devonwrestler's blog

Looking around on U Tube, as you do, I came accross some clips showing traditional Cornish wrestling matches. Since I live down in Devon it is not too far for me to drive over the Tamar bridge and into Cornwall so I decided to go along to watch one of the Cornish wrestling competitions that are held over the summer months in various parts of Cornwall. If you want to find details of these competitions Google should help, although I think there may be more frequent events than are actually listed on the internet.

The event I attended was one of the events open to novices as well as experienced wrestlers. I had read that the only equipment you need to take up Cornish wrestling is a pair of ordinary shorts, the special jackets are provided by the event organisers, although frequent participants will have their own jackets. So I put some shorts in the car, just in case, but at that stage I didnt really think that I would end up being one of the competitors. Not wishing to miss anything, I arrived about half an hour before the advertised start time and there was already a small crowd gathering on the village green where the wrestling was to take place. There was also a circle marked out on the grass with sawdust and plank on trestle style seating had been set out, presumably for spectators. There was a marquee in which refreshments were being served, the main offerings being, as you might expect, real Cornish pasties and real Cornish cream teas. Another tent was marked 'wrestlers changing' and a third tent was for the officials and had a table beside displaying an impressive collection of silverware, presumably the trophies for the winners. As well as the spectators there were already a few wrestlers changed into shorts and standing around bare foot as they chatted together.

Realising that pretty well anyone could enter the novices class, even with no previous experience, I could not resist sighning up - the entrance fee was small change and you just had to fill in a simple form to register for the event. They were collecting the forms up at a table in the marquee and as I handed in my form I explained that I had never done any kind of formal martial arts (I dont really think of the informal wrestling I have done though meetfighters.com as 'proper' martial arts. ) The guy said he would find someone to give me some instruction.

I should say at this point that the wrestling jackets used in Cornish wrestling are an essential part of this sport. They are very loose fitting, short sleeved and made from very strong canvas so pretty well impossible to tear. Male wrestlers wear the jacket over bare skin, a few females do also take part and are allowed a teeshirt or bathing costume under the jacket. When you wrestle you grip the opponents jacket, you are not allowed to grip his limbs but as well as gripping the jacket you can use the flat of your hand on any part of his (or I suppose her) body above the waist. The thought occured to me that unlike most forms of fighting clothing such as modern combat helmets and medieval suits of armour, these jackets are not designed to protect you from attack. Rather than protecting you they seem to be designed to make you more vulnerable to attack from your opponent. Because the jackets are loose fitting there is plenty of spare cloth for your opponent to get a good hold on. The jackets do not open at the front, you put them on over your head, but accross the front of your jacket there are a couple of ropes or straps, conveniently placed to make nice handholds for your opponent to grab and heave on while at the same time he will probably be tripping you or kicking your feet from under you. But for much of the time your opponent will be grasping your jacket each side of the collar and using it as if it were a rope round the back of your neck so as to wrench your head to wherever he wants it. This makes the jackets ride up to the shoulders so if you are male you are effectively almost 'topless' much of the time. Sometimes a jacket does come off over a wrestlers head in which case the fight stops to replace the jacket.

It was all very new to me and a bit bewildering at first. Then a couple of young guys in shorts and wrestling jackets came up to me and said they had been asked to give me some tuition. They were friendly and seemed keen to help a newcomer to get started, which was encouraging. One of them explained the rules, which are fairly simple and which I had already studied carefully on a web site. Then they demonstrated some of the moves on each other while I watched. I was soon feeling that although the rules are fairly simple the tactics and various moves you can make using both your hands and your feet are pretty complicated and I guessed that I wasn't going to remember much of what they were teaching me when it came my turn to fight. I told them that I would really like a trial fight just to get an idea of what I was letting myself in for and they agreed to that. I was aware that I was the only competitor who was completely new to Cornish wrestling, and also I am sure I was the oldest of all the competitors so I felt that I really did need to get an idea of what I had let myself in for before going into the ring.

