times of my life right here at the Clash, meeting great and amazing wrestlers! Joe mentioned that there was a total of 15 new Clashers (wrestlers) this year and each and every one of those clashers did an amazing job at the event. While most new Clashers usually stay behind and watch, the new Clashers this year actively participated in the event and performed amazingly well in the ring and on the mats. After all of this, it was now 8 pm and it was open ring/mats time. I had more open ring time with Heel4You and H2oWrestler. I also managed to get a rack on BearLord! Man, this guy is also very nice and.. very cute. The cutest bear at the event was definitely BearLord and the cutest cub was Buzz Jackson. Where does BuddySTL go? Well, he is the cutest wrestler :) I had almost missed wrestling LSPowerHouse (id 4337), but I finally managed to convince him to stay at the venue a tad longer and he went on and wrestled me, J and Heel4You. It was all caught on video, but I have to check with him if he wants it released or not. LSPowerHouse was pretty funny when I got him into my Torture Rack with Airplane Spin. While he was on my shoulders, I started spinning him counter-clockwise so he told me: - "The other way." I spun his clockwise and he instructed: - "Not too fast." And after a few rotations: - "Ok, you can drop me now." But you know what? That's exactly the type of communication you need to give to your opponents in a pro match :) And honestly, nobody outside the ring will hear what your opponent is telling you. I had a brief talk with Wrestlg who wanted to teach how to tie up my boots. He was able to determine the type and brand of the pairs I was wearing. It really shows he really loves wrestling boots. We came to the conclusion that the laces on my red/black boots are too long and I will need to get shorter ones in order to properly tie them up.I left the venue around 9 pm because RickSF, J and Roodle0p were tired and waiting and it's again unfair for me to make them wait. Before I left, I saw Rough House Rodrigo... we were supposed to do our pro match :( I felt so bad. I asked him if he would stay tomorrow, but no, like many wrestlers, most of them leave Saturday night or Sunday morning where they need to catch a flight back to their state. Sunday June 5th 2016: Open ring and mats SUNDAY JUNE 5 11:00 AM - OPEN RING AND MATS 04:00 PM - TAKE DOWN VENUE (HELP APPRECIATED) We arrived at the venue pretty early and Harley has arrived yet to open the door, so we went for Starbucks. When we got back around 11:30 AM, I was quite surprised: 3 years ago, there was only 4 people remaining: Joe, Harley, me and The Punisher. This year, there was at least ~15 wrestlers still present: Mighty Mongo, Joe, Harley, J, RickSF, Roodle0p, Kevin_Patrick, TampaChaser, BigChicago, Timnbama, BarrioBruiser, Major_Disaster, H2oWrestler, RasslorBear and at least 2-3 more people that I don't remember their ring handles or usernames. I briefly saw BuddySTL who carried me back and forth in a football tackle. Bearlord and him took the black/yellow mats away and were heading back home. Both thanked me for racking them. Uh.. I'd certainly do it again anytime. RickSF, J, Roodle0p and I decided to take the ring and do a tag team match. It was very fun and also... pretty hillarious. BarrioBruiser was the referee for our match and he was amazing. This match was actually recorded but cannot be shared. At least I have J now to look back in the future. Roodle0p actually tried to pin me while I was on my stomach, so a few wrestlers who gathered around the ring started laughing, but I actually did this rookie mistake several times in my early pro days. Joe actually named our tag team match the "Comedy match". I finally was able to wrestle BarrioBruiser (id 811)! It was a short match, but excellent match. Barrio is definitely a veteran wrestler that knows how to heel and how to lead. I was able to make a few pics with RickSF (id 8839) (my hotelmate from the Clash):
And I also got some pretty good ones with Edinchattanooga (id 2616). These turn out pretty well. You can see me servicing Edin... I'm actually just putting on his gloves:
He then rewards me with a headlock:
And this is how you say hello and goodbye in wrestling jargon: (Just kidding...)
