The Shine

It just feels like pain

The first time I took a bump I felt like my body had exploded. Wrestling rings are hard. People have said to me they think a wrestling ring is a trampoline. It's not. Why don't they make it softer? You have to move around on it.

A wrestler does more moving around then bumping. Try to run on a trampoline. Moving around on an unstable platform is bad for the knees and it's easy to lose your balance. Balance is everything. Not just in wrestling but in life. Ooh, that sounds cool and profound. Good job me.

As I was lying there thinking that I might have just died, the guy that trained me, in wrestling, not magic, said "it's not pain, it just feels like pain". I'm still trying to figure out if that's the most profound thing I've ever heard or the stupidest. Maybe it's both. That guy is Doug "Disco Biscuit" Douglas. Not "Disco" never that, always "Disco Biscuit". I don't know what a disco biscuit is but I'm sure it has something to do with drugs.

Doug the Disco Biscuit claims loudly and frequently to have been a big star in the "Louisiana territory" in the late 80's. I've never meet anyone who's heard of him. When I first saw him I thought that he looked terrible. When I found out he's in his late fifties I decided that he doesn't look so bad. He's got a beer belly and skinny chicken legs but he can still move. I know that he could still go out and have a decent five minute match. Longer if they do a lot of theatrics and really milk it.

There are three kinds of wrestling trainers. One, the total frauds that take your money and ghost you. Two, the true professionals who were great workers in their time and are great teachers now. They help you find places to stay near their school and their wife gives you a part time job in her diner and you babysit their kids and they become like a surrogate father to you or a second father depending on how your life went. Type 2 can transform type 1 when you're a woman. Because women are the worst so why not rip them off?

Thirdly, there are people like Doug the Disco Biscuit.

Even though no one has ever heard of him, I think he was a good worker. He's not a great teacher. He's for sure not above ripping people off from time to time. He didn't try to rip me off but I would say that I got 70% effort from him at the best of times, which isn't bad for the price. He normally charges $1500 to train somehow. I paid him somewhere around zero dollars. I think he felt sorry for me. I know he felt sorry for me.

I've told you about the cycle for women wrestlers, you don't get booked so you don't get experience so you don't get better so you don't get booked and on and on, but there's a problem even before you try to get booked. Most women get trained by men, and even a fat old man like Biscuit is a stronger and more solid than any woman I'm going to be working with. That doesn't help.

My first match was going to be awful no matter what, but it was made several times more awful than it needed to be because of my training. I was expecting my opponent to be able to pick me up as easily as Doug the Disco Biscuit did. I was expecting to be able to use her as a base just like I did with Doug the Disco Biscuit. She was probably thinking the same thing about me and whoever trained her. The first three things we tried to do we both fell flat on our asses because neither of us been in the ring with another woman.

And there's another issue. There aren't a lot of veteran women out on the road to learn from. I've never seen a single one. It's depressing when you see Brutus Beefcake and Marty Jennetty still out there making the rounds working for small paydays, but it serves a valuable purpose to the industry. They get to pass on their knowledge to the next generation.

Even if they don't try to teach you're anything you're going to learn a couple things just by being in the ring with someone with 30 years of experience. Where are the washed up lady old-timers for me to wrestle?

That doesn't happen on the women's side of things. There aren't any crusty middle-aged ladies out there who've worked across the world for years and years but never made it that can give a few tips to a young up and comer. Women don't hang around the biz that long, which is smart, but it leaves a void. The way to get better is by working with people better than you.

I've talked to Doug the Disco Biscuit a couple times since I flew the nest, mostly to see if he could help me get bookings. By and large he can't because he doesn't have a lot of connections. Or maybe he does and he doesn't want to use them for me because care that much about helping getting me booked.

Maybe if I ever hit it big I'll pay him that $1500.

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