Bronko Nagurski Beat Lou Thesz That Night

Tonight, I am in search of clues on how to be a man, not a man like my father, who traded his motorcycle for a job in the plane yards after my mother left. Before my father tried telling me wrestling was fake, we watched men scrap with brass knuckles and bull ropes. Back then, a dude could get his jaw broke calling the wrong guy a fake. Lou Thesz was a bona fide grappler, stretching men with that toehold facelock, snapping men’s elbows to protect his championship belt. My grandfather saw him lose the title to Bronko Nagurski, celebrated footballer who stomped men into the turf on his way to the end zone. Before my father died, he insisted my grandfather never saw that match, that men always invent things when they have something genuine to say. Today, everyone knows that fight was fixed. Tonight, I am thinking about all those shapes Lou Thesz could twist out of a man’s skeleton, and how some nights that just isn’t enough.