I think Edin lost weight, because he was much easier to lift this time around... You can actually tell the difference by looking at the picture where I racked him 3 years ago. Yes, I know, I've been doing a lot of racks this event. My bearhugs suck anyway and if I was in an alternate reality or in a different life, this website would probably have been called the "Torture Rack Submission Page" instead of the "Bearhug Submission Page". Anyway, I also got ring time with Major Disaster and got a short recording. I'm also in the process of seeing if I can get that video and if it can be shared or not. Major Disaster could ask me for anything and I would do it. He was twice my photographer, so I am eternally grateful for that!!! In the following picture, you can see Major Disaster in control of the match with a powerful chinlock!
I actually learned later that this guy prefer to be jobbed. I'll need to work on my heel game next time. H2oWrestler took the opportunity to experiment a few holds on me. I think we were aiming for the suspended surfboard with this one. Unfortunately, we were never able to pull it off since I am not that flexible.
As you can see, the Sunday of the Clash is the best day to take pictures. With many people already gone, the remaining wrestlers are less shy, they'll embark on the ring, they'll try out new stuff and they're no longer afraid to bring up their camera. Same thing for 3 years ago: This picture was taken on the Sunday of the Clash 3 years ago. Nearing 1 pm, I was able to get a short match with TampaChaser, a very sweet, cute and buffed guy. TampaChaser actually went on the ring to ask me to wrestle him, because I was too shy to ask him. I wasn't so sure if he was interested in wrestling me. When I later read TampaChaser's profile, I realized that he will wrestle all sizes and skill levels. Once again, I made a bad assumption by associating an incorrect preference type for each of the wrestlers here. Everyone here is nice. The other problem is that he registered under Razor Raul so I couldn't connect his ring or first name with his wrestling profile. In other words, I didn't know Razor Raul was TampaChaser. SactoWrestler was still intimidated by the ring, so all we were able to exchange are a few bearhugs. He applied on me 2 x 3 x 360 degrees bearhugs. So, each bearhug of his does a 1,080 degrees rotation. I believe I also had a very small time in the ring with Harley again to try out a few pro moves. Harley is really a sweet guy. We took our pro very slowly and chilled out. I think we were practicing some sort of rollover slam that is usually performed when your opponent is down on the mats and facing up. I asked the winner of the Biggest Jobber JD to wrestle me on the sub mats, but he was tired out. :( He's a very cute guy... and he had a weight advantage on me so he would probably have been able to beat me ;) RasslorBear was also there, but we were both too shy to talk to each other. We then realized much later that we would have each wanted to wrestle each other. Now, I just missed there 2 opportunities. You turn left and right, and it's already 2 pm.. I had to leave. I made the big mistake I could ever do for the entire event. Had I knew that there would be so many wrestlers remaining on sunday, I would have scheduled nothing inside the timeline of the Clash Event (11 am - 4 pm). However, I had scheduled a motel match at 2 pm near the airport with Jobber_Squash and I had to leave now to make it in time. I left behind 15 great wrestlers to meet up one wrestler. Mind you, Jobber Squash also traveled all the way from Florida to have a match with me. He mentioned to me that he is a big fan of my site and he's the one who told me that I had the best racks in the wrestling underground ;) I also realized on my way out that Timnbama was in the ring taking pictures with Big Chicago (id 4201) while Mighty Mongo was the photographer. Had I stayed, I probably could have taken pictures with those three wrestlers and probably others as well. Timnbama actually was busy for the whole event and mentioned to me the day before that he only had 10 minutes of wrestling... until now. There was so much more I could do between 2 pm and 4 pm... but you know what... this will just help me come back for a 3rd year to make up for this. After leaving the venue, encountering some traffic and finally arriving at the hotel near the airport, Jobber Squash and I exchanged a couple of body scissors, bearhugs and racks. After that session, I then rejoined RickSF, Roodle0p and BarrioBruiser later to eat in downtown Atlanta and we were given a tour by ATLwrestler of a park named "Pee-In-My-Park". I was wondering a moment why people in Atlanta gave such strange, but hilarious names for their parks. A sign in front of the park then made me realize that the name of the park is actually: "Piedmont Park". I had a weird case of hearing and dyslexia reading because I also saw a sign that said "Orange City" but read "Orange Orgy". Either I'm tired or my mind is dirty. Monday June 6th 2016: Flight back to Montreal My flight was only at 3 pm, so RickSF, Roodle0p and I were able to schedule a match with ATLwrestler. At one point, we were all piled up and ganged up against Roodle0p. It was pretty fun. Nothing like a last hotel match before leaving Atlanta. I left at noon, picked up SactoWrestler at 12:30 pm, was at the airport at 1 PM to return my rental car. At 2:30 PM, I was in the plane... Temporary scratches/scars I actually received two temporary scars worthy of note during the event. One was on the back of my neck which brings me to tell you guys to please always cut your fingernails when you attend the wrestling event.  