Monaco Off the Mats

Hello once again dear readers! Hope you're all having a great week and getting into all kinds of hot matches 😊 Today I wanted to touch on something that gets all of us a bit annoyed at times and hear your thoughts on what to do to solve it...

We've all had matches set up where we arrange to meet someone locally or away from our home turf. Everything is awesome, the pre-match banter online has been hot and the day finally comes. Then the guy is 15 minutes late. Then an hour. Then 2 hours. Then 3 hours. Finally, a long-delayed excuse message about why they can't make it after all 😑

Now, I won't name names here, that's not what the point is of this post. And I'm not talking about situations where there's a vague "maybe we can meet" exchange, I'm talking about the "Saturday at 1 P.M. at my place" situations where the gear is on, the mats set up and you're left hanging. Most frustrating to me is when this happens while on vacation, specifically to wrestle.

Years ago, I had such a trip to NYC where I had set up roughly 5 matches for a weekend trip. Not a single match I had planned happened as expected. Not. A. Single. One. 5 different opponents had issues that all suddenly showed up. All very unique and creative reasons (one notable one was that my opponent had suddenly forgotten he had tickets to see a show that evening and couldn't show up as a result...how does one forget that exactly?). And I do get it, sometimes there are REAL reasons that life gets in the way that are unforeseeable. I once had to cut a match short because my sister was going into labor so yeah, some things truly are out of our control.

What can we as a community do to help avoid these situations? One idea I heard recently was to have a "deposit" system for matches. Want a match? Take some monetary deposit that you hold onto until the opponent shows up OR that you keep when they don't. I'd have been disappointed in NYC all those years ago, but I'd have had my meals paid, right?

The downside I see to this is the mixing of money into what should be a fun time between two consenting (and hopefully punctual) adults. But what other alternatives do we have? Recommendations on this site can help spot problematic opponents on that front, but it often turns into a he-said-he-said without any clarity on who's at fault for the no-show.

In an ideal world, people set a time, they communicate and show up on schedule. But I get it too, the world can be chaotic and messy as we've all learned in recent years.

On that note, share your thoughts and stories! What have you had as experiences? What do you do to ensure people show up?

For now, I'm off to set up some matches...unless the guy suddenly forgot he has to go to space 10 minutes before we meet 😜