Wine and Weapons in the other Georgia

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I meet Lasha at an old Soviet military gym. Fading cement walls remind me of my visit to the abandoned city of Prypiat outside Chernobyl. The legacy of Soviet times are everywhere, from the battered Lada cars on the road to old hammer and sickle statues, engravings of Lenin on buildings, and ugly squat cement apartment buildings. In this bleak gym, twenty young men have gathered to kick, punch, stab and wrestle that era to the loser mat of history. I am handed a traditional warrior outfit, heavy and woollen, the rough wool scratching my recently polished skin. It is 200 years old, and was procured from a family for around $2500. The men stand in a line before training, crossing themselves in prayer to the Virgin Mother, honouring the past. Warm ups in the boxing ring involve jumping over two, three, four men, landing on both hands in a fluid somersault. I join the group, landing awkwardly on my left foot, still smarting from a motorbike that fell on it a few months ago. I show no pain, and some of the men turn to each other, nodding their approval. I am one of the few outsiders who have been exposed to this ancient form of defence, and surrounded by its most fervent practitioners, it’s best I take things seriously.

Archil, my translator, explains the thought behind each system, as Lasha prepares me to wrestle. Both hands behind the back, using nudges, shoulder and head butts, trips and feints to fell the opponent. Lasha is smaller than me, but I feel like barging into a brick wall. “If you can beat your opponent with both hands behind your back,” says Archill, ‘imagine what you can do with them in the front.” Body positioning is key. I try lift Lasha up and find it impossible. I join five guys trying to push over just one, who somehow resists our thrusts. During another wrestling exercise, involving one hand behind the back, the other in a handshake, my arm socket is almost wrenched out, my wrist almost snapped clean. There’s all manner of painful Georgian goodness that can be unleashed on your opponent in such an encounter, even if they were practiced for mostly folk festivals. Next up, Archil explains how to bend your body into a blow, so that you can absorb punches. A lean, shirtless bald man, with eyes that would intimidate a cobra, stands opposite Lasha. Apparently this guy killed a 3-year-old bull with a punch, or maybe it was just his stare. They begin punching each other in the face, hard enough for the clap to echo in the gym. Lasha asks me to hit him in the face. I prod, I push, but I just cannot bring myself to punch a guy surrounded by heavily armed buddies. They laugh. “Hit him harder! Don’t worry, be strong!” It’s like standing on the edge of a mountain connected to a harness. You can lean back, it’s safe, but your brain won’t let you. I could punch Lasha in the face, as hard as I could, but my brain just refuses. That credit I earned in the warm up fast evaporates.
“When you punch a man, it must be like you want to go right through him,” says Lasha, and for the next half hour, I watch the group train by beating on each other, absorbing the blows, including five men on one. I join in the thrashing, and the victim bulldozes me with a shoulder charge, sending me flying. As punishment for this act of defending himself against the gringo, the others raise their game, kicking and punching with a little more force. All I can think about is the unlucky Turk or Persian or Arab who faced a Georgian warrior one on one. My imagination can hear their bones crack.

I discovered Khrilodi through clips I found on Youtube, and our visit has caught the attention of local media. When foreigners are filming a Georgian tradition that many Georgians don’t know much about, it must mean something. A TV crew from a national public station are in the gym filming our film crew filming me. I am also interviewed by a local newspaper, another TV crew too. They are curious as to why we’d flew halfway around the world to focus on a forgotten tradition and something as underground as brutal death metal. Simply put: That’s how we roll.

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