If you're doing sub, cutting toe nails is even more important because the amount of kickouts often required in submission. If you're just going to do pro, then the cutting is optional since wrestling boots will cover your feet anyway. The 2nd scratch here is caused by a prop that looked like a beer bottle. Yes, I did say earlier that the prop is harmless, but you still need to aim on the head, not near the eye. Nevertheless, the three little scars there disappeared after about 3 days. At the time of writing this, there are only dots remaining that will completely disappear tomorrow. Interestingly, when I took my shower, some remnants of the bottle fell from my hair and I realized that the fake beer bottle could actually become just very small particles of dust.  Rectification/clarification: I hold no grudges against the wrestlers who caused me this. Accidents happen in the ring, you just need to be cautious about them. Please see Blog ID 129 for additional details on this clarification. Car requirement, location of venue I have to admit that the car requirement is a bit of an obstacle. It's true that you can hitch a ride with someone that already has a car, but I'm more the type of person that doesn't want to bother too many people so I got my own car rental. I certainly don't drive at all back in Montreal (the subway system here is sufficient for me to get from home to work and to family). Since I don't want to take any risks with my inexperience in driving, I took maximum insurance for the car plus I added Roodle0p and RickSF as authorized and designated drivers. The venue is really out in the middle of nowhere so again, if you need to go eat, there's nothing that is of walkable distance so you'll have to drive the car again for 5-10 minutes to go eat. However, the organizers always make sure that you remain dehydrated. They have several coolers that contain a huge amount of bottled water, gatorade and lots of ice. There are also soft drinks on the table, granola bars and chips if you need a quick pit stop to refill your energy. You always see Harvey running around to refill all of the coolers, get more ice and refill food. On Saturday, the organizers even brought in pizza, sandwiches and cake just before the awards ceremony. Wrestlefest vs Clash: Which one to attend? Unlike the fest where you have to manage a schedule and book one person every 2-3 hours, the Clash is the complete opposite. You come there, you mingle and talk with wrestlers and you go up in the ring or down on the mats and you start wrestling. Matches can last anywhere between 5-30 minutes, but you need to stay aware and keep a look around the ring and mats to see if anyone is waiting to use it. I think I hogged and invaded the ring a bit too much this year, but I did check before hand if the ring was empty before hogging it. The other advantage is that if one person doesn't show up, you don't have to scramble to find someone else to fill in a spot. With the Clash, you just pick up a wrestler. 10-15% of wrestlers registered to the Clash usually cancel or never show up, but you can easily find someone else standing there to wrestle you instead or to do tag team matches, 2 vs 1 or even 3 vs 1. .In order to help people rotate the wrestlers using the ring, the organizers held a round-robin match where many wrestlers place themselves around the ring and can tag in/tag out anytime they want. That being said, this is a great opportunity to wrestle multiple wrestlers and get a taste of the type/style of pro wrestling used by each wrestler. The same can be done with the sub matches, but since we had two sets of mats, there was less problems regarding mats availability. Mind you, you can still book motel matches, but you'll quickly learn that you'll have a lot more fun wrestling the guys around at the venue. Why bother setting and messing up a hotel room for wrestling when you have wrestling mats and a wrestling ring? Not to mention that the available space to wrestle is way superior than what you'll get in a hotel. At the fest, I once got two calls from the reception asking us to keep it down. No matter how high you turn up the TV, the maids and the families staying in the adjacent rooms will probably still hear you. At the Clash, you are encouraged to make full use of the ring/mats and wrestle as much as you want and there's nobody in the other warehouses that will tell you to keep it down. If I can only pick a single event next year, I would certainly pick the Clash hands down. It can be a bit of a gamble: what this event was 3 years ago for me is really different this year, it got way way WAY better this year. I think people are now getting used to the change of venue and they are now really enjoying the new space. The lack of air conditioning might be a problem for some wrestlers, but there is a shower in the back that can be used to freshen up. You'd have to remember to bring your own sandals, towel, soap and shampoo. It doesn't take long before you sweat all over again because it gets pretty warm already at this time of the year, but you can always head back to the hotel and rest a bit. The hotels are about a 5-10 minute drive away. One of my