devonwrestler's blog

My previous blog entries have described some of the group wrestling meetings I have attended, the most recent being in 2011. The situation with regard to these meetings has changed somewhat since then, so here is my attempt at an update. I wouldnt want people to read my blog then waste their time making a journey to attend a meeting that no longer happens.

This is the situation to the best of my knowledge, but living in an out of the way part of the UK I dont get to these kind of meetings as often as I would like to, so do correct me if you know better:

The Grapevine group is still going strong and I can recommend their meetings - they are generally advertised on the events section at Meetfighters.com. My experience is mainly of the Grapevine meetings held at Alverston near Stratford on Avon. I have very recently heard (Oct 2012) that Grapevine may not be able to use this venue for future meetings. I understand that they are looking for an alternative place to meet, presumably in roughly the same part of the world. If anyone has any sugestions for this I expect Dave (Mattworker on this website) would be pleased to hear about them.

Although my own experience is of the Alverston meetings, I think that the events at the other venues are fairly similar. I havent yet been to the Manchester venue and Dave tells me that is a bit more of a free for all since wrestling takes place on several mats simulaneously, whereas there is only a single mat in use at the other venues.

You generally do meet freindly people at Grapevine and some of them gather for a pub meal after the Alveston meetings which I think is nice. After you have just spent an afternoon near naked and in sweaty combat with each other its slightly strange, but at the same time rather pleasant, to find oneself with the same group of guys tidily dressed and chatting about the weather or whatever in a smart village pub! The range of wrestling ability at Grapevine is quite wide, so is the age range for that matter. Most of us wrestle enthusiastically at the Grapevine meetings, but most of us are not all that strong or skilled wrestlers (perhaps I will get a thrashing next time I attend for saying that) If you are a complete beginner you will be welcome and I expect someone will give you some gentle rounds to get you started, or if you prefer I expect you would be welcome to just sit and watch others wrestle while you decide if its something you want to try yourself. If you are an expert, perhaps someone who has actually had some proper training in Judo/Jujutso etc., do also come along and show us how it should be done. We normally wrestle for submissions at Grapevine and we normally wrestle timed three minute rounds, our matches being just one round. This seems to work well, keeping the matches really short encourages participants to wrestle to their best of their ability to try to get a submission before the three minutes is up. Three minutes of hard wrestling is quite enough to leave most of us glad of a rest before another match - I guess some of us are not as fit as we would like to be. Of course, quite a few of these short matches end without a submission but that doesent matter since you can challenge your oponent to another match(s) later in the afternoon. Many of us choose to wear skimpy style swimming trunks to wrestle at Grapevine, but if you prefer you can wear a wrestling singlet or shorts and vest, or other light sportswear. For footwear, preference seems to be equally divided between proper wrestling boots and bare feet. I like to have my feet bare for wrestling, perhaps a slight fetish thing, and this is no problem when wrestling booted wrestlers. It may not be obvious to the uninitiated, but those dangerous looking wrestling boots are actually soft material so they wont injure another wrestlers skin. Although Grapevine meetings are for gay/bi guys, and most of us do take off most of our cloths to wrestle, dont imagine that these meetings are gay sex orgies - Grapevine meetings are primarily about wrestling as a sport, even though our mostly untutored struggles on the mat are somewhat far removed from the Olympic standard of wrestling. However, I cant deny that I, for one, do find it rather nice, as I sit waiting my turn on the mat, to watch sweaty bodies struggling against each other - muscels taught and straining, sometimes a crotch inadvertently thrust against a crotch or into a face, or a lightly clad arse raised high and nicely spread .....

The Queens Park Wrestlers meetings that were held at the Playpit venue in London dont seem to be happening any more, at least I cannot find any mention of them on the internet. A pity since I enjoyed the one QPW meeting that I attended. We had some good wrestling and the 'seedy' nature of the venue was certainly very conducive to a bit of gentle erotic fun after everyone felt they had done enough wrestling.

Iain Scotts meetings at Grove Park in SE London have definitely finished, for the foreseeable future at least. A great shame, but due to matters beyond Iain's control there was no way that these meetings could have continued. My thanks to Iain for the huge effort he made and the fun I had when I managed to get to Grove Park on half a dozen or so occasions.

I am not sure if the wrestling evenings at the Eagle are still going, and if they are how much actual wrestling takes place, can anyone confirm? From my experience when I last attended there were mats set out but no one seemed interested in wrestling except me, and its not something you can do on your own. Most of those present seemed to have come to drink and socialise at the bar, so very different to the Eagle wrestling evening I described in an earlier post here.