Wrestling Beast's blog

When I was planning my next match with my friend, I was thinking about some changes to our standard routine of sumo, wrestling and body boxing. I made suggestions and he agreed to try them.

The first suggestion had to do with our sumo. I kind of felt that forcing each other off the mat really was often over too quickly. I felt we needed something with more impact. My basement is long but somewhat narrow, as you can see in my photos and videos. For our meetup, I decided to scrap the force off the mat rule. Instead we would try to see how often we could slam each other up against either wall and how long we could hold each other there. I timed it for 1 minute with breaks of 30 seconds in between. I thought I had recorded it with an intent to share it here, but it didn't record :( It was really a lot of fun and I think we will keep this format for future matches.

The second suggestion came later. Big guys like us tend to throw our weight around, so we did a variation of the football tackle. One person would stand about one tile from the edge of the mat and the other person would rush at them from the other edge of the mat and collide with their body. The rusher's job would be to move the defender off the mat but could not use his hands to push the defender. The defender's job was to brace himself and be moved as little as possible. Five times and then we would switch roles. This was also a lot of fun as a variant on our sumo routine.

The final suggestion was to add light head punches to our body boxing. When my friend and I put on the boxing gloves, we are competing against each other and throw punches wherever and whenever we can. It is not a controlled contest like one-sided or mutual gutpunching. Our object in body boxing is to go on until one of us gives up. Occasionally in prior matches there have been punches that have landed above the chest. We are guys and friends and can suck it up. Even in body boxing, there is always a risk of a head shot. This time I wanted to make it OK to intentionally aim punches to the head, and I was glad when he agreed. I made sure not to throw head shots too often or too hard and I think it added to the match significantly. We were not wearing head gear, so the punches were not as hard as they could be. We definitely had a fun time. I was able to video this match and it is available in my videos, dated for 08-06-16.

I had planned to post video of our wrestling this time, but about two minutes in I encountered a wardrobe malfunction. As I kept earning more and more submissions, my wardrobe was mysteriously increasingly failing on me ;p It quickly became apparent that no video would be available from this bout. Next time I hope to wear a more reliable wrestling speedo.