Just Because I’m a Wrestler
Without a doubt, I will be forever lucky that I had the opportunity to wrestle growing up. Just because I wrestled, I learned things that I would carry with me through basic training in the military, college, and even now in my adult life. Wrestling taught me how to compete, how to weight manage, how to protect myself (kinda), and most importantly how to lose.
Just because I’m a wrestler I know how to compete.
I know right? What do you mean? You compete in all sports. Yea, but wrestling is a different animal. With other sports, you can somewhat depend on other people to do what needs to be done to come away with a win.
In basketball, you can play defense all game and not score, but your team still comes out with the win. How? Cause while you can’t shoot going 2-15 from the field, your teammates dropped all the buckets. Football, hooomuhgawh! You can play all game and not record a single tackle, hurry up, break up, interception, etc. vice versa on the opposite end and still win. Wrestling it’s you, your opponent, and the ref inside two circles with a box in the middle, and ain’t no going backward. No sir! I remember this one match I had against one of my buddies who was attempting to break the takedown record at his school. Up to this point in the season he had to have been maybe a couple hundred if not less away from breaking it. Of course, he rag-dolled me for about six sum takedowns and pinned me. Afterward, he told me I was the only one this far in the season who has gotten in that deep of a shot on him.
Just because I’m a wrestler I know how to manage and maintain my weight.
For some reason, the general public has this stigma about wrestlers being we don’t eat to make weight for competitions. I am here to tell you, that that is a gawd damn lie. I cannot think of a tournament where I didn’t eat to prepare for it. Listen, people can barely get through a traditional workout without fueling up properly beforehand. So what makes you think wrestlers are going to be able to get through training as growing adults, running on no nutrients? I still remember the first tournament from my senior year. Coach Allen had the idea of sending me to 160 and my buddy to 170. Dude I was on the bus to the tournament doing suicides down the aisle and spitting into a water bottle whatever moisture was generated from sucking sour skittles. I exercised up until maybe 10min before weigh-ins. I scratched my first attempt at 160.3, and everyone in there looking and seeing what was my next move. Well, I tried my best move and dropped the briefs just to scratch again at 160.1. At practice the following Monday, the whole team took turns to show me how much they appreciated me not making weight. I was the first shark in the tank my senior season, and afterward, I wrote my name into the 170 spot and proclaimed they can take it from me if they wanted it.
Don’t get it twisted, I have the palette of an absolute 10-year-old. But along with that wrestling taught me how to eat. As a competing adult in BJJ now I still have to monitor my weight when I get close to competition time. Even 10 years after graduating from high school and being finished with wrestling, I will still revisit my old high school diet whenever it’s competition time.
Just because I’m a wrestler I learned how to protect myself (somewhat).
I gotta throw the somewhat in there because it isn’t like boxing where you keep range from opponents and are throwing punches. The way I like to think about it is that wrestling taught me what manhandling was. Growing up I was sticks and bones. I don’t even remember being someone who was taller than most of my classmates but I do recall being the butt of the majority of jokes and such. I still remember vividly the story of the first time u threw a punch. It was all over a bag of peanuts in 7th grade, at Cobb Middle School. We’re in the principal's office, he’s holding a bag of ice on this knot on his forehead and I got one on my hand, bawling my eyes out cause I got a brand new boxer fracture in my right hand. I tried to send my hand through his eye and popped him right in the middle of his forehead. Sorry, I’m not as tough as you thought after hearing that, not really.
So virtually wrestling help me get better and more comfortable with defending myself. Helped me in the “friendly combative competition” in basic training and of course nowadays in BJJ. At this age, I look at it now as the confidence it gave me on my feet when things heat up. My teammates will attest to how methodical I come at them at the start of our rounds. Now in the face of aggression, I tend to become the joker. You know how he had that social problem and would laugh at some of the worst times? Yea that’s me, giggles.
Just because I’m a wrestler I learned how to lose.
In my first season, I finished with a record of 12-(~56). Got my teeth kicked in all season and the best part was I had to own it. Yea I had teammates and a knowledgeable coach, but when it’s go time, I’m the one with my foot on the line, headgear on. My coach isn’t who got pinned, I got pinned. I couldn’t pass off my Ls to anyone, they were all mine. Then you get to bask in their ambiance as their hand is raised. Man, that’s why you see two sides. I had a teammate that every time he began to realize he was losing or did lose, would have a complete meltdown. On the other hand, I had another teammate that would lose in some of the most heartbreaking ways and hop up as if nothing happened.
Wrestling importantly taught me I can’t bask in my wins or my losses. With most wrestling tournaments you rarely will just have one match. On an in-season competition weekend, I averaged around 6 to 7 matches between both days. I couldn’t get super cocky from one win and I couldn’t get completely devastated in the face of defeat. I remember my junior year I was disqualified in the quarterfinals of regionals and it wrecked me. I’m saying I was that kid running out of the gym in my singlet headgear in hand, almost to the other end of the school. In that same regional tournament, the same day, I wrestled back from that quarterfinals match winning three straight matches to punch my ticket to state for the first time. I could’ve turned over after they robbed me in the quarters, and I could’ve turned over in my second wrestle back when I went against a returning state qualifier who completely kicked my teeth in earlier in the year. That wasn’t an option, that isn’t what wrestling taught me. It taught me to learn, win or lose, and move on. A wise man once asked me “Do you think MJ (Michael Jordan) would’ve won in 97’ if he was still living off the 96’ championship? Do you think he would’ve won in 96’ still down on himself from taking 3rd in 95’? Think about
