Have you ever wondered how wrestling shapes not only the individual but the culture around it? Join us as we sit down with the master of USA Wrestling, Gary Mayabb, a Greco-Roman man, who shares his wrestling journey and its profound impact. From filling a void in his early life to shaping his personal growth, Gary’s narrative is a testament to the transformative power wrestling can have.
This one's from the archives! At the time he was the head of the Greco Roman program at the US Olympic Training facility, and is currently the Associate Women's Head Coach at the University of Iowa. But this episode still speaks volumes today!
I let Gary do the rest of the talking ;)
Appleton Tattoo Links
https://www.facebook.com/appletontattoo
https://www.instagram.com/mark_appletontattoo/
920 Hat Co. Links
https://920hatco.com/
https://www.instagram.com/920hatco/
https://www.facebook.com/920HatCo
Have you ever wondered how wrestling shapes not only the individual but the culture around it? Join us as we sit down with the master of USA Wrestling, Gary Mayabb, a Greco-Roman man, who shares his wrestling journey and its profound impact. From filling a void in his early life to shaping his personal growth, Gary’s narrative is a testament to the transformative power wrestling can have.
This one's from the archives! At the time he was the head of the Greco Roman program at the US Olympic Training facility, and is currently the Associate Women's Head Coach at the University of Iowa. But this episode still speaks volumes today!
I let Gary do the rest of the talking ;)
Appleton Tattoo Links
https://www.facebook.com/appletontattoo
https://www.instagram.com/mark_appletontattoo/
920 Hat Co. Links
https://920hatco.com/
https://www.instagram.com/920hatco/
https://www.facebook.com/920HatCo
Okay, everyone, this is Brad, back here again with the Vision Quest podcast for Girl Wrestling. This is episode four of hopefully thousands. We'll see what we can do. I am here and I'm actually extremely honored to be able to talk with the Greco-Roman man and master of USA Wrestling. This is Gary Mayab. Gary, thank you very much for your time.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely no. Thank you, brad. I appreciate you and all you guys do to actually grow wrestling. That's a big part of what I want to get done, and so I feel we're working together on this. I love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and you know the thing too with especially Greco. Not a lot of people know it. We'll put it that way, and I know that there are some people who have their own opinions on it, which is great. I think it's a great sport. Now you came up. Did you start it? When you came up and saw wrestling, it was obviously folk style. Where did you start and where did your love for wrestling?
Speaker 2:start. I've been so fortunate on my life. I've had great coaches, I mean from day one literally, and men that are in Hall of Fame and a bunch of them Just so fortunate to be, you know, plucked out by it. I mean it was a time that I was very tiny when I started wrestling. I think I was 52 pounds and the fourth grade star, 11 years old it was. And the coach I mean at the time he's recruiting but he comes into the middle school there, the elementary, and he just says there's a wrestling meeting at three o'clock today. Be there. And I was like, okay, that's where I'm gonna be right. Both these men that and doctor made me into the sport, were great humans. And then I went from there and got a top opportunity to work with just a master coach at the university and again, I called both of those men every father's day I don't miss.
Speaker 2:They filled a void that I needed and they took care of it, so it was a blast.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, you know. With that being said, when you you started in folk style, it sounds like you were actually pretty prominent in what the runner-up for Cameron's Yep, we lived in Carney until I was a sophomore underneath those coaches. Okay.
Speaker 2:And then my junior and senior year, my family decided we would move 30 miles north to a little bit bigger farm and we had a little bit more land up there, and so we went up there and lived out an old farm house and I went to work for a new school and it's just a different thing, but at the same point in time, it's why those deals with you know, when you're that age and you move, it's like man, it's not good. I loved it there, but then you didn't. All of a sudden you meet. There's two people that are still really into my life right now, from high school and and both of them were on the wrestling team. And then our best friend was the one that may have changed my life the most of any of them, and Charles Scott. He was our first state champion at that new school. The old school had several state champions, but we didn't have any.