friends had to do exactly that: the air was too thick and humid and he needed AC. He left the venue after a couple of hours and regained his hotel to stay cool and away from the heat. Would I do it again for a 3rd year? Yes, definitively. When I hugged Joe and thanked him, he told me not to wait 3 years before coming back. Joe, Harley, Timnbama, StumpyStew, BuddySTL were the real heroes behind the Clash because without them, there wouldn't be one. They are respectively the owner, co-owner and three members of the board. It takes a LOT of time, effort, sweat, preparation and a lot of rough moments to be able to manage an event like this and these guys are able to pull it out every year. Many people complain about various things, many wrestlers take things for granted, but very few people take the time to appreciate and thank these guys for organizing an outstanding event like this one. These guys gather the small underground gay wrestling community and they help us make new friends and they help us carve these memories that will last forever. If you want more information about the clash, visit their website: http://atlclash.blogspot.ca/ Or e-mail the owner: clashevent2016@gmail.com | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 67 x 1 | ||||||||||||||||
| Sunday March 13 2016 - Clash maybe? | Wrestling event | |||||||||||||||
I miss the Clash.. I haven't attended it since 2013. This photo brings me back a lot of memories...
Honestly though, I could have taken much much more photos, but I was quite a bit shy... People tell me that once you wrestle in a ring, you don't want to go back to a hotel/motel mattress. It'll be in May 2016 that I can evaluate if I can return to the Clash. The official dates of the Clash are June 2nd to June 5th 2016 so that would give me a month to make the preparations leading up to it.... if I can make it. The Canadian currency is pretty bad right now and I'm currently multiplying by 1.4x (or add +40%) any prices for traveling, food and lodging. On top of that, I need to rent a car for the duration that I'm there since the Clash is in the suburbs where it is impossible to travel anywhere otherwise. The Clash is really worth it though. We'll see... For those interested in knowing more about the event, see Joe and Harvey's Clash of the Titans blog at: http://atlclash.blogspot.ca | ||||||||||||||||
| Blog ID 53 | ||||||||||||||||
| Sunday February 28 2016 - Review: NYC Wrestlefest 2016 | Wrestling event | |||||||||||||||
| I can't believe it's already over. One week of wrestling... All in all, I've decided to cut by half the amount of matches this year. The reason for this is that I need to be careful and I need to be reasonable when thinking of my own potential and stamina. In addition, both EvilDark (id 1077) and WolfJobber (id 8490) were my roommates this year so we had to divide our schedule and sharing access to our hotel room in 3. We arrived on Friday Feb 19 2016, EvilDark and I started setting up the room. WolfJobber later joined us and he had the brilliant idea of putting up the base of the mattresses along with the wooden panels on one side of the room to hold all four single beds together so that the beds cannot move while we wrestle. It was a very nice setup. As with previous year, I also had bed strappers that held the sheets down at each corner. They didn't work all the time, but they were efficient enough to reduce the amount of times we had to reposition the sheets. Our 10 hours train trip exhausted us so we didn't schedule any match on the 19th. I believe the official dates of the fest to be between the 21st and the 23/24th, but many wrestlers come before to take advantage of the week-end. NickZ (id 3023) also usually holds on the saturday (In this year, on the 20th) an open room at his house, but I usually don't attend it because it takes about an hour and a half to get there. I'll need to do a better effort the next time to get there. My first match on Saturday Feb 20 2016 was with Rusnak (id 2653). I was a bit worried at first because he does have a greater weight advantage on me, but he went very easy on me. I'd say we did light sub with him occasionally giving me the upper hand. My 2nd match that day was with Tycoonboy (id 2690). We had a friendly pro match which was very relaxing. I then suggested Tycoonboy to meet later during the week to make pictures since he did mention he is a fan of my match against Be-Bear. I've decided to do a little bit of sightseeing this time around. It's my 5th time in NYC after all, and all the previous times I've visited NYC for the fest, I've only stayed in my hotel room to wrestle... So, EvilDark and I headed down to ground zero and visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum. It was quite a bit depressing, but we needed to see it. Around 8 pm, Wolfjobber and I had a match with SLiMJiM (id 7059) and Smeshy. These were full on competitive match, so we got tired pretty fast and simply started chatting for the rest of the night. We started Sunday Feb 21 2016 with a nice sub and pro match with Smeshy. I managed to get him stay over my room after yesterday's match. Wow.. this guy is just overly handsome. Having missed him 2 years ago, I was more than excited to finally have a rematch! I've got videos this time around, but these will probably remain private. I don't think Smeshy is comfortable with me sharing his face so you'll only see him a bit from the back here.
