Gazebo Grapplers 16, Part 2

Lon Dumont is as well known for his big talk in the ring as for his stellar wrestling moves. In the second match of BG East's Gazebo Grapplers 16, he keeps his mouth shut (for the most part) and just fights, and the results are, like, Wow! A big, bumpy, diamond-studded Wow!

His opponent is Denny Cartier, an experienced BGE wrestler considerably heavier than Dumont, but we have seen Lon take on the big boys before. Lon steps on the mat, tightlipped as a villain's henchman in a 007 movie, and silently gives Denny the universal signal for "Come at me, bro!" And just like that, it's on! No mouthy speech can set my heart racing faster than this.

Lon is a vicious adversary who has no qualms about using clenched fists to speed a wrestling match along. It doesn't take a lot of dialogue to convey the fact that his one goal for the next fifteen minutes is to rip Denny fifteen new assholes. He beats Denny down to the mat, and then pulls up the guy's head for a forearm blow to the face. Neat, calculated, vicious: it gets me hard.

These punches connect, too. You hear the pop of knuckles against Denny's flesh. There's a menace to Lon's actions that's been lacking in his chattier matches. Here he's less local TV sportscaster, more Ra's al Ghul. His relentless assault on Cartier is dead sexy. Headscissors are always erotically suggestive, the stuff of fantasy. In this match Lon makes the hold look deadly, too. And the agony lasts seemingly for-e-ver.

As he tightens his thigh muscles around Denny's skull, Lon exhales through his teeth, hissing. A snake would be the obvious metaphor, but it's more as if Lon has transformed his body into an elaborate steam-driven torture machine. Hard to say what Denny must have done (if anything) to deserve such a beatdown, but Lon is more than determined--he is driven--to dismantle him. After Denny claims a brief hope spot in the midst of the decimation, Lon retaliates with the cold inevitability of doomsday. He twists and cracks Denny's quivering physique, forcing his prey to shriek out a submission. 

Denny comes back stronger in the second round, merciless in exacting vengeance. He uses his size advantage to snap Lon's thighs out wide, and force the man at last to speak his first words of the match: "I quit!" This is not the end, though. Don't even think of counting Lon Dumont out. I could not have predicted what happens next, and I'm keeping mum about it here, except to say it was not what I expected it to be and there's quite a lot of it.

The silent treatment in a fight like this--especially against the natural surroundings of the gazebo--is like watching an Animal Planet fight to the finish--eagle versus badger, or crocodile versus python. The violence of the struggle seems rawer and more intense, undiluted by cleverly phrased barbs and verbal threats. Lon Dumont has always been a wrestler who could command the ring. Yet this, in my humble estimation, is his best work ever, so far anyway.

To be continued ...