Wrestling Beast's blog

On occasion, I have had matches that did not go as planned. There are guys who just aren't going to show or aren't worth it if they do. I would like to mention a few things which may not be apparently obvious.

Meeting at another guy's house. Does this guy live alone? Is open and honest about his wrestling with the people he lives with? If the answer to the first question is "no", then you will not be truly safe unless the answer to the second question is "yes". I once arranged to wrestle at my friend's apartment in the Metro North area of Boston. He told me his wife had gone to visit her parents in Maine and he assumed she would be staying overnight. He canceled because he was feeling poorly. When he woke up some hours later, she was standing over him. If I were there, it is highly likely that she would have walked in on a situation for which she had no prior preparation.

So, if you want to meet at another guy's house and he keeps it a secret from his husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend or roommate, you may want to wait until they are on a plane. But I had another friend whose house I wrestled at several times. He lived alone but was divorced and had shared custody with his kid. He certainly was not going to plan anything until his wife had the kid. But his parents would come by his place whenever they felt like it, so there was always an element of risk to going to his place unless it was very late in the evening.

Your opponent may not be forthcoming about prior injuries. I have had two matches end really prematurely because the opponent had a serious prior injury which he failed to inform me. Unless you are truly desperate, do not wrestle with someone who has had back surgery or a broken rib recently.

What if your opponent had HIV, Hepatitis B, Herpes or even crabs or the clap? How do you know that he is really practicing safe sexual practices? It is possible that he may not even know that he has a problem because he received it from another partner?

Some guys like to record their matches, others do not. What if your opponent is recording your activities without your knowledge or consent? Then someday you see yourself on Youtube, Facebook or Tosh.0, and maybe your friends and family do as well? But even if you both consent to the recording, what happens when the recording is finished? Do you watch then delete? Its easy to make copies and if it gets online, its hard to get it off. People with weak computer protections may leave the contents of their hard drives open to hackers and their like.

These days, before I meet a new opponent, we talk. Not chat, not IM, I listen to his voice and he listens to mine. Talking to someone is the best way, outside of meeting up with the person, to gauge this person's seriousness and willingness to commit. Sketchy dudes will usually give themselves away. When one guy talked about bringing "poppers" to the meeting, I should have trusted my better instincts and canceled once I found out what poppers were.

Finally, if you have to travel, make sure you have a valid cell phone number for your opponent and he has yours. If something comes up, you need working contact. If you have fears that your opponent has your cell number and will call you 10x a day, then you probably should not have given it out in the first place.