Wrestlemania Ready For Real Excitement? Go To Gatorland
Alligator wrestling? I’m not talking about ripping the label off a Lacoste tennis shirt. This was the real thing.
Well, sort of.
Mike, a veteran alligator wrestler at Gatorland, an alligator-theme park located about 20 minutes and $3 in tolls from Disney World, would be the first to tell you he’s more of a “handler” than a “wrestler.”
Still, 34 of the last 35 Gatorland wrestlers have been bitten, most more than once. The job doesn’t pay that well, so I hope they have a great health plan.
The alligators they wrestle aren’t the 1,500-pound monsters that swim around Gatorland’s pools, attack each other and eat fish and chicken tossed by tourists. (I got to throw a frozen chicken from the “Gator Jumping Booth.” Before I was allowed to dangle over the rail, Mike put a safety belt around my waist in case a hungry gator tried to take more than my entire upper torso! I was supposed to wait for a gator to jump, then, as a reward, toss the chicken in his mouth. What actually happened was a gator leaped out of the water and I got so nervous I tossed the chicken toward Cuba, missing the gator’s mouth by about 40 feet.)
After the snack session, I watched Mike’s 20-minute wrestling show. He didn’t wear a Spandex jumpsuit. He didn’t do any power slams off the third rope. He didn’t have a bikini-clad manager yelling at the officials. In fact, there were no officials.
What Mike did do was nearly as impressive, however. He held the gator’s jaw open with his chin and put a “sleeper hold” on the animal by flipping it over. He was able to maneuver the gator around with the ease of a Democratic fund-raiser working a room of celebrity whale-huggers.
Then it was my turn. I suddenly felt a bit squeamish. The gators used for wrestling were all 7-foot-long five- and six-year-olds, each about 130 pounds.
That may not sound like much, but 90 percent of their body weight is muscle, and they’re strong enough to bite through your arm or leg if you don’t know what you’re doing … and I didn’t.
I jumped across the yard-wide moat, where about 10 gators were swimming, and landed in the wrestling ring, a square sand pit about five yards across. The ring and moat were surrounded by enough bleachers to seat 300 sweaty tourists.
A surprising number of people who’d attended the “real” show stuck around to watch me go a few rounds with a gator. Perhaps it was the announcement of Tim Williams, the media coordinator: “This is Doug Lansky. He’s a travel writer. And he’s going to try to wrestle an alligator. You can watch if you want.” The audience understood this as: “This is wacko writer Doug Lansky. There’s going to be blood. Lots of blood. And missing fingers. Feel free to stick around.”
Mike picked out Jughead, the meanest looking gator, and taped his mouth shut with packing tape. Jughead looked like a UPS nightmare. Then he let the reptile back into the moat so I could fish him out.
The first trick was to find the right gator. This isn’t easy when you’re up to your thighs in water, sneaking up on a pack of alligators from the rear while glancing behind you, like a pitcher trying to keep a man on second, to see if another player is creeping up on you.
Mike and Tim helped me locate the right tail. I grabbed it firmly and Jughead started to fight. I struggled to maintain my grip as he thrashed his tail back and forth in my face, spraying water and making it impossible to keep an eye on the rest of the pack.
Between bursts, I hopped up into the ring and, using my weight, pulled Jughead up with me. Then, as instructed, I jumped on his back and placed both hands in the “safety position” firmly on his neck, which was about twice as wide as Mike Tyson’s.
I have to tell you that sitting on the alligator felt remarkably like - just to put it in perspective - sitting on the back of a giant Galapagos iguana. Jughead was only breathing once every 30 seconds or so, and each breath came as a bit of a surprise.
I was very conscious of not making Jughead uncomfortable, yet I definitely wanted to convince him I was The Boss. Come to think of it, though, he probably wouldn’t think twice about biting Bruce Springsteen’s fingers off, either.
I was starting to get the hang of things. Just sitting there on the back of a taped alligator posing for photos. Jughead seemed as happy as could be expected under the humiliating circumstances.
Then Mike stepped up, put one hand on Jughead’s snout, and removed the tape with the other.
The gator opened his mouth and everyone was suddenly much more serious - especially me.
“Whatever happens,” Tim Williams piped up, “don’t let go of the neck.” With that, Tim gave Jughead a kick in the belly and off he went to the other side of the ring with me riding on his back.
More pictures were taken, hands were shaken, pats on the back given, and I was told I had wrestled a gator and could still play the piano. Which I was very glad to hear. Because I could never play the piano before.