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Illustration: Thomas Pitilli

Backyard wrestling

View extreme photos of backyard wrestling

Manny Gonzalez, a.k.a. Diamondback, has me hoisted over his head in a military press. I’m holding some of my weight by pushing off his sweaty shoulder, but my hands are slipping. Otherwise we’re in perfect form. Is this modern dance or backyard wrestling?

This isn’t my first time being tossed around; I wrestled in high school. But Diamondback and his pals—who practice an indie, WWE-style tussle—consider this the real sport. My school coach would’ve said the same about his version.

I consider this from eight feet in the air, where I have a panoramic view of Spartacus Gym in Gravesend, Brooklyn, today’s practice site for Insane Backyard Wrestling, Inc. (myspace.com/ibwwrestling). There’s a tornado of wrestlers in baggy jeans and black T-shirts executing flips and throwing each other onto the mats, punctuating body slams with dramatic thwacks! They storm around between a rainbow of foam gymnastics equipment and a group of eight-year-olds playing parachute at a birthday party. A row of concerned families monitor from the edge of the room behind a glass wall, fogged with the breath of a pair of small boys watching me float in the air.

Ballerinas don’t become spinal tragedies, I think to myself, realizing that I don’t know how I’m going to descend from this. I hope the guys running this place have an ambulance on speed dial. But there ends up being no need—Gonzalez knows I’m a beginner and lets me jump off.

Eric Ayzenberg, a.k.a. Synn, offers some advice with a hint of Zen: “Before you know how to wrestle someone else, you have to know how to wrestle yourself.” My Miyagi demonstrates, running full-speed ahead and clotheslining himself on the arm of an invisible adversary.

Once I master the front and back bumps (dramatic falls, basically), Gonzalez thinks I’m ready to endure a barrage of more technical moves. I take a suplex—an upside-down drop; no big deal. Then comes a “real” clothesline, which means it’s going to hurt. It does. Next they want me to try a compact driver, which scares me because I don’t know what it is. I’m supposed to trust a skinny dude with braces who won’t tell me his real name, insisting I call him Pyro. He tells me to put my head between his legs. He turns me upside down and we plummet. Somehow my head doesn’t cave into my chest cavity.

I might be getting battered, but at this point, I finally let go of my high-school wrestling instincts. Even though these guys look like they’re pummeling each other, they’re really working with each other, more like a theater company than competitors. And in that moment, I overcome the fear. I take the plunge and let them do whatever they want—I am their stage prop. So when Wil Kitcher, a.k.a. Drunkin Janitur, asks to try out his special moves, the Halo Teabag and the Two Girls One Cup, I’m game. I tell myself that a suplex is really just a trust fall; a full nelson just a warm embrace; and IBW, Inc., just a big, crazy family. Bring it on, brother.—Sam Tremble