It's often stated that we all love an underdog - and we do - but there's no cliche in place to describe the amazement, or awe, we feel from the perfect record. Underdogs don't score the perfect ten, geniuses do. Dan Gable won an Olympic gold, in freestyle wrestling, without conceding a single point the entire time; Cael Sanderson is undefeated in college wrestling; Dock Ellis (baseball, sorry grapple fans) threw a no-hitter, whilst under the influence of LSD; Rickson Gracie never loses, ever.
Yesterday was the first time I've ever lost in a grappling competition - ruining any future hope I might've had at building that perfect record. I didn't loose out on a major championship, nor was my future welfare, in anyway, compromised, but, for some reason, it really got to me. After the match, I put Kurt Cobain to shame. And it's at a time like that you want to blame everyone else: "if so-and-so would've stopped talking to me beforehand, I could've focused more"; "that person being there made me too tense"; "that girl's my bad luck charm, I never do well with her here". The truth of the matter, though, is that I made mistakes and the other guy was good enough to capitalise on them. That's all. I would've really liked to have blamed someone else, or luck, but I don't believe in luck, or fate, or destiny; the only people you can count on, is yourself and your opponent (and maybe the ref).
The worst part was realising how stupid my approach was, later. I had a few other matches, after the loss, to settle on who'd win the bronze. It's a ridiculous mentality, but I'm a "first or last" sort of guy - there's first place, and there's last place, and nothing inbetween. So, I approached these other matches thinking "what's the point?" Which meant I was loose and limber, seeing the openings, and going to work, properly. I won the bronze. And all I could think of was how tense I'd been approaching the other matches. I hadn't switched off and relaxed. ("Be like water, my friend.") It was a learning experience - which is, really, what competing is supposed to be - but that doesn't make that smudge on my record any more tolerable, right now.
One of the people I beat, on the way to the bronze, blamed the mats for his loss: if he hadn't tripped on the mats, then there's no way I would have submitted him. He was nice enough to find me and tell me this, in a very matter of fact sort of way, after the match. Some people can't accept the loss, and some people can; thankfully, I'm the latter.
P.S.
I actually had an entirely different post half written, before writing this, but putting that up felt like ignoring what I really wanted to talk about. Somedays you need to put your hands up and shout "I fucked up!"
Monday 30 July 2012
Thursday 19 July 2012
Little boy lost
Before a match, grappling competitions, and even just training, I sort of stop thinking. I say sort of, because I am thinking, I just try to make myself unaware of it - does that make any sense? I hope it does. It's characterised by a stone-faced expression, which some people interpret as boredom, and others as a borderline psychopathic tendency; I've adopted the term "switching off" to describe it. (I suppose it's as close as I get to the "don't think, feel", philosophy of Bruce Lee.)
When I switch off, I don't like talking to people, I just find somewhere to myself, and do my thing. Sometimes I just put a towel on my head, other times I pace up and down, and every now and again I try listening to music.
Lately, I've been listening to music, and there's one track in particular, that's been on loop, these last few weeks: "Fucking in the Bushes" by Oasis. It's a quality song. If anything, most people associate it with Guy Ritchie's film, Snatch, but I don't.
Oasis starts shouting out the speakers and the lights start flashing in time with the beat. At this moment I'm fine; it's when I stop to stare at the entrance video that everything changes. It's highlights of all those matches I used to watch, and then, out he comes. Suddenly, I switch on.
"What the fuck am I doing here? Why is Nigel McGuinness walking to the ring?" I start thinking.
I'm here [at New Generation Wrestling, in Hull] because I'm their go-to, if they need someone to wrestle on the mat; Nigel McGuinness is walking to the ring, because I'm booked to face him. I'm having a surreal moment in the ring, to myself, where I feel completely out of place. I start trying to stare off into the middle distance and shut that voice off that's telling me to hop the railing and run. Fucking in the Bushes is playing, and to the ring, walks the man I will always associate with it.
In 2004, when I was at the tender age of fourteen, I discovered a company named "Ring of Honor" [sic]. I remember my overabundance of joy, at discovering a completely new roster of styles and characters to obsess over, and Nigel McGuinness was one of those guys. I remember the first match I saw him in: he was in blue trunks, with the Union Flag on the back, and he was facing off against a little wildman man named Jimmy Jacobs (in a weird twist of fate, I vaguely recall the commentators talking about the Wigan Snake Pit, during the match, too). I liked Nigel, because here was a British guy doing, a British-esque style - yes, the sharing of nationality was enough for me to like the guy. It didn't matter that he'd been trained by an American, damn it! He was British! (What a strange mentality I had.)
