Wrestling Beast's blog

As you may know, I posted a new video last week. It seems to be pretty popular and has been viewed quite a bit. I love taking pictures and especially video of myself while wrestling or boxing, but if I cannot mask my identity, I cannot do it. I am glad to be able to post video again. When I used to post video, I was at a friend's house and had to use his mask. If I was not wrestling at his house though, I was out of luck.

Since that time I have purchased my own mask. I do not like complicated masks with lots of frilly things and shiny bits on them, so I opted for a simple "[Navy] Blue Demon" mask from an ebay seller. The mask came from Mexico, as all wrestling masks seem to come from there, and arrived about six weeks after I ordered it. I have no quarrel with the mask's material or stitching, but I apparently have a big head, so my jaw does not have a full range of movement when I wear it. I can still breathe in it. Despite the restriction, the mask gives me what feels like an incredible amount of freedom.

With mask in hand, my wrestling/boxing buddy had a welcome surprise for me since we last met in December. He obtained a pair of 16oz boxing gloves just like mine. Now we could fight against each other as equals, which we could only do previously with bare fists.

We met for the first time this year at a Motel 6. I wished we could meet in my basement, but I could not arrange it. This Motel 6 we wrestled at before and we could easily rearrange the room to get the bed out of the way. Not all Motel 6s are like this unfortunately. This room seemed a bit smaller than the last room we had at that location, but the space was workable. The focus of the camera was tighter than I'd like it, but you can see most of the action.

We went at it for four rounds. He is a genuine friend and a true gentleman, and outside boxing and wrestling we can appear to be ordinary friends. However, I love his willingness to put on the gloves, give and receive lots of gut punishment and fight until he has nothing left to give. He does not pull his punches and landing punches to his large belly is positively addicting. So when he called for a break at the end of the four rounds, I was satisfied, as always, that he did the best he could. Because we were using boxing gloves, there was the occasional head contact, but neither of us seemed to mind too much and it looks great on video.

My phone was recording double duty both to take the video and to act as a round timer. I used the app called Round Timer!, which is free in the Google Play store and works well for my simple purposes. I was able to record almost twenty minutes and even though I forgot my phone stand, the phone did not topple over.

I would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to MF for the new video posting options. My opponent only has a smartphone and, like most smartphones, hates the Flash video player and refuses to work with it. With the HTML5 player, the video plays perfectly for his phone as well as my phone. My computer would play the flash video, but it would stall if you paused the video for any reason, even if you wanted to go forward or back. I believed he had as much right to watch the video as anyone, so I was hesitant about posting videos until MF adopted the new streaming option. I'm also glad that most other video contributors also have chosen the HTML5 player over the Flash player.