We were then supposed to me NJMuscGuy1 but he got injured. It's the 2nd time we missed him, but I'm keeping him on my radar since his recommendations do indicate that he is genuine. We moved up WreslBear (id 2181) from his original time slot and we did a couple of competitive matches followed by some give and take. WreslBear quite improved his wrestling skills. I'd say he is the most improved wrestler this year compared to our matches from 2 years ago. I think he lost a bit of weight and it shows that he's been training. This match was really fun. EvilDark really took advantage of this match to use WreslBear as his practice dummy. I don't remember who got who in the next picture, but I think WreslBear is probably the one in the better position. He has his arm around my neck and he is defending himself to prevent me from putting my own headlock around him.
We were supposed to meet RickSF (id 8839), but he had a bit of food poisoning, so he was nice enough to send me MattZ. I still remember wrestling this guy in November 2014 when I was visiting San Francisco... Istill remember he was completely invincible.. and he still is!!! All of my scissors are worth nothing. There wasn't a single hold that can make this guy budge! We spoke about the missed opportunity of taking pictures back in 2014, so we made sure this time to take some shots. MattZ prefers a bit of anonymity though so you won't see his face on this shot.
I started Monday February 22 2016 with a match against NJ_Woodbridge in a light competitive, give and take and jobber/heel mix and match session. NJ_Woodbridge has always been one of my favorite. He is quite passionate and he'll always brighten up the room when he walks in. I still remember him racking me when I walked in a room on my first Wrestlefest. What better way to welcome someone to a wrestling event? Our 2nd match of the day was with Jobberboy (id 482)... and wow, he got beefier and is much more skillful now. The trick with him is to avoid letting him do his sleeper and if you can scissor him, he'll most likely tap. I've mostly let him and EvilDark play around because EvilDark did tell me that Jobberboy is one of his favorite wrestler. I got my time with Jobberboy anyway: here's a shot where Jobberboy is head scissoring me and headlocking me. I definitely love his beard!
I was pretty aggressive because I still remember him cracking my ribs about 3 or 4 years ago when I allowed him to body scissor me while holding me in a reverse headlock... I didn't position myself properly back then. Later on, we finally had our match with RickSF (id 8839). He completely recovered from his food poisoning and wanted to be at 100% before tackling us. RickSF has improved... In fact, everybody this year has improved.. either that, or I lost some power... lol. Both EvilDark and I pushed RickSF into a gut punching and body scissor contest to determine which wrestler is more resistant or which wrestler had better scissors. RickSF is very playful.. and also a very handsome wrestler. Here is a kneeling rack on RickSF.
And here's also RickSF favorite hold. It's some sort of roll-up pin I guess. I actually need to get from him the real term. I believe it's a common hold in freestyle wrestling.
RickSF was so nice.. i commented on his nice San Diego Wrestling sweater with a big yellow bear paw and he ended up giving it to me. Sweeeet! A souvenir! . It really touched me. Exchanging gear is always a good way to remember someone or to leave a personal mark.
