RhodyRaybo's blog

Yesterday, I had scheduled a match with a buddy who is not on MF, but has a weird work schedule. I took the afternoon off and planned to go see him after I left work. But alas, it wasn't meant to be. His work called him up and asked him to come in. So I had nothing planned for my afternoon off. But then I remembered a guy that I had been wanting to go see. He's retired but in decent shape, but not a terribly skilled wrestler. But I've wrestled him in the past when he had a different profile, then took it down. I remembered you could do some light rolling around with him and do some "long holds", which I do enjoy at times with the right guys. In previous texting conversations with him he told me I was welcome anytime, and I told him I was a bit limited because he lived an hour away and driving at night now is a bit of a challenge because of my vision, and I try to limit my night driving to familiar territory. But seeing it was afternoon, there wouldn't be a problem. So I texted this guy, and he said he was around and I was welcome to come over. So I headed up into his direction as soon as I got off work.

When I pulled into his driveway, I got to the door, and he looked at me and seemed a bit confused. For some reason he wasn't expecting me but someone else, a certain someone that I've wrestled with many times in the past, though not in the last 3 years. It turned out, he had my number under the other guy's name/handle. We laughed about the mixup and went on for an hour with our "wrestling". When I left, he told me that he was glad I came over and that I was welcome anytime. When we had wrestled previously, it had been at my location. This was my first time at his house. I completely enjoyed the visit and am looking forward to meeting him again soon.

Now the story doesn't end there. I messaged the other guy, the guy he THOUGHT was on his way over, and told him this story. This other guy and I are trying to set up something soon, but apparently he has had a very demanding work schedule and getting away hasn't been easy, but he's working on it. When I told him what happened, he responded "This is funny. Lucky him. You are an upgrade". Although I appreciate the kind words, especially from someone who's butt I have kicked so many times, I'm not sure I'm an "upgrade", but at least the guy I saw yesterday was happy to see me. I will admit however, this was a very first time in 14 years of wrestling that I show up to someone's house after extensive dialogue and find out they were expecting someone else. If anything, it's the thing sitcoms are made of. But next time I text someone about getting together that I don't normally text, I'll make sure to clearly identify myself. RhodyRaybo!!!!

Peace out, Wrestlers!

The last few days, I got to spend some time with my wife's side of the family. They were up visiting from Florida to visit both us and my wife's sister's in-laws. It was a fun time as always. But during the last gathering with the family, something unusual happened. We were gathered with some of my wife's relatives at a picnic area on the Cape Cod Canal and at some point I noticed my nephew and my son wrestling. I went over to observe. Wrestling is nothing new to either one of them. I would "play wrestle" with both my son and nephew when they were children, but with my son being 26 and my nephew being 31, it was a different ball game. My nephew wrestled in high school and he took some martial arts, and my son has a black belt in karate, where they had frequent grappling sessions ( I always watched those and salivated). My son is very much out of shape, but my nephew is still very much in shape and fairly muscular, and HE'S the one I've been wanting to wrestle with for real for a very long time. But every time he came up for a visit, he would back away if I started getting playful with him.

Anyway, while the nephew was subduing my son, the nephew looks at me and asks if I wanted to go at it with him. I was like "are you serious???". I also have talked about him to other wrestlers and told them how much I wanted to seriously wrestle with him. I agreed to , and took my shoes off, got down on the grass and we started rolling. I was mostly doing BJJ no-gi style with him, which he was familiar with. He managed to pin me and grab me a couple times, but I managed to flip him over a couple times as well. It took a couple tries, but I managed to subdue him and get him in side control. Before I could nail him in an armbar, he tapped. He told me that I'm strong as a bull and that next time he was up, we'd roll again.

The reason this is particularly special to me, is that I have always loved this nephew and always enjoyed spending time with him during the family visits. I always wanted to take him down for real and he knew that. So this brief, 2 minute roll came very unexpectedly and meant the world to me. But also, wrestling on the grass outdoors is not a usual occurrence for me. So, I kept thanking him for the match. He kept saying "anytime". Hopefully next time I see him we can rumble some more. You just never know sometimes, you just never know.

Those of you who have wrestled with me in the last couple years know that I had a very nice 6 X 12 foot mat that had been given to me by a former wrestling opponent who had to quit wrestling because of health reasons. When he asked me if I wanted the mat, I told him "absolutely" and went to his place and brought it to my former "site B" in North Attleboro. It went perfectly in the living room and was the perfect setup. You can see many of my matches on that mat in the majority of videos I have posted in the last 2 years. Well, in April my wife listed the house in North Attleboro, and despite the fact that we still haven't closed on the house yet because of one issue after another, we had everything cleared out of the house including my wrestling mat. I brought the mat home to use in my basement. Surprisingly, the mat fit in the space in my basement. However, storage was a huge issue. The mat didn't roll up easily and getting it through the door from the storage room in the basement into game room the was a huge hassle. Putting back in the storage wasn't much easier. Recently, I decided to invest in an easier and slightly smaller option. I recently purchased a foldable mat from Amazon that is 4 X 10. It's a tad smaller than I would have liked, but it folds and stores very, very easily. After using the new mat with Wrestling Beast this past weekend, with some supplemental puzzle mats that Spiro45 had given to me a while back, I knew I could now get rid of the old mat. Seeing that the mat was given to me, I felt the need to give it away as well. I put an ad in Craig's list and got a few inquiries, but no followup. I then put an ad in Facebook Marketplace entitled "FREE Wrestling Mat". I got about a dozen inquiries in the first 10 minutes. To make a long story short I answered about 6 or 7 inquiries at the same time saying "the first one to get to my house tonight, takes it". The winner was this petite, attractive young woman probably in her early or mid 30's.

When she showed up and I loaded the awkwardly rolled up mat into her Chevy Tahoe, she explained it was for her 5 year old son. She kept thanking me and told me that her son had recently taken an interest in watching wrestling and MMA and very much wanted to do it and had been wrestling with his friends on his bed. As a parent who raised 2 sons, I can understand the type of catastrophe that can cause. She told me that she had told her husband they should set up a wrestling type of ring in the basement and that she would look for some sort of mat. So when she saw the ad, she quickly responded and happened to be just five minutes away. She drove away with my old mat, and now the mat will be used to help nurture a future wrestler, or martial arts expert, or mma fighter, or whatever road he goes down in relation to his interest. So I'm glad I could donate my old mat to help a child develop his interest in wrestling and maybe someday, he'll have a profile on Meetfighters.

Peace out and God bless!!!!