I’ve been very blessed over my wrestling career.  I’ve been able to step into the ring with some of the most talented, superb and acclaimed wrestlers on the planet.  It’s been a boon, as the fact is that the only way anyone ever gets better at anything is to compete/play/face others that are better than you.  If you manage to not only hang in there but up the proverbial ante while you are at it, you cannot help but get better at what you do, be it music, chess, engineering, cooking, MMA or pro wrestling.

You take pieces of every single match that you have and absorb the best parts of each outing to make yourself a more complete athlete and wrestler.  With this in mind, I’ve been able to learn boatloads by being in the ring with world-class names over my 24-year career such as Dave “Fit” Finlay, Keiji “Great Muta” Muto, Naomichi Marufuji, Super Crazy, “The Japanese Buzzsaw” Yoshihiro Tajiri, “Native American” Tatanka, Akira Nogami, Genechiro Tenryu, Al Snow, D-Lo Brown, Ultimo Dragon, Lance Storm, Chris “Bambikiller” Raaber, Michael Kovac, Masato Tanaka, Bernard Vandamme, Doug Williams, James Mason, even WWE’s longest reigning champion in over 20 years, Asuka, and a literal litany of others.

They say in our trade that you are only as good as your last match.  Well, if that is the case then age is indeed only a number, as I’ve consistently been able to produce some of the best match-ups of my career here in my mid-40’s.  That said, I’ve got one of the sternest challenges of my entire career ahead of me next weekend on February 24 in Leppävirta, Finland at an event called Rock Fight.

I believe the biggest man that I’ve been in the ring with was the monsterous Alofa the Wild Samoan, son of the legendary Afa the Wild Samoan, who tipped the scales somewhere between 150-170kg back in 2005 when I faced him in Monza, Italy.  In that match, Alofa came crashing down on my head with all of his weight as I failed to move out of the way in time, crushing my head between his considerable weight and the canvas.  What immediately followed was my fifth career concussion at that time, which I valiantly fought through on auto-pilot, finishing the match, which ended finally in a DQ or count-out as we fought outside the ring.

Now, on February 24, I face a man even bigger than Alofa.  My opponent at Rock Fight, Demolition Davies, is 191cm tall and 190kg of pure malicious intent and meanness personified.  Davies isn’t just a big man, either.  He’s been a champion the world over and right now he’s one of the best big man wrestlers in all of Europe.

I’ve been training incredibly hard in preparation for Davies next weekend, pushing some big weights in the gym, performing multiple compound movements to get myself ready for this latest challenger to my Valhalla Nordic Wrestling Championship title.  I’m going to use every single bit of wrestling knowhow that I’ve amassed over a quarter-decade in this game, all of the bits and pieces of the lessons learned against the masters along the way, to navigate and survive against Demolition Davies in order to walk out of Vesileppis Arena in Leppävirta, Finland on the evening of February 24 with the Nordic title intact.

If you’d like to witness one of the sternest challenges of my professional life, I’d recommend that you come out in person get your tickets NOW!