Here’s some more pandemic stuff you just don’t see everyday.
A local pro fighter contacted me this morning to see if we can use my basement mats to stage an underground grudge match. Why?
A local bar idiot challenged him to a grappling match. The victory condition for the bar idiot is to not get tapped out in three minutes. If he taps out in under three minutes, he loses. No striking, but all of grappling is on the table.
$1200 stimulus check is what’s on the line. I haven’t negotiated my cut of the winnings or agreed to provide the venue yet.
This is something I’m really tempted to do, especially considering my county only has about a dozen active cases and falling. When else could I host an underground grappling grudge match and make money doing it? They’ve probably both sobered up by now, but maybe there’s still an opportunity for me here.
It would be short and sweet most likely, but still fun to watch. This guy is far from the best grappler I’ve trained with, but he’s still a pro fighter and he’s still got my number on the mats. An untrained bar chump who is smaller and weaker with grappling rules (i.e. no strikes) is like folding laundry. The guy’s got no training background at all. Just a dude running on pure fantasy ideas about his capabilities in a struggle and seemingly willing to put up cash to back them up.
I have a feeling the closer it gets to actually happening the more likely our local bar hero (who I’m acquainted with from bouncing) will get cold feet and decide to keep his twelve hunnit. We’ve got a group chat started up. No commitment from me yet but it will be fun to see where this will lead. What else am I going to do? Work?
When? 1918? Is someone else breaking social distancing to host underground grappling matches for cash prizes and honor?
Probably close to ten years ago. It was a boxing match between two members here. A bigger guy and a smaller guy. I remember the bigger guy, though untrained, took a very disciplined approach. The little guy gassed incredibly fast. He went about 30 seconds then had to take a 3 minute break before doing another 30 seconds and quitting. Someone around here could probably dig it up and post it. Kind of boring but I’m sure yours is going to be much much more interresting.
I dunno. I’m guessing a tap in under 20 seconds if it goes down. Under non-pandemic circumstances we just take these people to jiu jitsu class and they experience this as part of their first roll. That’s really about all it will amount to, except this dumbass seems ready to put up cash.
If I’m ever up your way I have to go to this bar just to hang out. This is the kind of hardcore “waitin on a settlement” bullshit that I love, and the people who do it.
The bar chump insists it takes place outside. No walls he says, but he still wants a few small mats? I’m pretty sure he wants to try to run away for three minutes, but who knows? I’m not upending my setup for their shenanigans. They can wrestle out in the woods somewhere, far from prying eyes and the social distance social media police.
Or cut me in $200 and we can talk about doing this low-key in the basement, concrete walls-and-all, where things like this should be happening during the Kung-Flu.
This is not what I’d call out-of-character behavior for a good slice of the crowd that can show up there on any given night. Low level scuffles are common, and now that yours truly isn’t bouncing they seem to blossom into fisticuffs a little more often. Who knows? I’m surely biased towards myself.
It’s a neighborhood dive bar with the perfect amount of rule-bending and tolerance for shady stuff, bad behavior and roughnecking for my tastes, so I think you’d get a kick out of your typical Wednesday or Friday night there. Dive bar shit goes down there. If you don’t like it, go get a margarita at Applebees and hang out with Debbie from marketing while she gets sloppy.
Back on-topic, a lot of people miss that bar right now, and I’m sure plenty of other gathering spots we all took for granted.
I know where I’m going for a beer when this lifts. I expect bonkers crowds for weeks on end. I told the owner I’d come out of retirement too if they needed me for one night a week. That could prove interesting and possibly hazardous.
It is better to have the option of being a post-pandemic dive bar bouncer, than not.
Yeah. There are a couple of meetings I had just come to expect as simply always being there. Now they aren’t. If and when they come back it will be interesting.
In fact, I’m going to give a couple of my buddies a call just to check in and see how things are.
There are other people who I’m genuinely worried about due to their inability to train. I think it is fair to say that a significant segment of the training population uses jiu jitsu as their primary coping mechanism for whatever it is they struggle with, which are sometimes very severe problems. This is also true for many lifters for a lot of the same reason, especially in places like close-knit gyms or even people who can’t train like they want to.
I suppose I’ll have to do my part and show up on the mats on day 1, so the jiu jitsu addicts might all have a big strong goon to go 100 percent on. My grey hairs are showing considerably more now with almost two months growth, so perhaps they’ll see an old man and go easy on me.
Definitely. It was a great combination for me, for at least the first 10 years. Lifting and the bunch of guys I hung out/lifted with provided some stability, structure, comradery, all kinds of good.
For real though: I hate being corralled into bottlenecks or standing in lines with people, especially at grocery stores or other places where people tend to hurry and get pushy and crowd others. Like Really Really hate it.
I really appreciate this social distancing thing for at least temporarily solving that.
is probably immaculately clean. 
