Wrestling - Taking the bad with the good!

Sharples Bolton Open Championships 2013

It's been a reasonable amount of time since my last blog update so thought it was time to regale you with chat about what's been happening in the world of wrestling and specifically my #mission2014. The last time I updated the blog I was talking about the kick up the arse I had (motivationally speaking) from David Smith MBE and how his story had encouraged me to buckle down and get training. I spoke about the Commonwealth Games qualification standards and burritos from Los Cardos in Edinburgh, of which I am now a loyal customer. In other news my old man celebrated his 66th Birthday and I was treated to a Nandos, I would have loved to have treated him but really just haven't got any disposable income at the moment, it's a sad state of affairs but we will prevail. Still having money worries, its pish but that's life! It was their first taste of the chicken gurus and they thought it was pretty good. Was great to catch up with them just the three of us, first time in a while.

I spent a bit of time last week reading back over my blog posts and on reflection, it has been a pretty fun journey so far. I've been wrestling properly for 7 months now and have three championships under my belt with 2 loses, 2 wins and two golds. I've fought the Best in the Britain and I've had a cracked rib... i've got loads I want to do and I need to and want to train harder. I noticed that for the first three months I was spelling Michael Cavanagh's name wrong and I botched up his role title as well, what a muppet. He never mentioned it but I will apologise for that. He must have thought I was a complete tit for getting that wrong but I've amended them now.

I've had a few good run outs on the mat, my confidence was running high after the British Novices and I wanted to keep that feeling going. I have also had a bit more support from my mates which is great, I'm still eagerly awaiting the return of the Bear to the mat and would love to wrestle the Weeble, but i've been Wresting on Tuesdays at the Emirates arena with Dave Simm (the weebles brother), it's been great fun and tough training. Dave is back in the Scotland 'A' Rugby League squad and trying to increase his fitness and he is a good partner to train with, although he is a lefty which makes life that little more awkward for me. It's great to have someone kind of close to my weight to wrestle against it is completely different wrestling someone heavy that the lighter guys.

If your free get down to the club

I had a nice surprise the other week as well down at Edinburgh Wrestling Club, I mentioned that Iain Feenan was going to try and get down for a session, that finally happened a couple of Mondays ago. It was awesome to have him and Rory Monks down for a bit of a grapple. Iain, I think found it pretty easy to adapt to giving his MMA and Judo background and to tell the truth I was a little bit anxious/nervous/excited/all of the above to wrestle him in the live bouts at the end of the session. Iain is strong, fast, explosive and doesn't show any mercy so to get on the mat and fight with him was great. The wrestle itself was pretty decent, Iain with his speed managed to get some points in early with a double leg and he nipped round behind me. I managed to get him down as well and scored 4 points with a leg lace to get back in it and was only losing by 6 - 7 with 7 seconds left on the clock. In that situation there is only really one thing you can do... charge. I don't think Iain saw it coming... my charge was low into an ankle pick and drive that got him down with that I took the round 9-7. Unfortunately I didn't get to wrestle Rory, maybe another day! Iain took on Rory and beat him pretty convincingly but I have to mention that Rory got a cracking double leg at the end to give himself 3 points. Yep, we ruined Iain's day!

My other wrestling Antics have been with my coaches Steven Cote and Michael Cavanagh and then with folk like Callum Anderson and Danny Gallacher. They are always keen for a scrap at the end of the session. Steve and I have a healthy rivalry which is great. He has the experience and I have the weight advantage but to be fair if we were the same weight he would score a lot more. Steve tried a new tactic last week and kicked my ass twice, the first was just normal and he beat me in the last 2 seconds but the second bout he properly smashed me by mixing it up and driving, which I didn't see coming and I didn't really know what to do, in fact Steve had the better of me this week as well, its been a bad training week for me, this is Wrestling and you have to take the Bad with the Good, that's how you learn! Coach Michael proved a point this week as well that he still has it. He scored mainly off of my mistakes, I have no idea why I changed my tactics, i'm normally pretty defensive but I went for some leg attacks and failed and as a result Coach one the round. Then there is Danny, its always fun wrestling Danny, he has an energy which I really like, he bounds about the mat and has a really good double leg attack! Again the weight advantage usually dictates the winner of those bouts but its great to see Danny getting better and better and he managed to get a good take down on me yesterday as well. 

Callum - I don't want to talk about him, I need to kick his ass next time he is down training, using my favourite move against me.

Scales spotted on Saturday - no weigh in?

