During my senior year of high school spent in Tokyo, I wrestled as a St. Mary's Titan. And, I was quite good, if I do say so myself, and I do say so myself.
Wrestling for an international school meant that we did a lot of traveling to other international schools as well as U.S. military bases all around the Tokyo area, from schools called Kinnick, CAJ, ASIJ and on and on and on.
Well, towards the end of the season, CAJ held what was called the Kanto Plains tournament, which was the lead up to the grand daddy final tournament of the year, the All Far East Tournament, which was held in Okinawa.
At the CAJ tournament, we had to wake up exceptionally early because the school had brought in an inspirational speaker who was supposed to inspire us, I guess. At that point in the morning, however, the only thing that could have possibly inspired me was more sleep.
The inspirational speaker was a torso, by which I mean he was a man who had no arms or legs, just stumpy stumps. And, according to all the hype, he was also reportedly an awesome wrestler. It was reported that he was such an awesome wrestler, in fact, that he had placed 3rd in NCAA competition and that he came within one place of making the Olympic team. They stressed that it was the Olympic team, not the special or handicapped Olympic team.
I was rather incredulous of the claim because, honestly, the man was a torso. Granted, he was a very dextrous and mobile torso, but he was a torso nonetheless. Despite all the talk about almost making the Olympic team, and the jacket he proudly wore that was bedecked with more medals than MacArthur, I couldn't help but think I was having a considerable amount of smoke blown up my ass. I sat on the bleachers, head full of drowsiness and battling a cold, waiting for the man to inspire me in some way.
After a lot of talk from the torso, about such stuff as "never letting adversity get you down" and "using your weaknesses to your advantage" and blah, blah, blah, he finally called on a volunteer from audience to take him on in a wrestling match. It was about damned time.
The volunteer turned out to be a CAJ wrestler who was in my weight class, an opponent of mine who I was going to meet on the mat later in the day, so I took extreme interest in watching what transpired.
What transpired was pretty much what I expected: the torso didn't stand a chance. He got his stumpy ass handed to him. He got rolled, and re-rolled, and taken down, and rolled, and re-rolled. It was pretty damned embarrasing after all the hype, to be perfectly honest.
And, in the midst of this most amazing ass-kicking, the torso had the audacity to. . . complain. He complained that the CAJ wrestler was using an illegal hold, when it was obvious as snot to everyone watching that the hold was perfectly legitimate. Eventually, the torso did manage to get a reversal on the CAJ wrestler, which was worth one point.
It was at that point that the announcer said something like, "Okay, folks, it's obvious that he's not going to be pinned any time soon."
Pinned? PINNED?!! They talked the torso up to be some sort of wrestling god, and now they were content to say he wasn't going to be pinned?! By a nobody high school wrestler?! I damn near fell out of my bleacher. Never mind the fact that the score was somewhere around 12 to 1 in favor of the CAJ wrestler. At least the Olympic caliber torso wasn't pinned!? I woke up at the ass crack of dawn to be inspired by THAT?! ARGH!
I went on to win the tournament, including pinning the CAJ wrestler who had schooled the torso.
A few days later, the most recent issue of Stars & Stripes came to my attention. The torso was prominently featured in a human interest article about his "inspirational" story. The problem was, however, that the article had this to say about the match in which he was decimated. "Maestes (the CAJ wrestler), scissored in those stumps, is quickly pinned."
I was stunned. Dumbfounded. I mean, I was all like, WTF? I was there. My dad was there. Hundreds of people were there, and we all saw, plain as day, that the torso was annihilated on the mat by a nobody wrestler. Yet the Stars & Stripes played it up as another triumphant victory by the almost-Olympic torso. I wanted to barf.
And the worst part? The worst part was, in the article layout, there was a picture of me (a big picture of me), sitting on the bleachers looking amazed when, in fact, I was probably caught during the tail-end of a yawn.
I think that was when I realized that I can never, ever, evernever, believe anything I read without thinking that, at the very least, 20 percent or more of it may be completely wrong, or worse, fabricated.
