WORLD OF RAWR

After a lifetime of drought, I'm happy to announce that I finally got to wrestle this weekend.

THE PREQUEL

It was five and a half hours in the cars. Prior to that, however, there was a fair bit of chat and planning. Approximately three or so months worth with this guy. He goes by Blaze in some circles.

In the time I spoke with him, I also met another guy that goes by the name Shawty. These two know each other, so it soon evolved into a meetup between the three of us. Talking to them was fun, silly, and laced with innuendo.

In short, perfect.

THE DRIVE

After a bit of planning, I setup the hotel and car rental and made the drive Saturday morning (8/29). The first half of the trip was insane as I didn't have a way to play music I could enjoy on the way up. A trip to a gas station amended this problem and I continued on, happy. I finally got into the area and called Shawty to let him know I was in the area. I then called Blaze.

Fayetteville is the kind of place that will make you scream if you don't have eyes like a hawk on every part of the road.

THE MEETING

I picked up Shawty at his home, then made my way to the hotel where we meet up with Blaze. Sarcasm from me, laughter from them. We checked in, moved the beds around and started throwing pillows. We ended up wrestling before changing into proper clothes just being playful. We did this for a few hours while watching LOTR and The Hobbit on TV. We rolled around and tickled each other a bit, but got good gauges for strength, too.

After a bit of that, we were all hungry and went to dinner. We got back to the hotel and changed into gear where we did another 3-4 hours of round robins. Again, playful with a competitive edge. It was fun. I learned a lot and they learned a lot about me in that time.

Shawty was more creative and Blaze was a bit stronger, but there was a good balance and I think I can say I was certainly no slouch in the middle of this. Most of these battles were submission-based so lots of body contact. There was the hint of erotic without being overboard and they were both very respectful in that sense. As you could imagine, this was appreciated.

There were boston crabs. There were slams. There were grapevines. There were nelsons. There was relatively little clothing. There were hobbitses!

Shawty versus Blaze was the last match of the night.

We also took a few pictures.

The following morning, we took Shawty to work and Blaze and I rolled for another hour or two before we had to finally part ways.

AFTERMATH

I have an email with a bunch of photos for me to possibly post here and elsewhere and I think I have two new friends. Shawty was the most nervous about if I wanted a rematch (which, to be clear, I wouldn't mind).

While I drove home, I had to laugh because one person I wanted to wrestle here in Athens was sick. My theory of how wrestling meetups work continues to hold true in amazingly humorous ways.