RUMFORD — Picture giant Beanie Baby sumo wrestlers bouncing around a mat and you’ll get a good idea of Saturday night’s St. Patrick’s Day Sumo Wrestling Throwdown Showdown.

The debut event at Mountain Valley High School pitted community and business members and students against each other for rollicking laughs in the fundraiser for the Greater Rumford Community Center and its programs.

Wrestlers resembled giant beach balls with tiny legs and chicken-wing arms in the inflated suits as they tried to fling opponents to the mat or push or bounce them out of the large ring.

“It was a blast,” Rumford police Sgt. Doug Maifeld said, icing a knee injury that quickly ended his second match with Dixfield police Officer Eric Bernier.

“But you’d be surprised at how winded you can get. I just wish my knee hadn’t popped out,” he said.

Wearing a red sumo suit and red helmet, Maifeld resembled a squat, chubby strawberry to Bernier’s tall, imposing, blueberry-like suit.

After bowing to each other in sumo fashion, Maifeld quickly forced Bernier out of the ring in their first match.

Then Bernier, who was wrestling without his glasses and was barefoot, changed up his strategy for the second round, clinching and throwing Maifeld to the mat. That popped Maifeld’s knee out, ending the match.

“I thought he was going to push me out and I went to brace myself and he pulled instead of pushed and my knee popped,” Maifeld said.

Bernier got the win by default, although Maifeld, who had his knee popped back into place, steadfastly maintained it was a tie.

Afterward, Oxford County Sheriff Wayne Gallant, who was the master of ceremonies, spotted Bernier returning to his seat in the bleachers, pointed at him and yelled into the microphone, “Bully!”

The audience and Maifeld laughed as Bernier pumped his fist in the air.

Matches began with MVHS freshman, sophomore, junior and senior boys wrestling each other, and likewise with the girls, until there was a lone winning class.

One group of four teenage girls tried to push their opponents out of the ring, when three suddenly fell and rolled around like giant fruit, unable to get up.

In between suit-changing matches, teen band Mars Rocks performed songs like adult rock musicians.

During one match, when two wrestlers pinned each other simultaneously in slow motion, Gallant, laughing hard, asked referee Gary Dolloff, “Did anybody win this one?”

One of the biggest laughs — and boos — came when Rick White and Tommy Tompkins hammed up their match. White bounded out of the dressing room and onto the mat and flexed and danced around after Gallant introduced him.

Then, when Gallant introduced Tompkins, out ran 7-year-old Dakota Tompkins of Carthage in a mini sumo costume. The audience roared as the youngster imitated White’s posturing.

When Dolloff called them to center ring, White promptly walked over to Dakota and flattened him with a bounce, eliciting boos. Out came the much larger Tommy who quickly flattened White, and then had his son run and jump on him.

Dakota leaped atop White and somersaulted on the bounce to the floor, then leaped back up and belly-flopped atop White, grinning ear to ear.

“That was hilarious,” Maifeld said.

Then Rumford Selectmen Greg Buccina and Jeff Sterling waddled out and faced Dixfield town crew members Randy Glover and Craig Woods.

Glover and Woods quickly flattened the selectmen.

“That was a little bit scary,” Buccina said afterward. “I thought our opponents didn’t show up, and then I saw it was the two biggest guys in the place.”

Sterling said the suits didn’t weigh anything but were constricting.

“You can feel the pressure pressing on you, but it was fun,” he said.

The final match featured MVHS Principal Matt Gilbert and his assistant, Chris Decker, versus their Dirigo High School counterparts Mike Poulin and Chris Moreau.

They hammed it up while the audience howled before Decker and Gilbert out-bounced Poulin and Moreau.

“That’s exhausting,” Gilbert gasped. “I’ve got to go and get oxygen.”

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