Speaker 2:Right and he became our first state champion as a junior and was one of our best friends and unfortunately he got cancer and it's a long time ago, but it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know when we fought and she fought like you could not believe how hard he fought for two years.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And what's crazy good is that he became my college roommate for for a semester. Now think about the answer and what I've always you know. Now that you know I've got children, you got children. Yep. I mean, you know, I can't imagine something happening. One of my children.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:If they were fighting like that, I don't know that I would release them to school, you know. Right, he just said get with them. And said I know I'm going to die, I'm gonna fight this thing, but I wanted to go to college.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I still want to go to college and you know, and to their credit, he went to college. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:You know, we had some. We had some crazy times there. I mean, one night they had double chemo him and then to save his life again, and then he came back to school on a Tuesday right after that. Well, again, you know how you get sick. He got sick in the middle of the night and I'll tell you what we almost lost him right there we. It was one of those deals where you get through it, but you know, it's literally a life changing event based on moving to a new school and around new people and meeting some people. And that's the thing about our sport. I mean, in the middle of really good struggle like that. And I don't I don't compare to the, to his struggle, I just mean sure struggle. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then we learn a lot about ourselves, and at that time we learned a lot, a lot, definitely, yes, well, and that's.
Speaker 1:You know it's funny. You mentioned that because we recently just had a friend of ours that's taken care of Liam and you know a lot, of, a lot of good things came from those guys, especially with Liam's. You know what he's done. But a close friend of ours has just been diagnosed with stage two. I believe it's cervical cancer and you know any any time anyone, especially now, learning about Maverick in that situation. It's heartbreaking, you know, and a lot of times it happens to the best people that we're surrounded by that you can't imagine. But I mean even when it's illness or if it's just death, in general that you don't, you don't see that person having and being afflicted with that, and when it happens, it happens sometimes, and most times, to the best people.
Speaker 2:So you know you're right, but but you can't. You can't even do anything about something like that no, yeah, that's. I mean, it's part of what upset me again, you know, because I can't imagine what his siblings is and that young man fought, like just some of the things that you would read. My wife and I, dorothy, we would read that, those stories every day yeah and we would each other and hug each other and say man, you know how grateful we are right it is go ahead.
Speaker 2:I mean it's just that's what. But that's what fight is all about. I mean, there's things that I mean I've had the pleasure in the honor to coach some really good athletes. They, the best, are the ones that just fight like there's no tomorrow yeah, yeah and the ones I love are the ones that fight like that in the middle of a practice room, when the window doesn't you know when it went to.
Speaker 1:Some people doesn't matter, it always matters to them yes, yep, yeah, totally agree, totally agree in, you know, honestly, the to know that there are, there are people that are out there, not only, not only being, I mean that family support that that either Maverick had or even your friend had or my friend has it's.
Speaker 1:It's got to help them also on the on the way to wherever it is, whether it's healing or anything like that, but that that's minuscule compared to the amount that they have inside of the want and desire to be able to go forward and whether it's to fight it or making the decision also to not fight it. You know, knowing that you're, you know, sometimes can be at a certain point when you yeah, where they're, just like you know what, I'm gonna live, I'm gonna do what I got to do and I'm gonna live to the fullest, no matter what's going on. I don't care if it's cancer, I don't care what it is, and if we could put that in every athlete, I tell you what I think I don't think Russia would touch us no, if you could bottle it and sell it, I don't know if it be worth as much as we think.
Speaker 2:It is now like you could somehow buy it right at the same point down. I mean, it's it's. It's what it's all about, right, yep correct, correct.
Speaker 1:So what with what you, with what you did in wrestling in the, the folk style region? You were, what were your? Some of your accomplishments, I mean even from a kid, what? What did you get out of wrestling that kept you going as a youngster? I mean it was. It went in a state championship, and we know that. You know college coaches aren't paying attention to it. But to you what? What kept you going when you were a kid in wrestling? I mean because look all you, what?
Speaker 2:for almost 40 years, more than 40 years in wrestling, though it's 50, right, 50 years, and, and I was 11 and now I'm 61, but it is. It's. It's my friends, you know. It's it's the people around you. I mean, you are surrounded by people that that have the things that you and I were talking about. It's it's the war and and and and.
Speaker 2:Just, you know, I always tell my, my athletes that, you know, the reason why you should wrestle is because I think you'll hold your children yeah think that you know that when you stare into the, the eyes of your kids, you know who you are because you've been tested yeah, and I've not just. You've been tested in a wide variety of ways. I mean, you look at, look at the max that we just got through watching and and you think of Jordan Burroughs, breaks his ankle and and and wins it world title and, you know, wins another world medal and, and you look at him, go okay, no one knew he had broken right oh they make sure you go out and you think of Kenny Monday and, and, and what he, his struggle was when, when, when he won his Olympic gold and he was injured, and, and now, what are we gonna do?
Speaker 2:what we're gonna hide it and then he's just gonna suck it up and figure it out. You know Dave Taylor was talking at night about, you know, coming off of that bad knee injury that he had.
