Ultimate Sports by Donald R. Gallo Page A

Uncle Joe noticed. “Got some more quitters, I see. Well, good riddance to bad rubbish. Besides, with fewer guys I’ll be able to teach you more—and quicker. Joey, come up here again. The rest of you, gather round.
    “The great Kenji Shibuya taught me this move. First you get your opponent in a headlock.” Uncle Joe squeezed my head between his ribs and his elbows. “Then—and this is the tricky part—you find the nerve below the ear that connects to the heart or the brain or somewhere. If you massage it just right…
poof
…your opponent falls asleep. Out like a baby. Then you flop on him for the easy pin!”
    For the next minute Uncle Joe squeezed my head andrubbed my neck with the thumb on his left hand. “You feeling tired, Joey?” he asked.
    “A little,” I mumbled.
    He massaged for another minute. I thought I could smell sewage on his clothes.
    “How about now?” he asked.
    “I’m feeling a little queasy,” I mumbled.
    Uncle Joe released me. “See? It works! Just listen to your uncle Joe, boys, and we’ll do great.”
    Wednesday he showed us how to go into a trance like the Sheik. Thursday he used a cantaloupe to demonstrate Bobo Brazil’s dreaded Cocoa Butt. Friday he described the Bill Melby-Ray Stevens match.
    “Talk about profiles in courage! That match was one for the ages. It was a grudge match—bad blood on both sides. We put a barbed-wire fence around the ring. Early on, Bill snatched my timekeeper’s bell and banged Ray over the head with it. Bill paid for it later, though, because at the end of the match Ray raked his face over the barbed wire.
    “Once the match ended, I took my girlfriend Daisy backstage.” Uncle Joe stopped and pulled a white purse with dark spots on it from his equipment bag. “Bill was bleeding bad, but he still took time to autograph her purse. That’s the kind of class he had. ’Best wishes, Bill,’ it says right here. When we broke up, Daisy gave me this purse. She knew how much it would mean to me.” Uncle Joe stared long and hard at the spotted white purse with the scrawled signature. It was the closest to tears I’d ever seen him.
    By the end of that practice, we were down to ten wrestlers—all freshmen and sophomores. I think even Dinky and J.R might have quit if they hadn’t been my bestfriends. Uncle Joe, as usual, looked on the bright side. “With ten it will be easy to figure out tag team partners.”
    •   •   •
    Saturday morning I talked to my mom. “Let’s go to the library,” she said. “Maybe we could find a book to give Uncle Joe. He can be a little goofy sometimes, but he’s not stupid.”
    “He’s not?” I asked.
    “Not completely,” she replied.
    The book we found was entitled
Better Wrestling for Boys
. It explained the basic rules and had lots of pictures. When Uncle Joe stopped by for lunch that afternoon, my mother put the book on the kitchen table by his plate. He didn’t notice it. He was about to leave when I sucked up my courage. “Uncle Joe,” I said, holding the book out to him, “I think you should read this book.”
    He smiled. “A wrestling book? Joey, my boy, I don’t need to read about wrestling. I’ve lived it.”
    I looked to my mother. “Please, Joe,” she said. “Sit down on the sofa and read a few pages.”
    He shrugged. “Okay. Though I don’t see why.”
    As he read, his lips straightened and his forehead wrinkled. After ten minutes of concentrated study, he looked up. “You really wrestle this way, Joey?”
    I nodded. “Yeah, Uncle Joe, we really do.”
    “No sleeper holds? No Cocoa Butts? No tag teams?”
    “No, Uncle Joe. And no airplane rides, no body slams, no trances either.”
    He went to the front door and opened it. Only then did he turn back. “Well, I’m glad I know. I’d have to find out sooner or later. But this breaks my heart, Joey. I won’t deny it.”
    I know now how parents feel when their children discover there is no Santa