Observing an 83 year old man getting his butt handed to him in randori might not seem fair. However if if it’s an 92 year old doing the butt kicking – color us curious!
The two men in question are 92 year old Jerry Vessichio and a 83 year old.
“He was no match for me, really,” he tells me. “I am the oldest competitor in the United States.” Vessichio told New York CBS local news.
Vessichio is a longtime judo practitioner out of Huegenot, New York who spent his career as a retired PE teacher. He’s been a judoka since 1943.
Over the years he even got to use judo for self defense:
“I was walking down the street, and there were like four guys across, and they started coming after me. So I started running. But I ran so that one could catch up and then I pelted him out,” Vessichio says.
“One punch. Another guy I threw in a shoulder throw, and I slammed him on top of a car,” he says.
Jerry never plans to quit:
“Because if I don’t do it, I’ll die,” he says. “I’m going to waste away and I’m going to get fat as a horse, and waste away. I don’t want to do that.”