Speaker 2:You know yeah it's just, it's a part of what we do. I mean, I had double digits. Double digit trips to the emergency room was in college, you know yeah and it's. It's one of those things that you just had eight knee surgeries, both hips replaced, both shoulders reconstructed, one right twice man there's very few things that that that are the way they were supposed to be yeah but at the end of the day, you know, my mom would sometimes tell me when you get older, you're not gonna like the fact that you wrestled, and I would always tell her.
Speaker 2:I hope I never feel like that, because I know what it has given me right right. I'm just there's just no there. I don't know the substitute. And, brad, I appreciate everything that you've done because, at the end of the day, I mean I was fortunate, I got to cook soccer for nine years yeah and I love putting together a team like that. Yeah, and I love watching 11 people working in unison yes and we've gained a goal yep wrestling.
Speaker 2:We do it more the curahee way, I mean yeah you go out one at a time, but you're still trying to achieve a goal at the end. We're just doing it one at a time. There's no you know past to pass, to shot you know right right now, and sometimes it's really well done, it's a, it's a great save on one then and a quick response on the other, and you just beat him to the punch and put it at home. Yep, sport has it right and, and and being around people.
Speaker 2:I used to always tell some of my athletes and like look, you get this in high school for almost free. All it takes is hard work and determination yeah but if you go further than this and maybe within your 30s or 40s, and you got that nice corporate job, you're gonna pay a lot of money to have people train you. And guess what? You can't replace having all those people around you that desperately want you to succeed yeah, yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 1:I totally agree. I, when I when I played soccer and even when I coached I mean I was coaching kids for the most part, but I got up to teenagers I actually coached a girls team and and they did it extremely well, coming from last place, taking second place a year after. But I'll tell you, even in training, when I was trained, when I was young, when I was training, we had you have a good group of four or five guys I mean some guys around the team because they wanted something to put on their college application. You get that kind of stuff. But we also had a good group of four or five guys that we played with each other from youth all the way up. And I had a wingman I had. His name was Ryan Ferguson. That was my wing guy because I knew he could cross it like anybody else to me and I would pass it to him. It was a, it was a give-and-go situation. Every single time I knew he was gonna get it just the right height. But I also knew that Derek was right behind me on the other wing if I missed it to put it up in the top corner. So we always had something to roll off of. We were it was like we were all together at the same time, and that was a great community as well.
Speaker 1:I mean, I can't. I can't compare it. I think right now, though, to wrestling. I, you know wrestling is a special breed, you know it is. It is definitely and I think I heard you talk about it in another podcast you did this is a small group. Once you get into an area of wrestling, it's a small community and in it, in a good way, and also, you know, there are some bad things that come with it, but in a good way, because they know what it takes, they know what you're going through, you know, and there's a lot of that stuff, and I, you know, coming in thinking about some of the stuff that you did, as in the high school realm, I mean, you had to have had a pretty decent coaching staff behind you to be able to, you know, come up from what you guys are doing.
Speaker 2:Phenomenal gifts. I mean throughout my whole career I was surrounded by great coaches, even when they were on the same staff as I was. I mean I mean so often. I mean, you know, when you challenge another strong-willed human, I don't, I don't. And the thing I love about wrestling is sometimes age, isn't? I mean you know someone can look at it and go well, you're the older coach, so obviously you should have known that the athlete doesn't care. Right.
Speaker 2:I mean they, they were getting go. I'll take you down and if I can put you, then I'm as good as you, it doesn't matter. So when you are really challenging that horse, that thoroughbred, you better have a couple of coaches. That's right there with you. And again, I know it's that same way in other sports. But in wrestling. There is a, there is a true sizing up there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the thing that I think is that is you're asking me to do something and you know, and again, just the nature of the sport, where you know we, we turn to an athlete and look at him and say, are you ready? And they're like, yeah, okay, now go out there all by yourself, with really no special equipment, and take on another human is what you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And their spirit to win is is equal to yours. Let's go. Yeah. And there's just, there's certain things in that. I mean even things that I know I would get in trouble by thinking that, but I mean like injury time out, you know what I mean. A wrestler can't really call just, I'm gonna time out.
Speaker 1:Right, right.
Speaker 2:They don't get that. You only get a time out when the rep repos a whistle, because you're actually injured.
Speaker 1:Right and they determine that you're injured. I mean they may look at him and be like keep wrestling.
