Team Strategy Was Tough On Me

      Before I met the guy that Mr. Dano said would kick my ass in wrestling, I had plenty of things on the team to keep my mind otherwise occupied.

In wrestling there was all sorts of complex strategies to master.

For instances, if the coach wanted you to wrestle at a higher weight class at a future meet, you had to do as he said…even if you had to maintain your current bodyweight for a lighter weight classes.

      We were often not allowed to wrestle at certain weight classes even if we made weight, if it was not done with the permission of the coaches.

      When I was in high school, it was permissible for a wrestler to compete in several weight classes above him. I think that today, it is limited to one weight class above.

      This type of juggling made sense to a certain extent. Every time we prepared for a match against another school’s team, our coach often looked at the skill level of each player on our team and then he would look at the skill or record and reputation of the wrestlers on the other teams. After evaluating all the kids involved on each team, it was his job to figure out how each of us would fare in our normal weight classes, or how we may fare if one or many of us had to go up or down one or more weight classes, to prepare for our next match. Our coach had to take all of this into account and then look at how that would affect the team overall.

      For instances, a few times our coach determined that our man at the one hundred and eight-five pounds would not have a chance against a beast in the same weight class at the school we were going against at the next meet, he would have to form a special strategy.

      Depending on many factors he would have our one hundred and eight-five pound varsity man stay in that class and wrestle Junior Varsity for that meet, and then he would designate me, a one hundred and forty two pound man to wrestle that beast from the other school in the one hundred and eighty-five pound class. He did this because he figured that I would have the best chance of defeating the one hundred and eighty-five beast.

      After designating me to a heavier class, he would have Jimmy jump up from junior varsity to wrestle my varsity position, while most of the other wrestlers would stay in their classes; or he would put me in the one hundred and eighty-five pound varsity slot, and then the kid from that slot would have to diet down to the next lower weight class.

      Then he had the kid in the weight class below the one hundred and eighty-five class to diet down to the weight class below him in the next lower category, and so forth. Our coaches employed various permutations of this strategy.

      Whenever I was instructed that I would be moving up, it was always right to the one hundred and eighty-five pound weight class, never in between.

      Once I was instructed to suck down to the weight class below what I normally wrestled at. Dieting down was extraordinarily tough for me since I did not have any fat on my body to play with.

      The discipline that it required from me to purposely starve myself and limit my water intake so that I could make the lower weight was especially excruciating. It went against my prime directive. I was tortured by dreams of food and water always just out of reach.

      In both my dreams and life I knew what the mythological person Tantalus must have felt like. In my dreams and my life I suffered the same agonies that Tantalus suffered.

      Tantalus was the son of Zeus and the King of Sipylos. Before his punishment he was favored among mortals since he was invited to share many banquets with the gods of Olympus.

      I forget how he eventually inspired the wrath of the gods, but he did. Because Tantalus like me was fixated on the pleasure of food and because of this obsession, the gods devised an especially devilish punishment for him. The gods of Olympus put Tantalus within a pit in a place called Tartarus; it was there that he was made to suffer from excruciating pangs of thirst and starvation for eternity. It was also there that for the rest of eternity he would be immersed up to his neck in cool clean water. Whenever Tantalus would try to slake his thirst by bending forward to suck up the water, the water perversely would keep lowering so that it would always be just out of reach for poor Tantalus.

      Even when he tried to throw himself violently face first into the water in a desperate attempt to alleviate his parched body he would end up with a mouth full of sand for his efforts.

      The gods also kept numerous fruit trees around the pit where Tantalus was imprisoned. The variety of luscious fruit would sway at the ends of the branches, just out of reach of his mouth but often within reach of his hands; that is until he would make a desperate grab for the fruit, which would cause the winds to blow the fruit always just out of reach. No matter how quickly he moved to eat or drink or how subtly or slyly he went for nourishment the gods made his task impossible for him.

      In my dreams I was never in a pit. I was able to move about freely. Also in my dreams there was a greater variety of food floating around me than poor Tantalus and always seemingly within my grasp. I would see plump butter-basted turkeys dripping moist with tenderness, pineapple and cherry laced Christmas hams, thick juicy rare T-boned steaks, lobster dripping in butter and a variety of biscuits, and cornpone with all the vegetables and fruits that I loved. In real life, I was tormented to watch my family eat my mother’s delicious meals. My hunger and thirst would be unbearable.

      It was impossible to say which was worst, my hunger for food or my thirst for liquids; both my hunger and thirst competed viciously for first place. My mouth lost its moistness from saliva but was never quite bone dry, instead and perhaps worse was the feeling that I had “Elmers Glue” that was congealing and coating the inside of my mouth.

      I felt these pangs every moment I was awake and I was unable to escape this torture even in my dreams.

      Whenever I went to grab any of the tempting items of food whirling and floating around me, just like Tantalus the food would magically whisk away. Whenever I tried to jump into a pool of fresh clean water, I also would find my self-sucking sand. Like Tantalus I felt constantly tantalize by food and drink all around me.

      This was the first time in my life that I would learn about certain fine distinctions of starving under different circumstances. I learned that it was terrible to starve because unfortunate life circumstances out of your control, which did not permit you having an adequate supply of food – such as when I lived in North Carolina. It is worse to have someone or any outside agency purposely get in the way of you acquiring adequate nourishment.

      It was something new and unusual for me to make the decision to go against my body’s prime directive of eating as much as I felt I needed to pursue a questionable goal. Especially because as a child, starving had been a very uncomfortable experience both emotionally as well as physically. Starving had always filled me with fear.

