Ultimate Sports by Donald R. Gallo

whacked Pretty Boy over the head with a folding chair, ran his head into a steel pole, body-slammed him, then flopped on top of him. “One! Two! Three!” the ref counted. The Marauder popped to his feet, gave Pretty Boy a final kick in the head, then punched the air with both fists as the crowd roared its approval.
    I flicked the television off and sat in the dark trying to think of one thing I’d seen that was legal in high-school wrestling. I came up empty.
    •   •   •
    Wrestling tryouts were Monday. Uncle Joe showed up decked out in a purple Adidas warm-up outfit with a white stripe that went down the sleeve and then matched up with another stripe coming up the leg. He had on a purple headband and purple wristbands. The lettermen exchanged glances.
    Uncle Joe motioned the fifty or so of us who were turning out to come close. “My name is Joe Milligan. You probably know I’m Joey’s uncle. My philosophy is simple: I look out for number one.” He paused, and in that second I wanted to run away and never come back. But before I could, he went on. “I also look out for number two. See, I work at the sewage plant. Get it?” he said. “Tinkle and poop! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
    Amazingly, most of the guys laughed. So I laughed too. Ha! Ha! Ha! Maybe it was funny—for the first time.
    Uncle Joe waved his hands. “Now, let’s get to work,” he said, and then he looked to me. “Joey, where’s the ring?” He saw the blank look on my face. “You know, three ropes that go around four poles. You wrestle inside it.” He snapped his fingers. “Come on, Joey, get with the picture!”
    I didn’t know what to say. “Uncle Joe, we wrestle on a mat.”
    “Of course you wrestle on a mat. I didn’t think you wrestled on cement. But you still need a ring around the mat, don’t you? How can you learn Bombs Away without ropes?”
    I could feel my teammates’ eyes on me—even J.P. and Dinky were staring at me. They were hoping Uncle Joe was joking, but they were afraid he was just plain nuts.
    “You—You don’t understand, Uncle Joe,” I stammered. “There are no ropes in high-school wrestling. We just wrestle on a mat.”
    He was incredulous. “No ropes? No ring?”
    I shook my head. “Just a mat.” I pointed to the mat we were standing on. “This mat.”
    Uncle Joe looked down. “This mat?”
    I thought for a second that he might quit on the spot, but I should have known better. Nothing keeps Uncle Joe down for long. “Well, if the school can’t afford a decent ring, it can’t afford a decent ring. We’ll just have to get along the best we can.”
    He paced back and forth a few times, then cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, before we go any farther, I want to be clear about my feelings on sportsmanship.” He stopped and looked us over. “I’m for it! One hundred percent! If the ref says ’Break clean!’ I want to see a clean break. No punching in the throat, no poking in the eyes.
    “But I’m no fool. No sirree Bob. I’m no fool. If they mess with us, we mess with them. So here is my first lesson. Come up here, Joey.”
    Knees wobbling, I stood and faced him.
    Uncle Joe looked to the other wrestlers. “Let’s say on the first break Joey here whacked you a good one in the throat. Here’s what you do. On the next break, you hold your hands up all innocent until, quick as a wink”—here he grabbed my hair—“you pull straight down and pop the jerk in the forehead with your knee. Pow!”
    Ty Horton, district champion at 132 pounds, jumped to his feet. “Nobody does stuff like that! The ref would disqualify you for the season!”
    Uncle Joe gave him a look full of pity. “Oh, but they do, young man. They do. And refs let it go. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but it’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.”
    Horton stared at Uncle Joe. “I won’t be wrestling this year,” he finally muttered, and then he walked off the mat.
    Tuesday, only twenty-seven guys showed up for practice.