The Heavy

This was it. I was on deck, scared and angry. I looked across the mat not seeing whatever was happening out there, as if all that was in the gym was him and me. There he was, sitting there eating Doritos, laughing it up. Didn’t he know he was on deck, or did he just not care? Why would he? He had every advantage: height, experience, and of course, weight. Normally he would never even think he’d see me on the mat. Why would he? We were different weight classes after all―me at 195, him 275. But this wasn’t a normal night.

 

Before weigh-ins, my coach approached me and asked me to do the unthinkable. He explained our heavyweight was ineligible, our 220 was state bound, and there were scouts there that night. So, he asked me to blow weight and take wha, tat the time, we thought was going to be a bye. As far as he knew, this team hadn’t had a heavy all year, so it should be a forfeit and an easy win.  

 

So, I chugged some water. I stepped up onto that scale and―boom―195.2, exactly enough to blow weight. I was ineligible at 195, so I thought that was it, chalk it up to an easy night. That was until the door opened and in stepped this 274.8-pound, six-foot-four beast of a man. I swear I had never seen someone so large in my life. Even worse, I looked at my coach, and he was smiling like he was looking forward to it. So, I decided I would look forward to it, too. 

 

I remember warming up that night in absolute silence. Not that my team was silent. No, they were joking and laughing around. See, we were the fourth ranked team in the state.  The other team were a division lower and unranked. It should be no contest as far as anyone was concerned, but that meant nothing to me. As I warmed up, all I could do was stare at this massive boy sitting in the bleachers eating his damned burrito. In fact, I took it rather personally. You’re going to sit there and eat a damn burrito before our match. I remember that thought burning into my head as my team and I warmed up and stretched. 

 

The next hour or so felt like a blur―the national anthem, the captains meeting in the middle, and the first six matches all went by so quick. The next thing I know, I’m doing sprints behind my bench to warm up. Two matches left. Focus. My headphones were blaring and by the time I returned, I was on deck. I scanned their side of the gym to try and find him among the multiple wrestlers warming up, but he was nowhere. Then I found him, there he was, sitting for minutes before our match eating a bag of Doritos. Never in my life had I felt so disgusted by someone, or so angry. I felt as though he not only was disrespecting me, but at this point, both our teams.  

 

Getting dressed to the song “I Hate Everything About You” blaring through my headphones, I knew this was it. I was warm and ready to take the mat when something totally unexpected happened. Our assistant coach approached me minutes before I was up and told me my coach wanted me to go out there and just not get pinned to save us points. He wanted me to throw the match and not try. These words burned as I nodded in disappointment. I had to go out there and throw my pride out the door and loose to a guy who had done nothing to prepare. I wanted so badly to tell Coach to screw himself and go out there and wrestle to win. I put on my headgear. 

 

I gave my friend a hug as he was the 220, and someone I considered family at the time. What he whispered lit a fire under me, something that enraged me beyond belief. He told me that once he had won his match, he overheard the kid I was going to wrestle yell something about him. Something I dare not repeat here, something no man should ever be called, and he ended it with an r.

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That did it. I didn’t care what happened next. All I knew was he was going to hurt. I don’t remember much of what happened up until the whistle, then the tightness in my chest as the nerves threatened to overtake me and the shakiness in my hands. The one thing I do remember mainly from pictures I’ve seen was the cold in my eye. There we were face to face in the middle of the mat. He towered over me like a mountain. Then everything was silent. I could feel the vibrations from the stands and the people cheering,but I heard none of it. The only thing to break me from that trance was the sound of the whistle piercing my ears.  

 

Boom. I felt my head get thrown down by my opponent's hand as the whole world focused in, and it was time to go. I could finally use all the anger and anticipation. I found myself moving without thinking, his leg in my arms. I was fighting to lift him off the ground. I could feel my chest squeezing. My heart was pounding like a stampede of bulls about to burst through me. Then I felt it. I felt him come up and fall back down. I had taken him down. I heard the ref yell out the score, and I could feel my team's bench through the ground. It was thunderous in that gym. All I could think is Make him pay. So I did the move I knew was most effective and caused a very decent amount of discomfort.

  

I circled all the way around to his side, fighting his constant pleas to escape. I did as I was trained. Like a machine, I threaded the arm bar. I yanked his arm behind him and pressed my hip into his shoulder insuring he felt every pound I had to offer, and I began to crank. I slowly walked around his massive body turning his shoulder over his head while keeping his elbow locked, cranking it. Laughing with joy, not because I knew what I was doing hurt, but because I knew I was about to win. This was my best move, and the only way to stop it was for him to go to his back, which in the sport of wrestling is the absolute last thing he wanted to do. As I slowly cranked his shoulder, I saw my team for the first time. Their faces will forever be saved in my memory―half of them in the air, the other half screaming at the top of their lungs, all of them excited. I felt my opponent go, he rolled onto his back and gave up. The clock showed only two seconds left in the first period. 

 

In my four years as a wrestler, it had never felt so good to have my hand raised after a match, to see the crowd cheering, to be embraced by my team, and most importantly, to look my coach in the eye after that match and shake his hand. He never asked me to throw a match again. He also never let me go back down to 195 again. In retrospect, maybe I should’ve lost after all because, damn, those boys were heavy.