Moving swiftly on to the Bolton Open Championships... I was a little annoyed that there wasn't an on the day weigh in but I guess it didn't matter at the end of the day. I was just hoping to save myself some driving, petrol, time, money the night before but c'est la vie. I only had one bout again but it was a good one and as it turns out it was really just to give me someone to fight against. I was fighting a lad called Cameron from Tryst Lions in Cumbernauld. I think he was weighing in a bit heavy for the 96kg lads at 98-99kg and he won that division and had to wrestle me. That kind of took away from the day a little bit for me but still we had to wrestle and we were both looking for the win. It tough to develop when you only have one match, yeah you still get the title and hats good but i want to be able to walk away after winning a couple of matches not just one.

The match itself wasn't the most brilliant of spectacles, there was a lot of strength and fighting for position and a few shots and blocks but at the end of the first round the score was sitting at 0 - 0 that meant that we went to the Clinch. This was my first in competition. It's basically a tie breaker. One person draws a ball out of a bag and the colour of that ball gets to dominant position by starting with the opponents leg in their arms. Basically like a rugby tackle. I drew out the blue ball and that meant I had to surrender a leg and was in a bit of a precarious position. The whistle went and I sprawled and somehow managed to break my leg free. That meant I only had to defend for 30 seconds without conceding and the round was mine. Success!

Hanging out with my Trophy 

The second bout was a bit more interesting, I won 2 - 0 with a push out of bounds and I successfully defended a shot and managed to take Cameron's back that gave me another point. What are my thoughts after the match? I need to work on my fitness, I'm not sure if it was the day that took it out of my, pressure of winning a match or the driving or something else? but I was tired afterwards and that's something I want to fix. I felt my strength was good and I think I played a very safe, very tactical game, I knew that Cameron had a very good leg attack and my goal was to disrupt that, throw him off his game plan and pick up a couple of points. think that worked quite well. If there is one thing I've noticed since the English Championships its that my wrestling knowledge and know know has really improved... but there is still a hell of a lot of work to get done.
I watched the USA vs. Iran vs. Russia at Grand Central station in NYC the other night, wow! Jordon Burroughs take a bow, his double leg attacks were phenomenal, no idea where he gets the power from when he is on his knees but its impressive!

How is my balancing act with a full time job/wrestling/family/money. I've still not won the lottery which is pretty disappointing, i've not really been playing to be fair but still... that's not the point. It's the last couple of weeks in the month that hit me hardest. Not that i'm bad at budgeting, but the first week of the month wipes me out - mortgage, council tax, bills, food, petrol. I've been managing my time a bit better of late I think. Trying to get sessions in where I can and i'm vowing to start running this week to start increasing my CV capacity. Of course FILA (Governing Body) have changed the rules of the sport which i'll talk about in my next update... I've also got myself a guest blogger for the next Update - Mr. Steven Cote is going to write me a blog post this week giving some interesting insights into the world of wrestling and hopefully on my progress on the mat since we locked horns back in September... i'll keep you posted with that one. Cameron has been helping me out with some training. You may have seen this n Facebook or You Tube but in case you didn't 

This video below is Gareth Jones, one of the Scottish Wrestlers who was competing at the Bolton Open, I thought his bout was really good to watch. It went the full distance. You can check it out here: Gareth Jones - Sharples Bolton Final camera work isn't great

My final thought for the day goes out to an old friend of mine Pete Oshagbemi - I played rugby with Pete years back for Scotland Students, he was a big, strong, fast winger and a lovely bloke. I mention Pete because Pete has started writing a blog, he isn't doing any mad sporting challenge (yet) or reviewing anything in particular but what he is doing is trying to make sense of things and document his thoughts, much the same as me. I read it last week and thought it was a decent effort, a well put together piece of writing. I hope he keeps it up! If you want to have a look you can find it here. Musings of a citizen of humanity just like you!

Right, that's all from me this week. Thanks to everyone who has supported me thus far and who has been been down to the club or through to the Emirates to help with training, always on the look out for new people so feel free to get down!

Cheers

@shocksjr

"Practice makes permanent"

Thoughts on the IOC recommendation

I'm taking a break from my normal blog style of telling everyone else what I've been up to in my quest to get to the Commonwealth Games in 2014. Rest assured, it’s all good this week but there are more important things to discuss. I promise my break in normal themes hasn’t got anything to do with losing a match 5 – 2 to Michael Cavanagh on Monday. It was a sad day but great fun and absolutely nothing to do with a cracked rib!

