Beyond That Horizon

Championship wrestling was a big thing on Yap. A few of the islanders had an ESPN feed from somewhere and were able to get segments of pro wrestling on their TV screens. Of course, the consensus was that it was all real and the dressed up, 'roid monsters on the screen were really beating the crap out of each other.

Jeff’s son, Mickey-Mantle asked me one Sunday if I knew anything about wrestling. I said that I had wrestled in high school. He wondered if I would teach him some wrestling moves. So the next day, we met at the branch meeting house, laid out a tarp on the grass and went to work.

It wasn’t long before Mickey-Mantle wondered if I could skip all the easy stuff we were doing and go right into aerial throws, slams, jams, kicks, slaps, pile-drives and all the other stuff he had seen on TV. I explained that most of what he saw was stunts performed by muscle-bound brutes trying to make a buck, and even though they looked real, it was all pretty much for show.

He didn’t buy it, saying he was pretty sure that it was all real. Who was I to argue with him? So, I made up some stuff and we performed our own version of Championship Wrestling - Yapese style. We had a good time throwing each other around and thankfully nobody got hurt – just like on TV!