As time went on, I continued to watch, and eventually started to train. Nigel switched from blue to black, started flicking the V's, and became money with a microphone. Time continued to pass -
I'm stood in the ring and I've managed to shut the nagging little voice off, again. The lights are up and Nigel's in the opposite corner to me. This is the only chance I'll get to do this; this is all part of the McGuinness retirement tour. You want to come across as professional, but you want to tell this guy how much you enjoyed everything he's done. He stands in the middle of the ring, with his hand outstretched - that'll always be the "Code of Honor" handsake, to me. The audience doesn't think I'll shake it, but I do. There's this pause, where they don't know what to expect. I sneer and, as clearly as possible with a gumshield in, say "bye-bye Nigel". People actually get angry - this is too easy.
This post probably comes as a little late, but it's only recently that I actually knew how to say all this. Self expression is like most things: easy to do, just hard to do well. I've settled for saying this quite well: cheers Nigel, for everything.
(http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/307482471/the-last-of-mcguinness)
When I switch off, I don't like talking to people, I just find somewhere to myself, and do my thing. Sometimes I just put a towel on my head, other times I pace up and down, and every now and again I try listening to music.
Lately, I've been listening to music, and there's one track in particular, that's been on loop, these last few weeks: "Fucking in the Bushes" by Oasis. It's a quality song. If anything, most people associate it with Guy Ritchie's film, Snatch, but I don't.
***
Oasis starts shouting out the speakers and the lights start flashing in time with the beat. At this moment I'm fine; it's when I stop to stare at the entrance video that everything changes. It's highlights of all those matches I used to watch, and then, out he comes. Suddenly, I switch on.
"What the fuck am I doing here? Why is Nigel McGuinness walking to the ring?" I start thinking.
I'm here [at New Generation Wrestling, in Hull] because I'm their go-to, if they need someone to wrestle on the mat; Nigel McGuinness is walking to the ring, because I'm booked to face him. I'm having a surreal moment in the ring, to myself, where I feel completely out of place. I start trying to stare off into the middle distance and shut that voice off that's telling me to hop the railing and run. Fucking in the Bushes is playing, and to the ring, walks the man I will always associate with it.
***
In 2004, when I was at the tender age of fourteen, I discovered a company named "Ring of Honor" [sic]. I remember my overabundance of joy, at discovering a completely new roster of styles and characters to obsess over, and Nigel McGuinness was one of those guys. I remember the first match I saw him in: he was in blue trunks, with the Union Flag on the back, and he was facing off against a little wildman man named Jimmy Jacobs (in a weird twist of fate, I vaguely recall the commentators talking about the Wigan Snake Pit, during the match, too). I liked Nigel, because here was a British guy doing, a British-esque style - yes, the sharing of nationality was enough for me to like the guy. It didn't matter that he'd been trained by an American, damn it! He was British! (What a strange mentality I had.)
As time went on, I continued to watch, and eventually started to train. Nigel switched from blue to black, started flicking the V's, and became money with a microphone. Time continued to pass -
***
I'm stood in the ring and I've managed to shut the nagging little voice off, again. The lights are up and Nigel's in the opposite corner to me. This is the only chance I'll get to do this; this is all part of the McGuinness retirement tour. You want to come across as professional, but you want to tell this guy how much you enjoyed everything he's done. He stands in the middle of the ring, with his hand outstretched - that'll always be the "Code of Honor" handsake, to me. The audience doesn't think I'll shake it, but I do. There's this pause, where they don't know what to expect. I sneer and, as clearly as possible with a gumshield in, say "bye-bye Nigel". People actually get angry - this is too easy.
***
This post probably comes as a little late, but it's only recently that I actually knew how to say all this. Self expression is like most things: easy to do, just hard to do well. I've settled for saying this quite well: cheers Nigel, for everything.
(http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/307482471/the-last-of-mcguinness)
Friday 13 July 2012
Just a wrestler
Okay, so I'm going to start this one with a little section of bragging, but bear with me and, hopefully, this actually becomes readable.
People seem to enjoy my matches. (Whoa! Huge brag, I know.) After doing a post that denounced criticism, why is this even important? Well, it's because wrestlers - people who have actual experience and skill in the act of wrestling - often compliment me on my matches. I hold out no hopes for universal admiration, but appreciation from peers seems to be an attainable goal.
The crux of all this: I don't believe any of it.
I know I'm not incompetent at my part-time, passtime, but I don't think I'm good at it. There was a phrase that I often uttered after matches, so much so that it became a running joke between a few friends: "could've been better." I eventually had to change this habit, because people hear "could've been better" as entirely negative. Implicity, I was saying "it was alright, but it could've been better", but that's not what people hear. (Now I just say "it was alright" as the stock response.)