International Olympic Committee

Of course the more important thing this week that I’m blogging about is the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) recommendation to remove Wrestling from the Olympic Games after 2020.That recommendation from the IOC has the potential to put Wrestling on the sporting equivalent of the endangered species list. You may think that's a tad dramatic but indulge me for a minute and I'll qualify that statement. 

First of all let’s take a quick look at Wrestling – Wrestling is one of the oldest combat sports in the world. Historians can track wrestling back 15,000 years but most noticeably and most relevant to this news is that Wrestling was the number one sport in the ancient Olympiad and has featured in every modern Olympic Games bar Paris 1900, that’s a pretty impressive track record. In one sense Wrestling has until now withstood the test of time, holds the traditional values and provides a link back to the ancient history of the games themselves.

Egyptian Burial Chamber drawing depicting wrestling from 2400 BC

The Olympics is steeped in tradition, I for one don’t think enough emphasis has been placed on the traditional values and the merits that the individual sports bring to the modern games. Not only that; but let’s look at the popularity of the sport. Those in the UK will say “What? popularity of Wrestling?” well you’d be surprised, there are over 200 countries across the globe where Wrestling is recognised, in the College set up in the US it is the 6^th most popular sport and their High School programmes last year alone had 280,384 participants pushing Wrestling into the top 10 sports. That’s just the US, look at Russia, Eastern Europe, India, Canada and Iran to name but a few and I’ll bet you have a hell of a lot of world wide participants. Granted the UK only had 701 registered Wrestlers last year but there were more who aren’t affiliated to the National Governing Body.

Here are my thoughts - In my view what makes the Olympic Games the greatest sporting competition in the world are the principles that they were founded upon. The Olympic Charter speaks of Olympism. They describe Olympism as a philosophy of life that combine the qualities of mind, body and will, blending sport with culture and education. The Olympic Charter goes on to state that the goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind and that the practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practising sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic Spirit. 

Unfortunately, In my view I don’t feel the vision and values that the Olympics and the IOC should hold to its core match the current situation that we find ourselves in today. Once upon a time the Olympic Games were about Amateur athletes coming together to compete for their nations but nowadays that’s been lost in the commercialisation of sport. Wrestling lost its place because the IOC deemed there to not be enough global popularity, the volume of ticket sales and its sexiness for a television audience. I’m paraphrasing of course but they could have just said... Money!

I would like to think that because I’ve not been involved in Wrestling for that long, I can take a slightly objective view of their decision but to be frank I think they have made the wrong choice. The IOC are trying to modernise, I get that. It’s essential for every organisation to move with the times, the Olympics is now big business with big sponsors and they can and need to continue to attract big television audiences and ticket sales, how do you maximise TV audiences and Sponsorship? you get the big names from the big team sports but I would argue that its taking away from the whole ethos of the Olympics?

GB had Andy Murray playing tennis, whilst it was great for GB to medal. I watched (on TV) Andy Murray play in the Wimbledon final three weeks prior to the Olympics starting. Don’t get me wrong, it’s done wonders for Tennis, but the question is, did Tennis really need the extra exposure of being an Olympic sport?

The question I would ask to the IOC is why do we need to lose any of the smaller sports, the IOC claim that the cap on sports is to allow for manageable organisation but surely Tennis, Rugby, Football and Golf all have their rightful places away from the Olympics. If I wanted to watch a contest of any of the above sports I could do so easily throughout the year, every year because they all have majors, grand slams, world cups and International Competitions. What’s next Olympic F1?

Save Olympic Wrestling

Back to one of my opening comments, the endangered species. Wrestling has the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games, yes it’s got Regional and World Championships in Europe, Asia and the Americas but taking the carrot of the Olympics away from Wrestling would be like taking away the Football World Cup. Wrestling is very much a development / grass roots sport and if you take away something as large as the Olympics, then what do the young one’s have to aspire to. You are almost guaranteed to see the world wide participation rates decline. For those nations not in the Commonwealth, what do they have left on an international profile raising stage?

You have to hope that the people at the IOC have thought about it and aren't just bowing down to the political, corporate and commercial pressures that have been festering within sport over the last few years. The IOC has an obligation to protect the autonomy of sport; that means to keep it independent, to me that means forget the politics and forget the commercialisation and let sport be sport. Let’s hope they see sense and keep Wrestling where it is...where it deserves to be. 


Thanks for taking time out to read

@shocksjr