devonwrestler's blog

I was up in London towards the end of last year and managed to get along to the Grapple 101 held at the 'Eagle'. The event I attended was only the second of these events to take place, so I expect that the organisers were feeling their way a bit and for all I know, the event I attended may not be typical of the more recent ones.

I can say that I did very much enjoy my evening (night really) at Grapple 101 and I hope to be back again when I get the chance. It was definitely an extra thrill for me to wrestle for an audience of 'punters', i.e. guys off the street (generally gay or bi ones of course, it is a gay bar). I really felt like I was a 'proper' wrestler as I stepped out onto the mat, naked except for my swim trunks, and watched by all those guys in their street cloths. I suppose I must be a bit of an exhibitionist, at least with wrestling, but if you dont like the idea of being on display you had better just go to Grapple 101 as a spectator. You dont have to wrestle if you dont want to.

I reckon that having an audience did encourage me to wrestle to the best of my ability. There were some experienced wrestlers present that night, so as a relative beginner I lost more rounds than I won, at least I hope the punters enjoyed watching my helpless struggles as I was forced into painful submissions! Mind you, I did get my own back against a couple of other novices present. A nice thing was that the audience applauded every submission so we must have been doing something right to keep them interested.

I arrived soon after doors open time, along with a group of four other wrestlers I already knew quite well - this pastime is quite a small community. The changing facilities were basic, but then you dont really need much in the way of facilities to get undressed and slip into your swim trunks. Our cloths were packed away and looked after for the rest of the evening, so keep some change aside for soft drinks. Some people wrestled in boots, but I prefer bare feet and either option seemed acceptable. Obviously, if you are going to wear boots they must be the soft wrestling type boots. Most of us wore swim trunks, but shorts also seemed acceptable, so I would say you can just wear what you enjoy wrestling in.

Ashley and the other organisers were really helpful in getting us wrestlers at least a bit organised and making sure that everyone who wanted got a chance to get on the mat. Basically it was up to you who you chose to challenge to a fight and i think you do have to be a bit careful fighting with someone you have never met before. I think everyone present was taking care to wrestle safely but you can never be sure. At least with an event like this you can watch someone wrestling before you decide to challenge them. I hear that they have now introduced referreeing which should also help keep it safe. Its fine to wake up the next morning with sore muscels everywhere, but no one wants to get injured. There was a bit of a difficulty with the mats slipping about on the floor, so some of us held the mats still when not our turn to wrestle - at least that way I got a real close up view of the action. I hear the problem of the slipping mats may now been solved. At one point they got us novices to do some simple training exercises, practicing set moves on each other, but I am not sure that was so successful. The background music was not excesively loud but it was loud enough that it was hard to hear the instructions, so it may not be an ideal training environment. Later in the evening we did tag wrestling, but not the ususl team tag wrestling. We just had four wrestlers standing around the edge of the mat and the guy in trouble would tag the nearest. That seemed to work well, it kept the action going and it got me wrestling with a few guys, Ashley for one, who I wouldnt have dared to challenge otherwise. Was fun struggling against such a fit muscular guy as Ashley, even if it was for only 15 seconds or so. It was a late night for me. I had intended to leave at midnight but I just couldnt tear myself away and stayed till chucking out time in the early hours.

Hope that has given anyone who is thinking of going to one of these events an idea of what it is about.

I generally try to get to the Grapevine wrestling afternoons which are held near Stratford on Avon four times each year. Nice to get together with a friendly bunch of guys and get the chance to wrestle in front of a like minded audience, which somehow adds to the appeal for me, and presumably for most of us who like group wrestling meetings. There are usually about 6 to 10 of us at these meetings, which is a nice number. We wrestle single round 3 minute bouts, so if you are feeling energetic you can fit a lot of bouts into an afternoon and still get a breather between bouts. Some bouts do get a bit competitive if both guys are well matched and both want to get submissions, but no one bothers too much about scoring, the idea is just to have fun and exercise, and to keep it 'safe and sane'. Some of us go for a meal together afterwards - when we are not next to naked and rolling about on a wrestling mat we can look reasonably respectable for a smart pub, quite an amusing contrast in a way! Last weekend the venue had to be changed at short notice, to the Long Eaton wrestling room. Maybe that explains why only four of us got there, even so we had a nice wrestle. Would be good to see a few more next time though.

I recently spent a weekend up in London which is quite a long way for me, but it did give me the chance to get to two of Iain's wrestling sessions in his purpose built wrestling clubhouse. The first session was an erotic 'rip and strip' session on the Saturday evening. I arrived to find the lights turned low and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom I became aware of a few naked bodies standing around, but as yet no action had started. Feeling keen, I slipped out of my cloths and challenged one the naked bodies to a fight. I hadnt wrestled for a while and it felt good to be in skin to skin combat again, soon getting slippery with sweat as we each struggled to find possibilities for submission holds. Once we got started, others paired up and there were soon several of us at it. Then we started on the rip and strip, something that I had never done before. Not wanting to sacrifice either of the two swim trunks I posess, I had brought along a few pairs of old underpants that had seen better days. As Ian had suggested, I had snipped the waistbands in a few places to give the opposition a fair chance, modern underpants are otherwise almost indestructable. I soon found that rip and strip can become quite competitive, the objective differs from the submission/pin wrestling, but when it gets competitive it still demands concentration and effort to block your oponent from grabbing your pants while at the same time trying to get a grip on his. I also challenged a couple of guys to a round of rip and strip as a 2 onto 1 match, suggesting they see how quickly they could get my pants down and right off over my feet. They were both at least my size, so I didnt expect to last long, but actually it took them a lot longer than I expected. I hadn't wrestled 2 onto 1 before, although I had often thought it would be fun to try. I soon found that with 2 guys attacking you, you are only going to be wrestling defensively, and with all your efforts being concentrated on defence you may well hold out longer than you might expect, at least thats how I found it, from that one experience. If I might say so, my oponents had not planed their attack very well. Eventually they got me down with one of them pinning me on my back and more or less controling my arms. The other was trying to get my pants off, but because I was on my back it was easy for me to make it really difficult for him by kicking with my legs and bucking about. If they has forced me down on my chest, then if necessary twisted my arms behind my back, I think I would have been pretty helpless and those pants off in no time - just the way the body bends in the middle. I did find that whole Saturday evening session good fun and certainly erotic at times, although it did not develop into the full blown orgy one might have expected, another time who knows. The Sunday session that weekend, was quite different, being a proper training session plus the chance to do a few competitive rounds. Apart from Iain the instructor, only me and one other turned up, that other being M. who I have wrestled before a few times and who generaly gives me a good scrap. It is a pity that Iain's meetings do not always get the attendence that Iain would like to see, but with just two of us we did get some intensive tuition. Without going into details, (wouldnt want to give away too many secrets) Iain started by explaining three ways to counter a side headlock. As a novice, I thought that once you are in a side headlock your head just goes wherever your oponent wants it to go, which is usually down on the mat. I now know that it doesnt have to be that way. Then we looked at a few other holds and countermeasures and M. and I practiced them on each other. Finally M and I did a couple of long and exhausting rounds of subs/pins and we got one sub each, a nice result. I can recommend Ian's meetings, well worth a try if you are within range of SE London, he has a yahoo group called SpeedoWrestlers.