Prologue:
Pro-Wrestling is an odd thing to be into. To be a fan of the sport is filled with up’s and downs, during the 1980’s there were large periods of extreme mainstream popularity, followed by it being a puss filled wound in the early 1990’s… then the Attitude era of the WWF hit and it became more popular than ever before.
However, during all of this there was always a troop of devoted fans who weren’t toothless hicks with nothing better to do then see some ‘rasslin and a tracker pull or two. This group, back then, would grow up to be the future of the sport on the Local, and World-wide wrestling scene. People who grew up watching Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Ted Dibiase Sr., have now either grown out of it, or are involved in the wrestling scene in some way either by writing Blogs, running message boards, working in the back office of a federation, or even being workers themselves.
This is where I come in, If you read WTFEntertainment for any length of time you already know my backstory when it comes to the business. I won’t rehash that.
2009 was quite a year for me. I went to every single Chikara show that was local, and bought every DVD. It was like a virus that was just devouring me from the inside out. I had to get back into this before it was too late. Luckilly the fates shined upon me when I met a friend of a friend who happened to wrestle locally for the past 4+ years. Him and I started talking shop, discussing indy feds, workers, angles, everything we could. Eventually the talk turned to the fact that he, and a fellow worker, were starting training classes at the training center they train at. This led to me getting an amazing deal on training up and getting into that ring. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 11pm – 1am I’ll be training…
Step one complete… now the hard part begins.
Feb 2nd 2010:
First night of training. It’s my day off from work so I at least have some time to relax and let the nervousness subside a bit. Why am I so nervous? I’ve been in a ring before, I’ve hit the ropes, taken bumps, been involved slightly during the BWA days. I guess it’s just because I’m a lot older and do have some back issues as well that I need to work past.
9pm:
It’s starting to snow outside a bit, guess those eastern snow storms aren’t big fat meteorological lie. Training is still on for tonight at 11. I should shower and start getting ready, I really need to stretch my back out quite a bit.
10:30pm:
I’m about to head out to the training ‘center’, theres about 2-3 inches of snow on the ground from what I can see. Driving shouldn’t be too bad though, im only going 10 minutes away. I’ll post more when training is done.
1:25am:
First day in the books. Started with taking standing and walking bumps, had a bit of a problem wrapping my mind around the walking bumps a little bit at first. My trainer said I took to bumping super quick and its looking really good. My training partner, Elliott, had some issues at first, kept hitting his elbows first but he caught on really well.
We did some timing exercises, which helped ring presence and cardio a little bit.
I hit a bit of a snag when it came to doing the forward, backward, and side rolls. I’m a big guy as most of you know so rolling around like a gymnast isn’t quite a normal feat for me. I surprised myself a few times, especially because of how bad my lower back ached from curling up into a ball, basically. I took a few more bumps and messed up my shoulder on one of them — no big deal, sat out a few minutes then went back into it.
Other than that we learned some basic skills, how to properly lock up – do an arm ringer – and chain back and fourth with reversals of the arm ringer. Being left handed has its disadvantages in this situation because I had to completely reverse my thinking of which way to rotate and how to transition from point to point.
It took me longer than I would have liked but I’d rather get it right then be sloppy as hell.
Feb. 3rd 2010:
10:43am
I’m a bit sore, okay, scratch that a LOT sore. My quads are aching more than I expected, I didn’t realize I was working them as much as I was when it came down to doing the bumps and rolls. Oh well, time for a long hot shower, some stretching, then heading off to work.
5:32pm
Training was cancelled until further notice due to personal obligations with a few people involved (i.e. trainer). Will continue to update the blog as much as possible with little quips!
Feb. 9th 2010
Another quite wicked storm is rolling through this week, Training was once again cancelled tonight, and tomorrow due to weather. Thursday is still up in the air.
I’ve been watching a lot more wrestling lately, old school wise, keeping an eye on the ring psychology and how they block themselves in the ring to help build tension. It’s like watching it for the very first time… even a few people I didn’t think had much in ways of in-ring skills I was in awe of when it came to certain things they could do.
Amazingly awesome to witness with my new eyes.
-Steve Rice
www.twitter.com/srice13
Popularity: 37% [?]