I don't dwell on negative aspects, in life in general, but I'm still aware of faults and imprecisions, on my own part. So when someone has something positive to say about my work, I'm more amazed they didn't notice all the mistakes I made - which ultimately leads me to conclude they didn't watch the match properly, or they're just lying to be kind.
One day, I come across a speech gave by Neil Gaiman to the graduates of an arts university (if you don't know who Neil Gaiman is, stop reading this now, and, instead, read something by him). He spoke of his own experience creating and progressing through art. It's a great speech, and I found it inspirational, not because there was an amazing writer laying out the metaphor he lived by, but because he spoke of the imposter syndrome:
"The first problem of any kind, of even limited success, is the unshakable conviction that you're getting away with something, and that any moment now they will discover you."
It's when someone says something like that, that you breath a sign of relief, that you didn't even know you had pent up in your chest; you answer the question you'd never even internalised: "Oh, I'm not the only one."
Your friends are too kind and no matter how hard they try to convince you that you're too hard on yourself, you'll always believe they say that because they're you're friends; your enemies are too malign, so you'll never believe them either, really. It's hard to find opinions to trust, with this cognitive conviction.
Where am I now, then? Am I accepting any and all praise I can lay my ears on? No. Am I a manic depressive, who believes every negative I stumble across? No. But there was something I heard about myself, that I actually agree with:
"I don't get the hype about Jack Gallagher, he's just a wrestler."
Yes, that is a quote from another wrestler, and he has no idea I heard it. I'm just a wrestler, and I'm happy with that.
P.S.
I don't get the hype, either.
P.P.S.
For those interested, here's the speech gave by Neil Gaiman: https://vimeo.com/42372767
People seem to enjoy my matches. (Whoa! Huge brag, I know.) After doing a post that denounced criticism, why is this even important? Well, it's because wrestlers - people who have actual experience and skill in the act of wrestling - often compliment me on my matches. I hold out no hopes for universal admiration, but appreciation from peers seems to be an attainable goal.
The crux of all this: I don't believe any of it.
I know I'm not incompetent at my part-time, passtime, but I don't think I'm good at it. There was a phrase that I often uttered after matches, so much so that it became a running joke between a few friends: "could've been better." I eventually had to change this habit, because people hear "could've been better" as entirely negative. Implicity, I was saying "it was alright, but it could've been better", but that's not what people hear. (Now I just say "it was alright" as the stock response.)
I don't dwell on negative aspects, in life in general, but I'm still aware of faults and imprecisions, on my own part. So when someone has something positive to say about my work, I'm more amazed they didn't notice all the mistakes I made - which ultimately leads me to conclude they didn't watch the match properly, or they're just lying to be kind.
One day, I come across a speech gave by Neil Gaiman to the graduates of an arts university (if you don't know who Neil Gaiman is, stop reading this now, and, instead, read something by him). He spoke of his own experience creating and progressing through art. It's a great speech, and I found it inspirational, not because there was an amazing writer laying out the metaphor he lived by, but because he spoke of the imposter syndrome:
"The first problem of any kind, of even limited success, is the unshakable conviction that you're getting away with something, and that any moment now they will discover you."
It's when someone says something like that, that you breath a sign of relief, that you didn't even know you had pent up in your chest; you answer the question you'd never even internalised: "Oh, I'm not the only one."
Your friends are too kind and no matter how hard they try to convince you that you're too hard on yourself, you'll always believe they say that because they're you're friends; your enemies are too malign, so you'll never believe them either, really. It's hard to find opinions to trust, with this cognitive conviction.
Where am I now, then? Am I accepting any and all praise I can lay my ears on? No. Am I a manic depressive, who believes every negative I stumble across? No. But there was something I heard about myself, that I actually agree with:
"I don't get the hype about Jack Gallagher, he's just a wrestler."
Yes, that is a quote from another wrestler, and he has no idea I heard it. I'm just a wrestler, and I'm happy with that.
P.S.
I don't get the hype, either.
P.P.S.
For those interested, here's the speech gave by Neil Gaiman: https://vimeo.com/42372767
Sunday 8 July 2012
"Opinions are like arseholes"
There's something I need to come clean about: when I first started wrestling, I would go online and read reviews of my matches -
I hang my head at my naivety.
Before I continue, I want to make it clear, I'm going to try and write this in the most positive and least preachy way possible; people get angry when you question their opinions.
That's probably the best place to begin: opinions. Some people like to say "opinons are like arseholes, everyone's got one." Now, that's a perfectly valid statement, if not also a backhanded way of insulting people with an opinion you don't approve of. (It's also incredibly overused by people who're trying to be witty.) If you expose yourself to people's opinions of you, or your work, or even the work of others, that you enjoy, then you open yourself up to the experiencing of the negative opinion - the most feared of all opinions. However, you're also potentially going to run into the positive opinion - that oh, so friendly form. The reading of reviews is the game risk, reward that a lot of people play. It also gives rise to the artistic double standard.
