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.