Speaker 2:Keep wrestling, and so it's one of those kind of things where you know you look at it as an official. You know I can't tell you how many times I had athletes where I thought, man, these guys are hurt. Yeah. If they were a head hurt I'm stopping, but if they weren't head hurt and they weren't stopping, I wouldn't stop. And it was just one of those kind of deals where in most sports you get substituted in something changes. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, you just don't get that in wrestling, and I think that's another dimension of what makes that difference you know what I mean, yep.
Speaker 2:And again, I was fortunate. In high school I was a pole balter. I ran cross country. And I ran cross country because I went out for football and they kicked me off the bus. So you know, I mean, it was just one of those deals where again I had a great coach and he was sitting in the second seat. I went in and got my uniform, I thought I'm in, I'm sure my helmet looked like a bobblehead doll and I get out there and I start to walk and all of a sudden a hand grabs my arm and says no, you're not playing football, so go take the close back, turn them in and in two hours, at 10 o'clock, you'll be a cross country practice. Because I signed you up, nope, and I ran cross country for four years.
Speaker 1:It probably worked out for the best in some ways. You know that's.
Speaker 2:I tried to play in junior high, you know, and there are so many embarrassing moments.
Speaker 1:I think I think I was speaking. Who's I think I was talking to is either Dennis or maybe it was Evan Wick, and we're talking about football as well. I was. I played a lot of. I played baseball stuff like that. I was always short Liam is also short and I was, I was. Then I saw my buddies playing football.
Speaker 1:So seventh grade I tried out for Eagles Club. They put me in a defensive end. So I'm like the short little dude I could have run through legs. I wouldn't have run through guys. I would have run through legs and in knowing what I was into, I think I we're on vacation for Easter break and they did some practices and ran plays. I was behind the eight ball already because I didn't know the balls or the plays. But I wound up playing one game and I think I got put on my face about five times and finally the coach looked at me and goes you know, maybe you're just not meant for the sport. I was like I kind of figured that after I wasn't making it through practice the whole time. So I'm going to go back in the soccer field now and I'm going to do what I'm good at.
Speaker 2:But yeah, and there's a way we find our niche. Yep, it works. Yeah, yeah. But what it requires an honesty with ourselves. It does.
Speaker 2:And so, and I think that that wrestling because you know you, just you know I absorb so many beatings I mean just people should have gone to jail as bad as I could. They just you know the lessons that it puts on you and you know, and I even had again great coaches, but they would say to me if you survive this, you're going to get better. You know, but you have to survive it. And so those things are. I mean, again, it's because the people around you, right, yep, and you get to know that they're suffering and struggling just like you, yep, and you know, it's like I always love that your fifth year senior and a young freshman walks in and of course they're stud and they think that it's just going to keep going like that because that's what they did in high school, and then they have no idea what you've done with your last five years of your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You lay it on you know you can help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Yep.
Speaker 2:Right, I mean when I walked in the college room I did not get a takedown for the first two and a half months. I went home for Thanksgiving without a takedown in the room and I was supposed to be pretty good. And not only that, I mean at the university I was at. It was just different than it is today. Yep, I was the 11th guy out of 11 at the Lightest Weight class.
Speaker 1:Central Missouri, correct, no, no no, no Central Missouri. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We just had. We had, we only had about maybe four or five at 126. But at 118, we were unbelievably deep and I just I couldn't whip any of them yeah. And so you just get to that point where you're like, yeah, maybe this isn't for me either, but luckily again had a great coach, kept me out, and you know. And once you get past that, at some point it dawns on you that what I meant to say in all this is that the fifth year senior had that done to him. Yep.
Speaker 2:And so now you know you can't get out from bottom to save your life it's there for I mean, for eternity it seems like. But at some point then you get, you come to grips with that and you start changing and you make the changes necessary to adapt to that. Right. You know and it forces you to be on the. You have an IQ. You have to know the sport. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You have to tolerate the emotions and the stress that it brings and then overcome that. And then, finally, your IQ, your adaptability. And if you can adapt to the sport and change it. Then you know again, the angle that you take on goal when you're younger might not work. Sure, as you become more sophisticated and really truly understand how to use your outside wings, then they'll either draw fire for you or you Pass off to them because you drew it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Only that timing. But when you're young you think you're going to do it and you are not enough to do it, and so you know there's, there's so much of that that I think that that wrestling you know. But again you come to terms with the fact that, man, these guys did it so and they're my friends, and so there's a lot of times it doesn't seem like they're your friends, Right, Right, Yep, they're really pure friends. I mean, they don't ever feel sorry for you, they just pound on you and tell you to fix it.
