McCONAUGHEY TURNS WRESTLING CHAMP IN AFRICA <\/p>\n
Actor MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY has been keeping a secret from his fans – he’s a wrestling champion in remote Africa.<\/p>\n
The A TIME TO KILL star trekked through Africa in 2000, staying in villages and meeting locals, who had no idea about his star status.<\/p>\n
When word spread he was teaching kids how to box on his travels, he was challenged to a wrestling match by a local champion, called MICHEL – and he won.<\/p>\n
He says, “The (village) chief steps in, grabs both our hands, raised them. The crowd of about 80 screamed and cheered loudly… and I got pounds and pats on the back.<\/p>\n
“(I learned) Michel is not only champion of this village, but he’s champion of this village and four villages back.”<\/p>\n
The actor returned to the village, who he has agreed not to name, while he was filming new movies SAHARA – and he’s still a local hero.<\/p>\n
He says, “I went back and saw him (Michel) three years later. He had four kids, blew his shoulder out. We didn’t wrestle but we hung out and drank some beer.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
McCONAUGHEY TURNS WRESTLING CHAMP IN AFRICA Actor MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY has been keeping a secret from his fans – he’s a wrestling champion in remote Africa. The A TIME TO KILL star trekked through Africa in 2000, staying in villages and meeting locals, who had no idea about his star status. When word spread he was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B7Di-gD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}