alpinisto's blog

As a part of my recuperation (and for the fun of it) I for some time have tried to get to wrestle every calendar month, and this June I had hoped to get to wrestle when I was having a visit to my non-wrestling friend in Dresden. But those wrestlers I had talked to were not able to show up while I was there, which is some thing we just have to accept. And in July I did not have the money to travel for wrestling, which is what I normally have to do, as there are very few wrestlers here in Denmark, and those appear to have no interest in wrestling me. But in August there was an American guy coming to Copenhagen on a cruise ship and I was happy when he wrote me and told me that he wanted to wrestle me in my home town, just like a Mexican guy had done it back in 2015.

This Mexican guy I had wrestled in a local park as I had not any room for wrestling in my small apartment, but although I liked the outdoor wrestling in the sunshine on the lawn it was not much of a success. An alternative could be to rent a hotel room, but this would be too expensive, even for just a few hours.

Unlike in the U.K. there are no private mat rooms here in Denmark, but now 2018 another possibility had opened, for my local gym had been renovated during the winter, and among the new features the gym now also had a boxing ring. I had never seen a wrestling ring, but I had seen several pictures of guys wrestling in a ring, though mostly Pro wrestling. But I expected that a mat was a mat, so I guessed that this boxing ring could be used for wrestling as well. I asked the caretaker about the possibility of using the ring for wrestling - but he seemed not to know anything about wrestling. But as a member of the gym I could use it while there was not any boxing planned - and for responsibility reasons I was not allowed to use the ring for boxing without qualified boxing instructors.

Nothing said about wrestling - apparantly the gym did not have any regulations for that, and while I regularily have been there since the gym reopened after the refurbishment I have never seen anybody wrestling in the ring; most of the time it was only standing unattended and a bit desolate. With this American guy coming in on the cruise ship I thought it the perfect chance to bring wrestling to my gym, also because he had some experience in Pro wrestling (which I don't), so he should be able to show me how things are done.

The week before my American opponent arrived I checked with the gym again if the ring would be free on the day he was in Copenhagen and was informed that it would be free the whole afternoon. I should just register him at the entrance and he could have free admission as my guest to the gym. But a few days later he told me that he was retiring from action and he would not wrestle me anyway! Which I was unhappy with, for now I had everything arranged and was looking forward to try out what experience it would be to wrestle in a ring.
But the ring is still there, so I will keep it in mind if in the future there could be other wrestlers coming to Copenhagen - so we can wrestle in a ring and not the local park. Any takers?

Thus there will be almost three months for me without wrestling, but I should look ahead and not back. At the end of this month I will be leaving on my annual visit to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and have added a few days in the beginning of September where I plan to go to New York, expecting to meet some of the local wrestlers there then.