Speaker 1:More Correct. Yeah Well, and like you're saying, like with a fifth year senior to an incoming freshman, I mean, that's how a room is built, you know that's. That's how. That's how you know if you have those guys that have already been doing it, you kind of expect them to. I would almost call it. Still, even if they're beating them up, they're taking them under their wing, you know they're. They're showing them that you need to. This is where you need to be at, this is what you need to do.
Speaker 1:I, I, I follow, I think I follow that rule a lot, especially in the high school room. And that's kind of where you know, I, I didn't have the drive and determination like, like my son has. He's, he's by far a lot better mind wise than I ever was. And seeing these other kids wrestle, I mean we go super 32, we go to Pennsylvania, we go to, you know, tulsa, oklahoma, you know and seeing some of these other kids in, in watching how they react to certain things Every kid's different, every mentality is different, but when that room is built off of just grit and determination, I think that great personalities help. I mean, obviously it's not just you're not just in there to smash and grab, but when it's grit and determination is built in a room and it's, it is sustained in a room and they understand that I mean. That to me seems like it's a huge step forward for a program.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, just like the term that you just named off. I mean they're so deep and if you're not coming out of a good room you just can't measure up on those days.
Speaker 2:You can't, and you know the athletes that I feel for the ones that don't get to come out of a good room. Now, again, that's that's based on the winning. But we know that the neat thing about the sport is is that even in rooms that might not send athletes to national tournaments like that or to the world trials, to where they hope to get overseas and actually take on the world I mean they that part. But the neat thing about it is, at no matter at any level of our sport, it changes these people, it makes them print and it helps them grow. So that's the part also I love about this sport is that it could be for anybody, the smallest guy to the heavyweight.
Speaker 2:It has frustrated me in the past where we put a weight limit on heavyweight now and we put a weight limit on the lightweight now, and I used to not be there and I liked it better when it was like that, because when you make a statement that says wrestling is for everybody, it's for everybody. And now that women's wrestling has come on like, we are just now opening the real Pandora's box on this thing, this is going to be so big, yeah, so I mean you know we have been in the top two or three in the world nonstop every year. What our staff does at USA Wrestling is absolutely incredible, yep. And now, now, all of a sudden, they're going to have a full national fear program.
Speaker 1:Come on, I mean this is going to get great.
Speaker 2:We're going to see the juggernaut, I believe. I mean we've got the right coaches, we, you know, you know, and this thing is just to watch something double and then quadruple and I mean the explosion of it's just, it's crazy. And if everything that we say is great about our sport, now we're truly sharing it with everybody.
Speaker 1:Everyone Right, everyone yes.
Speaker 2:Yep Size aside, doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Correct, correct. And you know, when this started coming up, it took me, like I said, I coached, I coached girl soccer for a while and when I finally heard that they're bringing girls into wrestling and finally, you know, I watch girls, I wrestle girls when I was in high school and they've always been kind of, they've just been in it and now they own a portion of it. And if it wasn't a point, if it wasn't for them, I think right now men's and boys wrestling in high school and middle school and stuff like that, programs in general, will be hurting, I think so. It brought a lot of attention to the sport.
Speaker 2:We used to. We used to go down to Texas for tournaments, sometimes just to, you know, get out of our region and go down there and wrestle, and we had really good success down there. So it was if you chose the right time, especially coming right off of Christmas break where you just need competition but you need to be away from the heat that Kansas City metropolitan area has. I mean, you know, it was one of those kind of things where you just say, hey, I need to get out of here and we take our team down there. And women's wrestling had been 10 years in going down there at that time. And so they literally two of the high school teams that we trained at they actually had like they would have like 45 boys, but they had like 62, 65 girls, so they were already doing some of this yeah.
Speaker 2:It was like looking into the future and again all it takes is someone just opening the door. It's two people open the door for me, but now we're opening the door and you talk about grow wrestling. This is, this is what's I mean, this explosion, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally agree. And you know, the thing is too is it's nice to that the and I hope this opens it up more especially the discussion for it with girls wrestling coming in. The focus for them is freestyle. So I mean, right away we're aiming internationally for these girls right away, and I think it's the best thing in the world. And I talk with I shouldn't say talk I jibber jaw with stealth quite a bit about this. He gets, he gets a little wild and crazy when people are, you know, they have girls with folk style tournaments and stuff like that. But I mean, at some point I'm just happy that they're in it. But I do agree with them where we're, we're really focused now and put them in the path of international success while they're still doing their domestic wrestling. You know, and I'm hoping I'm a bit, actually, I, if I could petition the WIA, I'd love to have it where high school wrestling involved freestyle or Greco or Greco, and not to put any of it down.
