The first thing anyone will notice in a Manny Ramirez match is that the Strawberry Crest junior doesn’t move like a wrestler.
Where most high school grapplers appear to always be lining up their next shot — not quite rooted to the ground, yet ready to plant if needed — Ramirez is constantly, fluidly moving. That he occasionally looks like he’s dancing on the mat is no accident. An opponent shooting for a takedown will be caught off-guard when Ramirez, rather than sprawling to counter, pops his legs up and enters a handstand, creating distance that the Crest Charger can close just as quickly, swooping in for ground work or, perhaps, a suplex.
Ramirez’s style, injected with elements of breakdancing and parkour, is unique. Combined with his speed and athleticism, the junior was able to make it all the way to the FHSAA state championships on Friday, March 3, and place sixth overall in the 113-pound class.
“I stepped up my game,” Ramirez says. “I worked hard to place.”
But the road to that moment wasn’t nearly as easy as Ramirez makes his moves look.
FROM YOUTUBE TO REAL LIFE
Growing up in Plant City, Ramirez didn’t exactly enjoy a life of privilege.
As with many less-than-fortunate young men and women, the temptation of finding trouble and trying to make ends meet through the streets was often present in his life. But Ramirez, a natural athlete, wasn’t without healthier outlets.
While in sixth grade at Tomlin Middle, he discovered the worlds of breakdancing and parkour, or “free running.” Watching the movie “Step Up,” led to hours spent learning new concepts on YouTube, which then led to hours spent practicing flips and other moves wherever Ramirez and his friends could go. A popular spot was his apartment complex’s playground, even though it was off-limits to anyone not enrolled in the daycare program.
“There was a big sand pit,” Ramirez says. “We just dug a hole and started doing flips into the sand pit. We would get kicked out every day, though.”
By the end of his time at Tomlin, Ramirez developed a reputation as, based on what Chargers head coach C.J. Gittens had heard, “the kid who does all these flips and stuff.” When Ramirez entered ninth grade, Gittens approached him about joining the wrestling team.
It didn’t work out exactly as the coach had hoped, but it still did.
HIGHS AND LOWS
Ramirez admits that, at first, he had no interest in joining the team.
But, as Gittens persisted, Ramirez eventually came around. The coach offered to let Ramirez borrow some running and wrestling shoes if he would just try out for three weeks, and Ramirez agreed.
He finally showed up for conditioning meets — two weeks late — and made his first impression by blazing past the other wrestlers in the 400-yard sprint. That was when Gittens and the staff knew they had something special.
As Ramirez learned more about the sport, he eventually discovered that there were instances where he could use some of the moves and ideas he had picked up from the YouTube videos. Wrestling became more than just something new to try: it became a much-needed escape that he could be proud of.
“Without wrestling, I would be in the streets,” Ramirez says. “I feel like wrestling really saves me from getting into trouble.”
Like a Major League Baseball pitcher with a unique delivery, Ramirez’s style eventually began to confuse his opponents. And, partnered with eventual state champion Cullen Telfer, he became good enough to make it to states as a freshman.
“Wrestling’s like a dance,” Ramirez says. “When you move your feet, they can’t touch you.”
Also like some of those crafty MLB pitchers, opponents eventually figured Ramirez out. He had trouble with the single-leg takedown, and with his angles. After taking the only loss of his sophomore season to state champion Lucas Willis, just one day before the county championships, Ramirez — who had been building up to the moment — left the team.
“It was myself,” Ramirez says. “Mentally, I wasn’t ready. I was mentally weak … I’m a second-year wrestler, and I hadn’t been in the game for a long time. I didn’t know what it took to be a champ. So, I left.”
The coaching staff went to great lengths to get him back, though. It got to a point where Ramirez had called assistant coach Will Terry around 2 a.m., reconsidering, and the pair went to a park where Ramirez could run five miles to cut weight for counties. The police came to investigate why a grown man was making a child run laps in a park before sunrise, and an officer ended up telling Ramirez to “keep grinding.”
But Ramirez spent the rest of the season, through the end of summer, completely out of wrestling. He struggled with his decision, as well as the temptation to find trouble again — which came to its peak with a police-involved incident at home he now describes as his “wake-up call.”
“It was like a wake-up call for me to come back and do better,” Ramirez says.
He knew then that he had to get back into wrestling. He knew he had to get back into the Chargers’ brotherhood.
Gittens says that the decision to allow Ramirez back on the team wasn’t an easy one to make, all things considered. But the coach, who says his own youth was quite similar, sympathized. He and the coaching staff, after much discussion, allowed the team to vote on whether or not to let Ramirez back in.
“I grew up in the same situation,” Gittens says. “Wrestling saved my life. If I didn’t wrestle, or have the coaches that I did, I would probably have been living under the Brooklyn Bridge, because that was the way that I was going.”
The vote passed. Ramirez was not named a captain, as he had been in his first run with the team, but that wasn’t a big concern of his. Because of the extra pressure he now had to face — the stigma of being the “guy who quit and then wanted back in” always attracts the largest microscope, after all — Gittens gave the junior two rules to live by.
Do good in school. Do your best in wrestling.
So far, Ramirez has followed both. He approached this season with a new attitude, more focused than ever and more calm when things don’t go his way, and has kept his grades up. On the mat, he honed on the elements of his style that previously opened up weaknesses and, after placing second at regionals, made it back to states again.
“I got serious about it,” Ramirez says. “I worked hard, and I made it to states.”
Ramirez knows that people have many different perceptions of who he is and what he’s done, but he believes that the hard work he’s put in, on and off the mat, speaks to his character.
“You’ve just got to push through the pain,” Ramirez says. “You’ve got to be a special person to be a wrestler. It takes a strong mentality.”
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.