alpinisto's blog

Since I had started wrestling in 2013 after my stroke I had always had a lot of wrestling taking place in Berlin. For there are practically not any wrestlers in Copenhagen, except for when I can meet with other wrestlers visiting the city as tourists, and I then can get lucky to meet them for a wrestle. While there are much more wrestlers in Berlin, and Berlin is just an hour away by flight - or eight hours by bus. When in Berlin I often stay with my wrestling mate kleiner kerl, and as he has his own mats there also are several Berlin or other German wrestlers coming by for a match when I am there.

This time I had planned that I would stay eight days in Berlin, so that there would be time for more than wrestling, and already on the first day we had two guys visiting, both guys which I had not wrestled before. The first one was a guy I had never heard of and whose name I barely could pronounce, but when my mate showed me his profile on MeetFighters I immediately saw him as a charming guy. About twenty years younger than me and only six kilos heaver than me in spite of being five inches shorter than me. So this was looking to become a good match, had it not been for my normally strong legs, which had turned increasingly painful the recent months, this because the strength of my legs had deteriorated as my knock-knees had increased.

The result was that I found difficulty in turning my opponent over with my legs in a ground fight while I no longer had the strength in my bodyscissors I had grown used to. That told me that I had to venture on another kind of strategy. But changing horses in midstream is always bound to failure, especially if this is in the middle of a wrestling match. For naturally my opponent made use of my unexpected weakness and made sure that he could get on top of me. I had always been happy wrestling opponents heavier than myself, for with my strong legs I had mostly been able to get some kind of control of the match. But now this control was virtually non-existing, and once my opponent took seat on my chest it was very difficult to remove his weight. Which was very frustrating, for I could read from his profile that he had less experience than I had.

The other wrestler was a guy I had hoped to wrestle the previous month when I had been some days in Dresden, but we never met while I was there, because it would take me too long time to take the train to his place and back to be of any good for the time I had available. So it was a good coincidence that he had come to spend a couple of days in Berlin while I was here. That guy had very much similar stats as I had, and, like my previous opponent, had not much experience, but in lack of that experience he was making more use of his body strength and his weight.

With 96 kilos we were both heavier than average, but while I often had tried equalizing my weight advantage when wrestling lighter guys, this opponent clearly made use of his weight in the fight. Which could not bother me while I had my former strong legs. But without this strength I should have used the same technique which my mate did against me to prevent that I got on top of him. But I didn't and therefore it also didn't take long before this second opponent got on top of me. So as a result I was defeated in both the matches this day.

A few days later we had another wrestling visitor, and this not any wrestler, for this visitor turned out to be the strongest wrestler I met during those eight days I spent in Berlin. Finn was his name, and my mate had often talked about him when I had visited him, But I had never met Finn, so when I was asked if I wanted to wrestle him I obviously accepted. I had chatted with him a bit in the previous years, and now I had the best chance to meet him. He was five years younger than me, five cm shorter and a lot lighter. But when he took of his shirt I could see that he had a well-sculpted and toned body with plenty of muscle.

First of all Finn wanted to have a match with my mate, probably so that I could see what I was up to, and reluctantly he accepted that challenge. For my mate had wrestled Finn previously so he knew what he was up to. And he was not surprised in any way, for it didn't take much more than a minute before Finn had total control of my mate. I had by now wrestled my mate a dozen times and won most of the times, but I had never been able to show such supremacy like Finn did now.

I had by now realised that I could not trust my legs completely, and this way my strongest weapon was not reliable. So I had to see what I could do with my upper body. Which I knew wasn't much, but at least I should be able to keep him somewhat at bay with my bearhugs. They had been pretty strong long before I had begun wrestling, but then put them aside for safety reasons after having bent some ribs on one of my friends when I had greeted him with a bearhug. But there was no alternative, so I did what I found possible, even though this probably wasn't enough. Once again I wished for that I could have done some training so I had more techniques to choose from.

The least I could do was to show some good resistance, even though I assumed that all resistance to Finn was hopeless. But anything would be better than just flip onto my back and give up. Also I was a bit curious of what I could achieve even without my valuable legs, and I was surprised when I was able to last longer than my mate. Finn was trained in a lot of combat sports; he was also a master in Aikido and Kendo, and while I had never done anything in these East Asian combats it gave me a good feeling that I would survive, for then he would be both safe and sane in tradition with the Budo oath. So even if I could not win I at least could show some resistance. After this match I got the recommandation from him that I had a strong upper body - but I assumed that writing this he was only kind to me.

I wrestled him again the following Monday, but this didn't bring much change - wrestling Finn felt like swimming in a pool of quick-drying concrete. Once he had me in a hold there was not any chance to making a change on that. So out of the six matches I had during the eight days in Berlin there was only one guy who had surrendered to me. And this was catchbear1, probably the guy I had wrestled most often, next to kleiner kerl. He also was the heaviest of my opponents that week, so I assume that he had only been kind to me, so that I at least could bring one victory home from Berlin.

The following day I left Berlin after a long and intense week of wrestling and returned to Copenhagen. I had an appointment in my hospital on Wednesday to find what could be done with my knock-knees I had been bothered with during the last ten years. Too much long-distance running and high-altitude climbing with heavy rucksacks through 30 years had taken its toll, and the last six months it had increased the mobility problems I've had since the stroke. In the hospital I was put under X-ray, and then there was no choice: I am going to have both knees replaced. The first surgery is planned to take place in October, the second to take place three months later, so from next October I expect that I won't be able to wrestle the next six months before I slowly can start up again.

I am not planning any more wrestling the next four weeks, as for once I will travel without wrestling. In two weeks I will have a week of holiday in Spain where I will focus on my other interest in bondage. So I expect that my next wrestling match will take place in Florida late August, where I am invited to visit and wrestle a wrestling couple there. Which I am sure will be a challenge for not only me but also my legs. This visit to Florida will take place just before my annual visit to New Jersey, and maybe I also will meet other guys there to wrestle. We'll see about that.