I nipped back to my car to fetch my shorts while one of my instructors who was about my size and weight but much younger went to fetch me a wrestling jacket. We went to the changing tent and I took my watch off (obviously) and quickly stripped to my underpants and got my shorts on then my instructor placed the wrestliing jacket over my head and helped my arms into the sleeves. We went to a patch of grass a little away from the crowd that was gathering then we shook hands which is the way you signal you are ready to wrestle. My first practice fight started very gently but I soon found myself almost instinctively attempting to unballance the instructor by tripping his legs with my bare feet and grasping and pulling his jacket at the collar, I was enjoying it a lot but soon realalised that it is quite hard work, it helps to be fit. I am sure the instructor was being gentle with me and giving me some easy chances but i did manage to have him on the ground a couple of times and he also had me down a few times. The fight pauses when a competitor is on the ground - there is no 'ground work' allowed. The instuctor said that he thought I had done ok considering I was so new to it, but he also said that he hoped for my sake that I would not be drawn against too good a wrestler for my first fight.

The wrestling tournament had now started so I joined a group of the other competitors watching the action in the ring. No one said 'what's an old guy like you doing here?' I felt I was accepted as a competitor right away so I think this would be an easy sport to get into, but you would do well to be younger, fitter and stronger than I am these days. The first fights were in the junior group, basically kids, both males and females. It seems that females have to wrestle in the same classes as males, I dont think there are women's classes. Some of the young kids wrestled enthusiastically but a few were perhaps a bit too young for it and didnt quite seem able to work out what they were expected to do in front of all the spectators. Once the wrestling started there was a fair crowd of spectators standing in front of the marque or sitting on the benches round the ring. I am not sure how many spectators - maybe as many as a couple of hundred or so. I think the various officials running the event were pretty well all ex-competitors and I was told that the guy giving a comentary over the loudspeaker system had been Cornish champion in his day.

When they started the adult novices fights I knew that it would be my turn within an hour at the most. Watching the first novices I realised that the fighting in the ring could be pretty intense. I guessed that I had little chance of getting through to the second level of the tournament, but I reckoned that if I were picked against an oponent similar size to me I mght at least be able to survive a four minute round.

Other than in the juniors class there was only one female in the competition, a feisty lass in her twenties. She was picked against a male considerably bigger than herself and she put all she had into her fight but lost fairly decisively. I felt sorry for her since she had really tried and I felt that had she been picked against me I could have given her a much more even fight. While one fight is taking place the commentator gives out the names of the next pair over the loudspeaker system, so you only get a few minutes notice that you are about to fight and since I did not know peoples names I had no idea who I had been picked against. I certainly felt nervous as I stepped into the ring, but also quite determined to do the best I could. At first there was no sighn of my opponent, I had to stand there waiting while someone went to look for him and perhaps drag him out of the refreshment tent! Then when he finally appeared I was shocked - he seemed about a foot taller than me, well perhaps not quite that much, but he was a massive guy with arms that looked as strong as my legs and firm muscel everywhere. He had entered the novices class since he had little experience at the Cornish style of wrestling, at least that's what he said, but I learnt later that he was known as an expert at various other forms of martial arts, espeicially MMA. Oh shit !!

We shook hands and grasped each other's jacket collars, I remember having to reach quite high just to get my hands up to the collar of his jacket. A couple of seconds later the world seemed to spin round - the sky was not where it should be, nor was the ground where it should be. I landed heavily and although I instinctively tried to keep my head from hitting the ground the back of my head did hit the ground rather hard. Thankfullly it had rained recently and the turf was softer than it might have been in dry weather. I forced myself to get up off the ground right away, but I was dazed and unsteady on my feet. I may have been close to being knocked unconcious but I wouldn't know since that has never happened to me before. All I could think of at that moment was that somehow I must keep fighting, to death if need be. I was about to reach forward to shake hands with the opponent so as to re-start the fight but the referree stepped in and said to me, "wait, you are allowed a break to recover before you go on" So I stopped and collected my thoughts a bit. I hoped the bump on my head was not too serious and I was aware that there was somethng not quite right around my right ribs, but adrenalin was masking the pain. Then I started to think sensibly, I realised that if I carried on I was only going to get thrown around like a rag doll and possibly get seriously hurt, also I was not going to be able to put up enough of a fight to be worth the spectators watching. So I turned to the referree and said 'I am sorry but I dont think there is much point in me carrying on with this" As I left the ring I heard the commentator over the loudspeaker system explain that I was a complete novice and that I had been brave to give it a go. Then there was a ripple of applause from the crowd, I am not sure whether that was for me or my oponent or both of us.