      A part of me found it very perverse that I would voluntarily starve myself just to loss the weight I could ill afford to spare, so that I could get into a lower weight class. This was if not my first act of discipline and a test to my will power -- it was certainly the toughest so far in my young life.

      To add to this perverse situation, all of that suffering was mostly for naught. Instead of wrestling at that weight class at the next meet I had to wrestle a huge monster at the one hundred and eighty-five pound weight class.

      I was instructed not to up my eating volume, because now it was determined that at the following meet after I wrestled the huge beast, I still had to wrestle in the weight class that was one slot lower than my natural weight class.

      The day that I had to wrestle the one hundred and eighty-five pound beast was the first and only day that my mother and stepfather decided to come and watch me wrestle. Having to wrestle at the other school added to my nervousness. In addition to these disadvantages, I had the misfortune of slipping on some ice a week or two prior to the wrestling meet and I had crack a few ribs causing me more than a little pain. The pain often took my breath away.

      I just had to tape up regularly and it was during this month that Ben Gay and I became very close friends.

      The hundred and eighty-five pound animal that I had to wrestle was considered a terror on the football field and a terror as a wrestler within the league.

It was said that he was not as highly skilled as our best wrestlers, in fact he wasn’t much more skilled than me; but it was said that he had real strength and toughness on the level of being legendary.

      It was customary for me to feel a certain level of fear before every match. The anticipation for this match jacked up my fear at least a hundredfold. There were more things at stake with this match. My coach had created this strategy to insure that our team had the best chance of winning overall.

      If I lost, my team had a better even chance of losing. My match would not be the only deciding factor on whether our team would win or lose, but if one other key person who had been shifted around also failed then our team would be sunk.

      Also, knowing that my parents were coming to see me wrestle for the first time added a great deal of stress to my feelings of the upcoming meet. In addition the self-induced starvation I had put myself through made me very fatigued and weak. My injured ribs were also a big concern for me. If I turned wrong as I breathed the pain was jarring, causing my breathing to break its normal pattern. During practice my ribs often felt like they would snap and splinter out through my skin. I feared the fiend that I would meet might just accomplish breaking my ribcage open. Prior to this meet I looked like a skinny Tarzan, now I looked like a death camp wraith.

      The day of the meet came and before we traveled to the school, despite literally starving my self and only taking water in by sucking on ice cubes, I was just teetering back and forth at my target weight.

      My coached warned me that I needed to stay on target for making the lower weight class because I was targeted to wrestle in that class the following week.

      At the rival school I got a chance to meet my opponent. Not only did he look like the killer that rumor had claimed, to me he looked even scarier. Although he didn’t have Jimmy’s beautiful physique, he had a rangy and dangerous looking body.

      It’s hard to explain, but the closest types of physiques that I have seen that resembled the ogre I would wrestle could be found on the team of the Philadelphia Flyers or many of the men that I have seen compete in the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championships). In fact a man named Marcos Ruas who is known as “The King of the Streets”, a dangerous fighter from the streets of Rio de Jenaro, Brazil.

      The guy may have been dangerous looking, but he was very nice. He came over and made it a point to greet me well before the start of the first match. He was nice, but with an air of smug entitlement. Not conceit, but he appeared to be someone who was use to getting what he set his sights on. As we shook hands my legs were also shaking, if not from fear at least from extreme anxiety. If I weren’t so nervous it would have been funny. As we parted he wished me a genuine “good luck”. Not that he believe that would do me any good.

      By the time we wrestled, I was jacked up. Previous to being jacked up the slightest turn or twist caused me intense pain. Now I was mostly unaware of pain. As we wrestled it was apparent that he was not near as strong as he appeared and certainly not as strong as his reputation had indicated.

      In fact he was not quite as strong as I was. Very close but not quite even in my weaken state.

      Up until that time in my life, I have met many men who were enormously powerful, far more powerful than me. Men such as Mr. Eithe, and my Uncle Antoino, Captain Finbar who could turn my forearm as easily as you and I would turn a doorknob. These men I had never wrestled.

      Luckily, I was stronger than any wrestler on my team; so much so, I could even start wrestling with the lightest wrestler to the heaviest and go back down again and beat all of them. But up until that meet, I had never wrestled anyone as strong as the opponent that I faced that day. It would be twenty-five years before I would grapple with a man that exceeded his strength.

      Another thing that was apparent to me was that I was faster and had better balance and more squirrelly.

The bad news was that I was giving up almost fifty pounds in bodyweight and in addition he had noticeably greater skill.

      My parents were in the stands cheering me on. During the match my fatigue reached a crippling level. My opponent was so strong that when he put me in a wishbone set up, I felt as if my entire rib cage would explode. My strength was fading fast and then he had me on my back, I was fighting for my life.

      I rolled one way and then another trying to keep from being pinned. As I was fighting to keep from being pinned I happened to look up into the stands to see my mother and stepfather leaving in what I supposed was from embarrassment.

      Seeing them leave made me feel a combination of shame and rage. It made me redouble my efforts, which in turn made me move in a squirrelly manner. I ended up getting very lucky and barely beating this guy by one point.

The brute came closer than anyone to pinning me, with the exception of Mr. Chang and a person who would become my friend twenty-five years later. That day luck had much to do with me winning.                                                                                    

      When I confronted my parents as to why they left, they explained that they thought that I would be more embarrassed to lose in front of them. I was never certain if they were right or wrong in that regard.