I believe what’s important to all those situations is that when it does happen the really good football teams learn from it.”
Yesterday was going great; I was grappling with Mike, catching him with submissions, defending myself against his, and even being able to regain guard after he passed it. I was pretty excited about my progress.
Enter Joe.
Joe graduated high school with me, and now he’s coaching youth and middle school wrestlers. He only weighs 145 pounds, and has the scrawny-yet-athletic body that could only belong to a wrestler or marathon runner.
Mike was too tired to keep going (he had been working out longer than me), so he suggested I roll around with Joe. I thought, “It should be great to roll with somebody with very limited ju-jitsu experience and no strength advantage on me.”
I was wrong.
Very, very wrong.
Now I would beat Joe in an MMA fight, no question. But with no striking involved, the kid worked me. I mean, destroyed me. He’d wait for me to make a move (takedowns are definitely not my strongest point), then grab me, throw me off balance, and send me to the mat. I wish I could explain what was happening, but I was just lost. All I can tell you is that there was always some type of pressure on the top of my head, his forehead or chin would be driving into my face, and suddenly he was behind me.
If my life was a movie, this is where you’d insert the montage of my face being repeatedly smashed into the mat. The worst part was that, for a while, I couldn’t even get him in my guard. He was so fresh and energetic that he was spinning around and driving his body all over the place and my fatigued mind couldn’t even figure out what the hell was happening. Joe caught me in some of the most humiliating submissions imaginable; at one point, he had me cradled and was cranking my neck as he choked me – with his chin. I’m just glad that there were no witnesses to verify how much I was embarassed.
I did eventually catch on to him a bit, and I finally started submitting him after about 15 minutes of being tossed around like a rag doll. Still, all the arm bars and head triangles in the world couldn’t erase the humiliation. My arms and face are covered in mat burn, and my neck feels like I was hit by a car last night.
Fuck basketball. I should have wrestled in high school.
46 Days Until the Cage