I went to get a nice cup of tea from the refreshment tent, by now I realised the right side of my chest was hurting. I was not sure if it was crushed / cracked / bruised ribs, whatever you call it, or a muscel strain, or both. I have hurt my ribs a couple of times in my life, not because of wrestling but once from a fall from about 10 feet and once from tripping over a tree root while out jogging in the woods and going full pelt downhill. I reckoned this time it was not as bad as on those previous occasions so I guessed that I would get over it within perhaps a week or two, I hoped so anyway. I sipped my tea then went over to my erstwhile opponent. We shook hands and grinned at each other. He said he had not known that I was a complete novice, he said that when he saw that I was older than himself he thought that I must be someone with years of experience at Cornish wrestling whereas he was new to that particular style. Hence he thought he had better go in hard at the start to knock the fight out of me before I could use any clever moves on him! He was sympathetic and there was no hard feeling between us.

It was considerable consolation to me that in the next stage of the novices tounament the guy that had beaten me finished off his next oponent in much the same way that he had finished me off. His oponent this time was younger and probably stronger and more experienced than me but even so within a few seconds of the fight starting he got whirled round through the air and smashed down on his back. This time all four 'points' on his back hit the ground together and in Cornish wrestling that ends the fight immediately. (the 'points' are your shoulder blades and two points each side of your spine just above your buttocks - throws are scored according to how many points hit the ground) He won the novices class, then automatically entered the any weight contest. He didnt seem to get really serious competition until the final stages of the tournament when he was up against fighters who were well trained in the Cornish style. His final fight was with a smaller but strong and very experienced opponent and the fight went into extra time, after which it was one fall each and so the fight continued until one wrestler touched any body part other than his feet on the ground. If I recall correctly it was that same guy who wrote me off so effortlessly in the novices class that actually won the any weight prize. I have to say that it didn't seem quite right to me that a trained MMA fighter could enter the novices class on the basis that he hadn't done a lot of Cornish style wrestling, then proceed to make mincemeat of the genuine novices before going on to win the tournament.

My instructor came up to me and sympathised saying that I had been unlucky to be drawn against someone so much bigger and stronger than myself. He pointed out that in the novices class you could be drawn against someone of any size, whereas in the weight classes you would only need to fight people of similar weight to yourself. He said that he was sorry I had travelled some way to the event and not actually got much wrestling so he asked me if I would like to wrestle a bit with himself. I agreed immediately since I was also sorry my wrestling had ended so quickly. We went a little away from the crowd and started to wrestle. However, I found that I had no strength in the right side of my body so had to tell him that I was feeling a bit sore, but would like to fight another time.

After that I got dressed and joined the spectators on the viewing benches. The benches were quite full but someone gave me a smile and people shuffled along to make a space for me to sit. I got chatting to a few of the nearby spectators - everyone seemed freindly and sympathetic having seen what had happened to me. Maybe it was my own silly fault though!

I watched the tournament right through to the end and found it fascinating. There is no way that this could be considered 'erotic wrestling' or 'gay wrestling' or 'pro-wrestling' - it is a competitive sport that is keenly contested in the far south west peninsular of the UK and it requires skill, strength and agility. But I would say that if you enjoy seeing athletic bodies with muscel and sinew straining to win a fight, then you might well enjoy Cornish wrestling as a spectator. The bare feet, shorts and loose fitting jackets that often ride up over the shoulders allow a reasonable display of flesh. Most of the adult competitors are in their 20's or 30's. Some are stocky and tough, some are a bit overweight but still strong, others, espeicially in the lighter weight classes, are lean and gym trained. One thing I would say is that it seemed to me a far better spectacle when I was watching from the ringside than when I watched it on U tube. Cornish wrestling does not seem to have a good internet presence.

I hope that I will be able to go along again as a spectator but I am not sure it would be sensible for me to enter again as a competitor. Had I lived in Cornwall and discovered this sport in my '20's I think I could have become really keen on it and I might have done reasonably well in a light weight class. However, its not really a sport for someone to take up in their mid 60's. A pity since as a competitor rather than a mere spectator I really did feel part of that event, and overal it was a memorable day for me. The bruised ribs and strained muscels will recover and be forgotten but I expect I will always remember the excitement of actually taking part.

The pasties in the refreshment tent were also good!