Without trying to sound too pretentious, I like to think of what I do as an art form. There is skill involved, but that's not why it's art. To me, art is an expression of being. That's a very basic definition, but it's also going to be the one I'm sticking with for this post; any further elaboration of art and there are the equal dangers of turning this into a dissertation and becoming far more pretentious than a part-time pro wrestler has the right to be. Back to the matter at hand, I think that there is some art in what I do. As an artist, I have an audience, and audiences respond to the art. How people deal with that response, typically, is the double standard: if someone thinks you're good, then you consent to their opinion being valid, and receive an ego boost; if someone thinks you're bad, then they don't know what they're talking about, and you'll probably say something along the lines of "opinions are like arseholes-".
There's a horrible double standard in wrestling where people pick and choose whose opinions are valid, and whose are not, based solely upon how pleasant that person is, with regards to them. I was very guilty of this for quite a few years. Luckily, I'm weird, and my pondering time is spent with such vital questions like "what is a critic and why are they valid?" You can get into long and labourious lines of questioning regarding aesthetics, but really it's a question of skill.
Like I said, skill, alone, does not constitute an art form, but wrestling does require certain skills, regardless. If you are unfamiliar with the skills required, then you are in no position to judge them. You take your car to a mechanic for his opinion on how to fix it, because he has the skills to properly assess the situation; why are artistic forms, which take skill, any different? To me, they aren't. My favourite analogy is this:
"Imagine you're arguing against someone in a foreign language, when all you have is a basic phrase book and the other person is a native speaker."
So I don't read reviews, good or bad, because - and this is the part where you must remember, I'm just being honest - their opinions don't matter. I care if people are entertained, I care if people feel they got their money's worth, but I can tell these things by the immediate reactions at the shows. I don't care how people theorise that I could improve my skills, nor do I believe them when they try to explain my positive attributes. I probably sound like a right moody git, but you've got to concede, I have a consistent approach.
I hang my head at my naivety.
Before I continue, I want to make it clear, I'm going to try and write this in the most positive and least preachy way possible; people get angry when you question their opinions.
That's probably the best place to begin: opinions. Some people like to say "opinons are like arseholes, everyone's got one." Now, that's a perfectly valid statement, if not also a backhanded way of insulting people with an opinion you don't approve of. (It's also incredibly overused by people who're trying to be witty.) If you expose yourself to people's opinions of you, or your work, or even the work of others, that you enjoy, then you open yourself up to the experiencing of the negative opinion - the most feared of all opinions. However, you're also potentially going to run into the positive opinion - that oh, so friendly form. The reading of reviews is the game risk, reward that a lot of people play. It also gives rise to the artistic double standard.
Without trying to sound too pretentious, I like to think of what I do as an art form. There is skill involved, but that's not why it's art. To me, art is an expression of being. That's a very basic definition, but it's also going to be the one I'm sticking with for this post; any further elaboration of art and there are the equal dangers of turning this into a dissertation and becoming far more pretentious than a part-time pro wrestler has the right to be. Back to the matter at hand, I think that there is some art in what I do. As an artist, I have an audience, and audiences respond to the art. How people deal with that response, typically, is the double standard: if someone thinks you're good, then you consent to their opinion being valid, and receive an ego boost; if someone thinks you're bad, then they don't know what they're talking about, and you'll probably say something along the lines of "opinions are like arseholes-".
There's a horrible double standard in wrestling where people pick and choose whose opinions are valid, and whose are not, based solely upon how pleasant that person is, with regards to them. I was very guilty of this for quite a few years. Luckily, I'm weird, and my pondering time is spent with such vital questions like "what is a critic and why are they valid?" You can get into long and labourious lines of questioning regarding aesthetics, but really it's a question of skill.
Like I said, skill, alone, does not constitute an art form, but wrestling does require certain skills, regardless. If you are unfamiliar with the skills required, then you are in no position to judge them. You take your car to a mechanic for his opinion on how to fix it, because he has the skills to properly assess the situation; why are artistic forms, which take skill, any different? To me, they aren't. My favourite analogy is this:
"Imagine you're arguing against someone in a foreign language, when all you have is a basic phrase book and the other person is a native speaker."
So I don't read reviews, good or bad, because - and this is the part where you must remember, I'm just being honest - their opinions don't matter. I care if people are entertained, I care if people feel they got their money's worth, but I can tell these things by the immediate reactions at the shows. I don't care how people theorise that I could improve my skills, nor do I believe them when they try to explain my positive attributes. I probably sound like a right moody git, but you've got to concede, I have a consistent approach.
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