by The Immolator
Exclusive to OnlineOnslaught.com

"This end of my horse points to Canada. And THIS end of my horse points to the United States!" — Da Mountie

Welcome back to The Ring. Immo at your service. Happy 4^th of July to my neighbours to the south. Or, as we call it here in Canada, “Thursday.” HAR! Hey, I’m allowed to joke. I’m a half-breed: American Mom, Canadian Dad. Which is about the only thing I have in common with Bret Hart. Well, that, and I don’t go off the top rope.

Out of the 50 lessons that make up my “official” wrestling training, 12 are now in the books. My body seems to have adapted well to the punishment. And, holy frick, did I take some punishment last week at the hands of Disco. We did legdrops. Lots of legdrops. From the bottom rope. Then the second rope, except I didn’t get that far. Most of us students had trouble landing squarely on our behinds. I took some serious abuse to my tailbone, plus I somehow managed to send a jolt or two up my spine into my right shoulder. Hen tong, as we say back in China. I also whacked my sprained right little finger on the rope during one of my takeoffs. Crikey! After that fiasco, arm drags. Being on the receiving end of a standard arm drag causes you to go flying in the air over your left shoulder. That’s been a problem for me, for some reason. Just like some basketball players can’t go to their left, I’ve been having trouble rolling and bumping to my left. More abuse to my kidney. Pretty soon, I’ll have a lump like Ric Flair’s. I sat out the last part of the lesson. Wuss.

After the lesson, I gave myself some time to assess my progress thus far. My strength: selling. I love playing the heel, and I like the comedy face act. My weakness: fear of the bump. My timing has improved a lot on the standard “I just got clotheslined” fall, but each new move seems to have its own bump, with its own estimated time of impact. In Lesson 11 with Bubba as trainer, we did more hip tosses. On the first one I received, I over-rotated and landed on my ass. I don’t trust myself fully yet with the way I move in the ring. I don’t trust the ring itself. Sometimes, I don’t trust the person delivering the move. The snap mares we did went much better, since it’s a much shorter fall. The lesson ended with another match. I got to play the babyface in a tag match. I started for our team and really poured on the schmaltzy American Males stuff. An opening series of vanilla holds and reversals ensued, then I tagged out to my partner, Jared. He’s good. We call him “WWE,” that’s how good he is. He played Ricky Morton for a while. He rallied briefly, then missed a top-rope leg drop. Yee-owtch. I got the hot tag off a failed bad-guy double team and locked in a Texas Cloverleaf for the win. I felt kind of guilty, because Jared did all the work. I then had a sudden revelation that there are a lot of tag teams just like that. I had visions of Jared superkicking me through a plate glass window and going on to become top dog in the company. That comparison isn’t fair to Marty Janetty, of course, but you get the idea. I’d kill to have half the moves that Janetty has. Or had. Where is he now, anyway?

There are times when I wish I had a ring stashed away in the backyard so I could just spend time getting used to its parameters. The tension of the ropes. The distance from the top turnbuckle to the mat. From the apron to the floor. This is the canvas upon which we tell our stories. Of course, each ring is different. Some are bigger, some are taller, and some have steel trap doors that they don’t tell you about until after you’ve landed on them.

I got more of an education about the ring itself in Lesson 12 with Starr. We did some sunset flips, which I seem to do reasonably well. Halfway through, someone noticed something wrong with the ring. The boards under the mat were moving around independently, like piano keys. Off came the canvas. Yikes. Some of the boards had split lengthwise. Others were on the verge of breaking in the middle. As it turns out, this is normal wear and tear. Every once in a while, the boards need to be replaced. We ended the lesson early and watched a the start of a movie from 1975 called “The Wrestler.” A Verne Gagne production, starring Verne Gagne. If you can stay awake through the typical sloooooooow mid-70’s pacing of the movie, it’s actually an interesting view. Dick The Bruiser was a hoot.

I’m going to have to put my gimmick together pretty soon. I’m a little hesitant to commit after just 12 lessons, I suppose, but I want to do some fine-tuning. I want something I can translate to Japan if I get the good fortune to go there. I’m tempted to do an over-the-top comedy face, but that won’t get me far in Tokyo. Unless people would love to see Masa Chono kick my head off my shoulders just to shut me up. I’ll run my ideas by Starr soon and get back to y’all.

Until next time… Happy Independents Day! (grin)

Peace.

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