For the last half of the evening, I wrestled WrestlingCoachSF (id 4731). He's always a blast. He's aggressive, he's tough.. although both my body scissors and my leg scissors were able to pierce his defenses... if he lets me put those on him, of course. Our upper arm strength started to match this year.. I remember I could barely defend his attack on the arms previously. His techniques are still far superior than mine and I can still learn a lot from WrestlingCoachSF. He was very nice to sport and keep a beard when we met.I am still so shy to ask him if I can take pics... something tells me he might not want to... My pro matches actually started on Tuesday February 23 2016. My morning match was with RingWrestler (id 3709). I was worried I wouldn't "get the pro stuff" enough for him, but he made it very easy. Being more of a heel, RingWrestler threw me in flips and tumbles that were done gracefully without hurting me one bit. Very skillful and very passionate about pro wrestling. This was definitely an enlightening match and a great way to start my first pro match of the fest. Prostud_MI (id 8510) was my next match, also a pro match, but slower paced, so lighter pro. He lost some weight since our last meet so he was much easier to flip in a rack. Very cute stud. Here is him putting a knee backbreaker on me, followed by a standing camel variant.
I was then supposed to have a match with wrestlefan722, but he was quite a bit busy so that did not happen. This was followed by MikeSWUK (id 8896) in a semi-competitive match along with some training. Mike gave us a few tricks to up our wrestling submission skills. It also shows that Mike beefed up and got better also. He was much tougher to beat, but my scissors were still able to make him tap... although he had a couple of submissions on me. It always goes fast with Mike, because he always have lots of wrestling experiences to share. The proof is that I wanted to take pics but time flew so fast as we were talking that I wasn't able to get any pictures The open room was next, but I did a little mistake this year. I hadn't advertised it enough and I had not made it clear that it could be shared with everyone. A total of 10 people were in this room: MikeSWUK, AKRob, WreslBear, Gracie Paul, Scottilla (id 3020), NJ_Woodbridge, Hellcateddy (id 7537), BrownBomber (id 1265), EvilDark and myself. My match with Hellcatedy was a real quickie.. he is so light that he is among the few people that I can rack starting in a kneel down position and be able to stand up without hurting my back. Scottilla was still invincible. He's the only wrestler I have wrestled at almost every wrestling event, including the Clash of the Titans and the previous 4 fests, that I had never once being able to make him tap. He'd always had so much ease making me tap.. but that's what you get from an olympic medalist. He is up there with the elite guys, while I still dawdle forever in the intermediate level.Here's a shot with a rack on BrownBomber... this shot is unusual in the sense that I seem phased off or out of sync... I don't remember what I was thinking. But.. I absolutely love this shot. Kudos to the photographer... hehehe.
There was an 11th person that showed up but I couldn't figure out who this person was... I actually wrestled Gracie Paul at my first or second wrestlefest. I don't think he has a profile, nor does he put his name up for the registration. This makes him virtually invisible and hard to track. He's a very cute guy. In any case, I'll remember next time to give a shout out for my open room and to invite more people. Nevertheless, I don't regret it.. our small open room was fun and I rotated the matches with almost everyone who showed up. Wednesday February 24 2016 started with a match with FantasyFeak (id 4223). Both WolfJobber and I were up against him, and this was more a heel vs jobbers, where both Wolfjobber and I were jobbers. Quite a fun match and it was very nice to see how FantasyFeak easily handles double-teaming and taking control of both his jobbers. Yeah... FantasyFeak is better known as Tim Sheridan from BG East. Yay! I get to wrestle a BG celebrity! Here's a shot where he performs his victorious pin on me. It shows how a great and invincible heel he is. I mean how can I possibly beat a celebrity?
AKRob was my next match. Despite seeing him in the open room, he was too sore from his previous match to be able to grant me a match yesterday. So today, we got into light submission with some give and take. AKRob is a very nice guy and I had so much fun wrestling him! I did cuddle him quite a bit heheheh... and we took the opportunity to do some shots as well. He is very strong and very resistant also. My full nelson and body scissors combo did nothing to him... it seems that more and more people just build an immunity against it. It's only later that I realized that AKRob wanted to be immortalized in the sense of making a match on the site. I need to make a rematch with him to make all the necessary pics for a scenario.
