"Do Something That Scares You" And Other Misguided Pieces of Advice

 I was 49 years old the first time I stepped into a wrestling ring. 

It had started randomly enough. I was setting up to play a show with the man behind the mask of El Flaco Loco (I won't reveal his shoot name because that's the law of the luchas) when he mentioned that he'd be late getting there that night because he had a wrestling match. Now mind you, this was in the infant months of post-pandemic America, and the whole world was buzzing with the electricity of everybody wanting to start sucking the proverbial marrow out of life after basically retreating to our caves for about three years, so consider that in context when I tell you that for whatever reason, my interest was piqued. So I asked a couple of questions, got the obligatory, "you should come by and train with us some time" and put that in my back pocket for a different day.

Fast forward a month or two and I'm walking in the door of a professional wrestling training facility. I had no idea what I was going into, but I was deeply invested in trying new things. I also find a kind of surreal joy in doing things that are stupid. (You'll note that this is a recurring theme for me.) Two hours later I was aching, exhausted, beat up, and I couldn't wait to come back again. 

This continued for several months, but the further I got into it, the more I realized that I was in way over my head. I'd been basically physically stagnant for several years and my almost 50 year old body was keen on letting me know how ill-prepared it was for some of these activities.

One of these was a very simple drill that practiced running the ropes and doing what's called a "drop down." Everyone knows this move. A wrestler is running the ropes and his opponent throws himself to the ground in front of the guy in what I'm told is supposed to look like an attempt to trip him. (To me it always looked like an "Oh shit what do I do here" move to buy yourself some time but whatever.) You run the ropes while your partner throws himself at your feet five or ten times, causing you to jump over him, and then trade roles and do it again. That drill alone wasted my legs. It went beyond fatigue or being "gassed." My legs were quite literally numb and felt like concrete, but I kept trying to do what was asked of me, and they kept kicking my ass. Every drill they threw at me, I'd at least give it a shot. I might not have been all that great, but I heard what the coaches were teaching me and I was an eager student. Maybe my body couldn't handle a lot of the stuff in that ring, but my mind was a sponge, and I was having the time of my life.

Which would have been fine, were it not for the concussions. 

The first rule of taking bumps in wrestling is "tuck your damn chin." Anytime you're hitting the mat, there's a 90% chance that you're landing on your back, and when you land on your back, you gotta tuck that chin so you don't hit your head on the mat.

(Let's take a quick aside here and have a quick lesson on what a wrestling "mat" really is. It's a piece of canvas covering a very very thin layer of foam, which is laid on top of a bunch of 2x4 slabs of pine, which are nestled loosely on a large metal frame. That noise you hear when a wrestler hits the mat is the sound of about 20 planks of wood rattling around on a bed of hard steel. There seems to be a perception that wrestling rings are soft. They are not.)

I was not good at tucking my chin, and I hurt myself a few times. The last time I was doing a drill with The Godfather of Swole (real name, Ralph). I don't know what this drill was because I don't remember it. I woke up on the mat with no recollection of how I got there or what I had been doing. All I know is that Ralph gave me a shoulder tackle (the simplest move in the move set) and I didn't tuck my chin.

I do remember very distinctly how weird it felt to knock myself silly. I had taken several shots to the head in the months previous to this incident, and definitely had concussed myself a couple of those times. This time I lost consciousness for probably less than a second - so quick that I probably didn't technically even go out, but it felt like I was a computer that just took a hard reset. I needed help remembering what we'd been doing. I had almost no recollection of anything from the last few hours. My brain had turned to pudding in a matter of seconds and I was lost on my feet.

It was about a minute or two later when I said, "Maybe this isn't such a good idea anymore," and nobody in the room disagreed. 

But very quickly after that I pivoted to something different. I had the personality and the mic skills for the business. It was the whole "wrestling" thing that got in the way, so I did what every other failed professional wrestler did.

I became a manager.

Enter The Commodore, Brentwood Sinclair. The Commodore is a grown up spoiled rich kid/yachting enthusiast with a penchant for yacht rock. He swings a fraternity paddle (I created a fake fraternity, Sigma Tau Epsilon. It makes the acronym for "Smarter Than You.") and is the spiritual and financial leader of his own wrestling faction, The Yacht Club. 

I was having the time of my life. The crowd HATED me. It was weird how much joy my own wife and kids took in booing me and talking shit but I won't look too far into that.

Actually, as an aside, I have to talk about my family for a moment here. I know that at one point early on when I was still training as a wrestler I announced that I wouldn't be home for dinner because I had to go to training and my daughter Emily stopped, looked at me, and said, "Oh seriously? This is a thing?" The whole wrestling thing took me and everyone around me completely by surprise, but I can't imagine how lousy the experience would have been if my family didn't support me. They were (and are) amazing cheerleaders for me and Emily, of all people really became an honest to god wrestling fan. She was far and away my best wingperson when I was working shows. 

As of this writing, I've been at this for a little over two years, and I have no plans to stop. Independent wrestling has my heart, and I'll never be the same for it. Long live the Yacht Club. Long live The Commodore.