Alligator Wrestling

By: Glenn Wilsey, Sr.

As an everglades airboat tour guide, my primary job is education. However, here at Gator Park, I find myself doing many different jobs. One day you might see me standing at the cash register selling tickets for airboat tours. Or, I might be doing what I do best, guiding tourists on airboat tours through the glades. Sometimes, you may get to see me wrestling alligators. I like doing this because it gives me a great opportunity to dispel some myths. Tourists ask me all the time, “what is the trick to alligator wrestling?” Well, there is no trick! Ask any alligator wrestler and you’ll be told that the only trick to alligator wrestling is DON’T GET BIT BY THE ALLIGATOR!

When we are alligator wrestling we are demonstrating what is really just a traditional barehanded technique for catching alligators as the Native Americans here in the glades have done for centuries. The Native Americans of Florida would catch alligators to feed their people. We catch them for the same reason, to make money to feed our families. Alligator wrestling is very dangerous and if a wrestler makes a mistake it could be disastrous, resulting in the loss of valuable body parts. I have seen a lot of people I know bitten by alligators.

Kenny Cypress was performing one of the tourist’s favorite moves, putting his head in the mouth of a large gator. It didn’t go quite as well as planned. The alligator snapped its mouth shut on Kenny’s head. All it took was one drop of sweat falling from Kenny’s eyebrow, landing on the alligator’s tongue. An alligators tongue is very sensitive, like the bristles in a Venus flytrap. Just one tiny bump and the mouth will slam shut. Other expert alligator wrestlers surrounded Kenny and their quick actions saved his life. Kenny walked away with just a BAD headache.

Chief James Billy of the Seminole Indian tribe of Florida recently lost a finger to an alligator. Chief Billy was feeling around in murky water for an alligator’s mouth and he found it but didn’t realize the gator’s mouth was open. Chief Billy inadvertently stuck his finger in the alligator’s mouth. By the time Chief Billy realized his finger was in the gator’s mouth, the alligator slammed his mouth shut and rolled taking Chief Billy’s finger with him. It was the same instinctive reaction by a gator that almost cost Kenny his head.

One day while I was taking a break from work at Gator Park, sitting in the shade under some trees, Jaime A. Quinteros Jr., the alligator wrestler for the day came to me and said the alligator got his thumb. I thought he was fooling around and said “yeah, right.” Jamie said, “PLEASE! Glenn would you go get my thumb.” I took off heading for the alligator-wrestling pit. As I ran up to the alligator he turned, opening his mouth and striking at me. I could see the tip of Jamie’s thumb still in the gator’s mouth. I placed my finger under the alligator’s mouth, tilted his head back and slammed the mouth shut and jumped on his back. It took a minute to open his mouth but with me holding the gator’s mouth open, another co-worker, Chuck took a stick and flicked Jamie’s thumb tip out. Unfortunately, his thumb tip was mangled and could not be saved, but on the bright side, Jamie has a great story to tell.

Another time, I was watching Dan Coletrane teach someone else to wrestle an alligator when the gator grabbed Dan by the hand. Dan had stepped up to an alligator six and a half feet long, side stepping over the gator which took a wild snap in Dans direction. Dan then tickled the alligator on the nose, making the gator open his mouth wide so that Dan could hook his fingers under the alligator’s mouth. With the alligator’s mouth and head tilted back Dan went to shut the alligator’s mouth with his thumb. The problem was that the alligator was watching Dan and anticipated his next move. It grabbed Dan by the hand and started to thrash back and forth. While the alligator was thrashing it’s way to the ground Dan was following all the way, trying not to lose his thumb in the process. As this was happening I was headed for the gator. Flying through the air, I landed on the gator’s back. Regaining control, we covered the alligator’s eyes to calm him down and he let go of Dan. Dans thumb was almost ripped off by the gator but with some surgery and a few pins; Dan is back to normal. Well, at least as normal as Dan can be.

Some animal activists may say we hurt alligators when we wrestle them but that’s not true. At Gator Park we do not practice any move that might hurt the alligators we are using. If we were to hurt our alligators then we would not be able to wrestle them anymore and we would lose revenue. So, we are as gentle as we can be with them. In some alligator wrestling shows the wrestler might turn an alligator over on its back and rub its belly to “make the alligator go to sleep.” Turning an alligator over does not make the alligator go to sleep, it knocks the gator out. Rubbing its belly is just for show. Alligators are cold-blooded animals and they have a small brain. When you turn an alligator on its back all the blood in the gator’s body tries to flow to the brain all at once and this knocks the alligator out. If you turn an alligator over on its back time and time again it will cause brain damage so we don’t do that at all.

The first thing I do in the pit is to get the alligator to open his mouth by touching him on the nose. When he opens his mouth I pass my hand through his mouth to show everyone that what the alligator cannot see he will not bite. Next thing is to hook my fingers under the alligator’s chin, tilt his head back and slam his mouth shut and then I get on his back. Once on the alligator’s back I open his mouth to reveal for the crowd that the gators have forty teeth on the top of their mouths and another forty teeth on the bottom. That is eighty good reasons to leave alligators alone. Next, I tap on the alligator’s eyelid to make him blink so the crowd can see that he has three eyelids. One is used to clear his eyes like a squeegee. The second one is used as a goggle so he can see under the water and the third set of eyelids is a hard armor plate to protect the alligator’s eyes when he’s in a fight. When the Native Americans would catch an alligator for food, they would have to free their hands to tie the alligator’s mouth shut with a piece of leather string that they carried for that purpose. So the next thing we show the crowd is how that was accomplished. While on the alligator’s back, I tilt his head back and just as the Native Americans have done I clamp the gator’s jaws between my chest and chin. And, “look Ma, no hands!” An alligator’s muscle structure is designed for quickly and powerfully closing his mouth but he has very little strength for opening it. The tourists ask me all the time why anyone would want to capture an alligator alive when you could just kill him. South Florida is very hot. The Native Americans did not have any refrigeration so if they killed something they had to use it fast before it could spoil. So, the Indians would catch alligators when the opportunities arose and take them back to their village alive to kill and eat them sometime later. An alligator of five to six feet long was ideal because it was much easier to carry through the swamp. It’s hard enough to walk through The Everglades without an alligator so you can imagine how they wouldn’t want a gator any bigger than they could comfortably carry.

I do hope that this story helps you understand why we do what we do with the alligators.

Again I would like to THANK all of you from around the world for checking out our award winning web site. Remember NATURE RULES!!! GATORMAN Glenn Wilsey Sr.

*This story or any part of it can not be used or reproduced with out written permission of the author!