I Wrestled In High School...Part II: The Chest

Frida Mayıs 25, 2022

I Wrestled In High School, But I was Not A Wrestler

When we last left the Young High School Cranky, he was preparing to wrestle a 225 pound human chest. Emaciated from losing seven pounds in one day, young Cranky was waiting to get his ass beat.

If you missed part I, find it here:

http://joeh-crankyoldman.blogspot.com/2013/05/i-wrestled-in-high-school-but-i-was-not.html

Part II: The Chest

By the time my match was to begin, the varsity had finished with a win. They all gathered around the mat to watch me be destroyed by “The Chest.”

In the first period, I stayed away from “The Chest” and the second period started 0-0. “The Chest” was huge, but he was slow and not very skilled. In the second period I scored a point with an escape, and stalled as best I could the rest of the period…1-0.

In the third period my man escaped and tied the score 1-1. Then with less than a minute in the match I managed a takedown for 2 points and took the lead 3-1. In a desperate attempt to escape, “The Chest” made a beginners mistake and raised his inside arm. I leveraged his arm and had him almost on his back for a near pin making the score 5-1. With 20 seconds left, I could have stood up, giving “The Chest” one point and then stayed away until the horn blew giving me a huge upset win as everyone in the gym had expected me to be easily defeated.

Instead of standing up and taking the virtually guaranteed win, I tried for a pin. I had “The Chest” three quarters of the way on his back. The entire Varsity and Junior Varsity teams were chanting, “PIN, PIN, PIN!” I reacted to the chant by pressing further and further for the pin. As I attempted to force “The Chest” to his back, I slipped more and more over his giant thorax until my weight was suddenly too far over the mid-point of his body. With 8 seconds left in the match, “The Chest” simply rolled over and dragged my unbalanced body onto my back. The referees hand came down with a slap a second before the horn went off. I lost a sure win by getting greedy. I lost by a pin.

In three seconds I went from having my back slapped by my teammates for a great upset victory, to having my back slap on the mat for a loss.

Ten minutes later, weak from famine, exhausted from the match and dejected from the last second loss, I hit the shower. My head under the cold spray of water trying to cool off, “The Chest” came over hand extended and offered me congratulations, “Hey, great match, for a while there I almost thought I was going to lose!”

“Thought you were going to lose! Thought!! Are you kidding me! You were beat, all I had to do was stand up and the match was over. You lost except I got greedy and your only freaking move the whole fight was to roll over on that gigantic chest of yours!”

Actually I didn’t say that at all, I just shook his hand and said, “Thanks, good match.”

By the time I got home, I was over the lost match that I should have won. It would have taken days for a wrestler to get over such a loss.

I wrestled, I was never a wrestler.