Bring it on! Annual corny event challenges wrestling skills in slop
By Brady Averill / Winona Daily News
A few pigs maybe went hungry on Saturday.
Instead of filling troughs for livestock, 250 pounds of feed corn was thrown into a pit at a local park.
Not for eating. For wrestling in.
About 75 people attended the seventh annual cream corn wrestling tournament at Latsch Island on Saturday.
Last year’s event drew complaints from the public, many of whom thought the corn was being wasted.
“The wasting corn is just silly, “said organizer Robert Armstrong.
If anything, he said, a few pigs went without food.
Armstrong said people can wrestle in practically anything. Organizers could have chose pudding or mud.
But cream corn is more interesting.
It’s stinky. It’s sloppy.
“It’s comedy. It’s funny, “he said.
When asked about wrestling in a pit of gooey vegetables, Jeffrey Amadeus Booty said, “I didn’t pick the corn. I just followed suit.”
Armstrong and others cooked the corn on kettles before dumping it into the pit.
As soon as the corn was creamy, the matches were on.
“It sucked. He was playing dirty, “said a man who went by the wrestling name, “El Nino.”
It was his first time wrestling in cream corn.
Some take the matches more seriously than others.
“I’m vying for the new belt, “Booty said.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t find a “worthy adversary “he knew to wrestle against.
“See my friends won’t wrestle me, “he said. “(They’re) scared.”
Booty has traveled with friends from the Twin Cities for the last three years to wrestle in cream corn.
James Davey, 45, said he weighs too little and is getting too old to wrestle.
He’s been a spectator ever since he wrestled five years ago.
“If they’re 200 pounds, I can’t throw them around, “he said.
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