UPDATE: I've spent an unhealthy amount of time doing various Google searches to find the name of the torso, but to no avail. Have any of you readers out there heard of him? Gawd, you'd think it would be a simple task to find a torso via Google.
UPDATE 2.0: My Google searching, however, did locate this picture of my dad, which is pretty cool.
Posted by Ryan at April 22, 2004 12:45 PMSheesh. Whatta freak.
That bragging about his wrestling sounds real bogus to me for Japanese who are NEVER supposed to brag.
Perhaps you saw Japan's most famous "Torso" who wrote a bestseller and is on TV all the time is OTOTAKE HIROTADA.
See http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/99/0709/feat2.html
Take a look at the pictures at the OTOTAKE freak's homepage and see if this is the same Torso.
http://www.ototake.jp/index.html
I prefer this Japanese wrestler who at least a good sense of humor about being a gimp wrestler:
http://village.infoweb.ne.jp/~fwhx2425/
Dogpatch: 'super handicapped wrestling'
Taro, he wasn't Japanese. He was American, I guess. And a fraud, I guess.
Posted by: Ryan at April 23, 2004 12:27 AMGreat story! Wrestling is like fishing...you can't ever believe the stories. I've met many losers that have told me that IF they would've wrestled that they would have been state champs.
Lol! I wish they could mail those things out for less than $9.99.
Posted by: Mike at April 25, 2004 07:18 PMi know it's your personal blog, but you should be careful when writing on internet. afterall, you've had close to 100,000 visitors. before you write something, you have to step back and think how your writing may affect those who read it. have you thought about how that handicapped person would feel after he reads your comment? how some people may think about st.mary's, and its wrestling team? words can be like sword at times. and your subjective personal opinion is no longer just that, when it gets on internet. sorry about my rambling but i hope you would think about that.
class of 1992. 1992 kanto plains champion,
ts
Hey TS. I'm usually pretty careful about not insulting people who aren't famous. Here's the deal about that handicapped wrestler though. He was a fraud. He was a phony. He went around as an inspirational speaker, making pretty good money, but it was all a big, fat lie. There are plenty of real, inspirational people out there, but he wasn't one of them. Granted, what he was able to accomplish in his handicapped state was admirable, but his claim that he almost made the Olympic team was ludicrous.
As for St. Mary's, I don't think I've ever written anything bad about my Alma Mater.
Cheers.
Ryan
St. Mary's Class of 1993
1993 Kanto Plains Champion (148 lbs)
Ryan, I used to wrestle at St.Mary's too, and I believe I was no where close being good as you were.
However, I did learn other things in wrestling that are far more important in life than taking a opponent down or pinning him: hard work, passion, dedication, discipline, self-control, respect for yourself and your opponents, courage, etc., etc. These intangibles have definitely made me a better person, and these are the qualities that I look for from a fellow person and not just what he or she did or what he or she is trying to do.
Having said this, the handicapped wrestler that you talk about in your blog post surely must had his share of struggle. It must had been a struggle that I can't possibly imagine...but what I do know is that he never quit, thrived to be the best that he could be, and was able to go talk to you and your fellow wrestlers that day and share his experience. This alone, to me, is truly inspirational, makes me believe that he is a fine young man and human being, regardless of being close to making the olympic team or not.
Now, I'm not writing this to tell you to change your opinion so I'll stop. But please do be careful on what you write on the internet in the future as you are one of the mat titans and a blog post like this could be viewed as a representative talking on behalf of all the mat titans alumni.
Regards,
Takashi
Class of 91
I certainly don't mean to put Titan wrestling in a sour light, by any means. And, although I do agree that the handicapped wrestler likely overcame some huge obstacles in his life, and his perseverence should be admired, that does in no way make it appropriate for him to sell a lie. The fact that he was destroyed on the mat by a high school wrestler immediately called into question his claims, and every wrestler in the stands that morning, or at least most of them, agreed that he was a fraud.