The next match after this was with Jobberboy, WreslBear, RickSF and EvilDark, we were taking turns. I guess this can be called a mini open room. It was pretty fun. EvilDark was in a corner with Jobberboy, I was in a corner with RickSF. EvilDark would trade turns with WreslBear... and there was plenty of space for 2 matches to run concurrently. WarriorJS (id 10934) later showed up and this was my cue for a full on 100% competitive match. After 10 minutes, I think WarriorJS had me 5-0, many of these submission were due to his deadly sleeper hold. I could resist his scissors and he could resist mine, so those were nullified... I rarely ever put sleepers through fear of hurting people. WarriorJS was way up there and was a much better wrestler than I am. I later learned that he could tone it down and he could even do pro...The only hold that would actually work on WarriorJS is a leg scissors on the thigh by using the knees to compress. However, WarriorJS easily avoided that hold by always having the upper hand and by staying on top of me. In fact, the only way I could apply this hold is when he willingly lets me apply it on him. My last match of the day was a short give and take session with WrestleInAstoria. He's a local not registered for the fest, but EvilDark wanted to give him a shot. I mainly traded head scissors and body scissors with him. He could take quite a few. BLarger was our morning match for Thursday February 25 2016, but he had to cancel due to the bad traffic in NYC. I was then supposed to have NickZ and WrestleVA7, but they mixed up the time slot so I squeezed in Grabmnsqwz (id 2569). Light submission, give and take, lots of headscissors and body scissors. This guy is very cute and it's a shame he doesn't put his pic... but like many, not everyone is comfortable in putting their faces on the net. He sports this very nice beard... and yea, everyone knows that I have this weakness with beards... I just melt! I had a wonderful time with him. It was RickSF who introduced me this wrestler and when I saw him for the first time, I told myself, "wow.. cute. I wonder if he'll wrestle me."... Little did I know he was thinking the same thing I ended the day with a rematch with Tycoonboy (id 2690), but this time around, it was to prep up a scenario.. so we took up a lot of shots and I'm thinking this will be probably one of those 10 pages match. I'll be stingy and only post two here.
Yes, you're not seeing it wrong. That's Tycoonboy smiling at my head scissors. It's the gimmick of the great Tycoonboy being so great and powerful that none of my holds have any effect on him. I'm sure you guys are used to that by now. My only regret this trip is that I didn't spend enough time with WolfJobber. Nevertheless, we did go out to watch a movie together and we had most of our meals together. We caught up on the two years we missed. I asked EvilDark during the week to close his tablet. When he is at home in Quebec city, he can play with his tablet anytime he wants. When he's here at the Wrestlefest, I do want him to participate, talk to the guys, socialize and WRESTLE! Which he promptly did... thankfully. He stopped touching his tablet for the 2nd half of the week. The reduced wrestling load was a good thing because I came up home with less bruises, less sores.. but I did get a cold o_O... which will probably disappear in 9 days. The only reason I got this cold was because I was careless. Some days were warm enough in NYC to just stroll around with t-shirt... yes, even in February, but a couple of other days were windy and rainy and I didn't dress warm enough I guess. I think I will keep the reduced-load format in the upcoming years... which unfortunately would probably be every 2 years since I keep one year for my family and one year for personal leisure such as wrestling. Our train ride back home on Friday February 26 2016 was uneventful, but both EvilDark and I were heading back with memories that will last forever. We gave WolfJobber a warm goodbye before he headed out to Albany. This ends and concludes my 5th year at the Wrestlefest. This year, I had a couple of 4 hours slots and many 2 hour slots. In comparison, 2 years ago, I had 2 hour slots with lots of 1 hour slots on the Wednesday. I had 18 matches and 3-6 open room matches (3 of which were unique, 3 others were repeats). This is down from 33 matches and 12 open room matches from my 4th Wrestlefest in 2014. But again, I purposely toned it down because I didn't want to go home too sore... just a little bit sore. Sometimes, you need to enjoy life, but you also need to take it easy and don't overestimate yourself. A friend once told me that its quality that counts rather than quantity. All in all, the Wrestlefest is still a great event to attend if you are very fond of wrestling. How else can you schedule a long string of consecutive matches in a single week when normally, back home, I'd only have a match per month (or less)? Of the 18 matches, 5 people were new wrestlers which I have not wrestled previously in any of the other Wrestlefests: RingWrestler, AKRob, WarriorJS, WrestleInAstoria and Grabmnsqwz. These are all guys I will definitely put back on my watch list in my future fests. Update 2021-07-28: Fast forward five years later, I browse MeetFighters and fall on FlWresler whom I apparently wrestled during the fest, but have no recollection. He either used Dave of FlWresler, yet that still does not bring up any memory. I feel terrible. :( | ||||||||||||||||
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