To take an extreme analogy, let's say a guy in a wheelchair robbed a bank. Do we applaud him as an inspiration, or do we call him as the bank robber he is?
At any rate, it's kind of fun to know that a St. Mary's alum found his way to my little corner of the Web. Feel free to browse around. There's a lot more than wrestling to be found here. Mostly, it's a bunch of insanity, but that's me.
Take care,
Ryan
Posted by: Ryan at January 19, 2005 06:14 PMhey ryan, this is Doo from 93 Mat Titans, it's been awhile. my fellow wrestlers informed me, and i read some of your posts in respect to St.Mary's wrestling.
regretfully, i was deeply bothered by them.
hey ryan, you weren't a "godwrestler" nor "robocop" that you mentione in other posts. hashi kicked your ass, and although i was 15 lbs lighter than you, i had to babysit you and wrestle you during every practice. if you don't rember that, ask Coach Rhodes.
what are you trying to prove here ?
doo
Doo Shik Shin? Oh my God, how cool is that?
Look, Doo. I don't know, exactly, how you're reading this site, but you certainly are entitled to your opinion. It's not my intent to make myself out to be a "god" or anything like that. I merely state that I was a good wrestler, which I don't think is an incorrect statement. You were good, too, as I recall. And, yes, Hashi did hand me my ass with regularity, which wasn't surprising, seeing as how he was built like a tank and outweighed me by 20 pounds or so. Jens destroyed me, too, and he was probably one of the best wrestlers I'd ever seen at the high school level. Hikaru Wykoff was a self-centered jack-ass, and I stand by that assessment wholeheartedly.
As for babysitting me, well, you can call it however you feel. I think my dad paired us up because you were good competition at about the same weight (weren't you a weight below me? I can't remember).
I apologize if this site has offended you in some way, but I certainly don't apologize for its content. If you can point out, somewhere, where my information is incorrect, I'll be more than happy to change it. Do you remember the "inspirational" speaker at the Kanto Plains Tournament?
At any rate, I still think it's cool that you ended up finding this site. I actually thought of you as one of my better friends from St. Mary's, and I still do. What have you been up to? The last St. Mary's alum I ever saw, if you can believe it, was Carl Shapiro, who went to the same Minnesota college I did.
Now, if Mario Arias would just find this site. That guy just disappeared off the face of the planet.
Posted by: Ryan at January 20, 2005 10:02 AMLooking through my archives, I did find the entry that mentioned "godlike" and "robocop," and I can definitely see how that pissed you off. Keep in mind, though, that the intent behind that post was to build up to the eventual confrontation between myself and that prick, Hikaru. Most people reading it would realize that I didn't actually believe I was "robocop" or "godlike." I was basically poking fun at myself via exaggeration. But, yeah, I see your point.
Posted by: Ryan at January 20, 2005 10:09 AMhey Ryan, no hard feelings; other Mat Titans' wrestlers recently told me about this blog and I was really surprised, because many of your comments didn't sound like Ryan I know. Anyway, hope everything is going well on your end. I live in Los Angeles,so if you ever have a chance to stop by here, give me a call; let's wrestle; I'll call other "senpai wrestlers" to join the meet,who are living in L.A, San Diego, and SF.
In respect to Mario, last time I heard about him
was last year and he was living in New York. Let me try to get his contact number, but is your e-mail address or phone # posted anywhere ? because i do not want to post Mario's number on this open blog
hey, take care.
doo
Posted by: Doo at January 25, 2005 07:33 AMDoo, my e-mail address is yossarian9@hotmail.com, or you can use my work address rhodesr@us.ibm.com. I'd really enjoy being able to drop a line to Mario and yourself, from time to time.
Not sure when will be the next time I'm over there on the West coast, although my job is unpredictable in that it sends me off to conventions and conferences when I'm not expecting it, so I'll keep you posted about that.
Posted by: Ryan at January 25, 2005 09:39 AM
Stumble It!