Speaker 1:But I think it's. I think it's. It's one of the greater, one of the greater aspects and, I think, one of the better arguments about wrestling about which style is better and I think I get into argument with Lucas stealth about it a lot too Greco and freestyle to me are two of the better styles of all wrestling. Folk style was, was was us taking a sport and we made it, so we liked it and it appealed to the masses and I don't think for a minute that we wouldn't be able to sustain and do just fine if we started including all three of them and give a choice.
Speaker 2:I would love to see that. You're absolutely right. I don't think there's any. You know, one of the things that I try to push is that the single greatest power we have as humans is the power of choice. And if we can afford that choice to people and let them take ownership and buy in and responsibility and have their rights with their responsibility, then we're going to move everybody forward.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:We're seeing that right now, women. But you know again, you know I I love Greco run wrestling. I just I love. But but you know, I, like I said, I officiate 36 years in folk style In college and I loved that. I mean, I really did it was you know I just I loved being around those people I was fortunate to call matches with. About everybody was on that fight card tonight and and and get to raise those kinds of people's hands is special. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I had David Taylor in a final one year and, and you know, at Big 10s and and just it's an honor, right. Yep. And they shake hands, they fight and you get to raise somebody's hand yeah, and you know how hard they work to get to that point.
Speaker 2:So I think that those I mean I love that part of it because it's it has what we've talked about before. It has the essence of wrestling, which is, send one person out, they'll send another person out and let's see what happens. That's what we talk about, right, yep? And then when, when you look at the different styles, but but Greco, I believe you know we're we're up here in camp right now. Yep, we've got an active camp going and we're in a bubble here in South Dakota and we just had great practices and these guys are fighting like crazy and they're training really well and and we're very excited for some of our younger guys that we've got in, and you know, we've got a couple of really young Wisconsin guys here and that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1:Who's that? So what?
Speaker 2:do you got Kail Kail is here, oh yeah, and so national champ there. And so you know, I mean it's and these young guys, you're working with them and and you know you watch the 16 year old walk out there against a 25 year old man and and and he gets drugged twice and same move. And you walk over to him and go hey, as you age you don't get taken down the same thing twice, right, but but and he looks at me like yeah, you know, but but.
Speaker 2:I stopped him and said hey, listen to me, hold on a second, let's. Let's not forget that you're 16.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, right.
Speaker 2:Right, what you're doing is phenomenal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's breathe.
Speaker 2:I mean, and he's, he's so good. Yeah. Really talented young man and I love, I just I love how he trains he's. He's one of those kind of guys that that when I brought him over and said that he didn't pick up the fact that I was being a little sarcastic and that was what was awesome about it was like it was like listen, I mean he really thought I was kind of on. You know, I was like.
Speaker 1:You saw in the moment? Yeah, he was focused man.
Speaker 2:Yeah Right, he's dialed in. Yeah. And so just all of it, and, and you know so, there's some lessons being taught daily here.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so we're having a lot of fun with it. But I just I told him in a day in practice, is you know, we go backwards better than anybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:When we go backwards. If you chase us, bad things are going to happen to you. You're going to go quite overtop of our head and you're not going to. You're not wanting to get thrown, but you're going to go over the top.
Speaker 1:Yes, You're going.
Speaker 2:You're going and, and there it takes a very high technical standard to get that done.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean, right.
Speaker 2:When we talk about stance, motion level change, penetration with back step, back arch, we're all that back step, back arch moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And the other styles aren't quite as adapted. The high level back, step back, arch stuff.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And you know, we put some of these guys in the room, some of the best guys in America and hopefully some of the best guys in the world, and and we, you know we we've got them backing up quickly and then throwing a hard motion on their own. And it's still has to be taught, still has to be read.
Speaker 1:It does, it does. Well, you know you talk about that because Liam, Liam has started getting into and he's not. He's not a feet, he likes leg attacks. So Greco isn't like his forte quite yet but in his wrestling and his folk style he's been throwing in lat drops quite a bit lately and he likes it. And I said, and he's a little sloppy, he doesn't, he doesn't close the gap between the hips as much when he's trying to. He'll try it from his knees, Stupid, stupid, stupid. He'll try it from anywhere. And I said honestly, I'm going to send you down to Bill Kale and I'm going to send you down to to McGowan to go and have him work with those guys. He goes, yeah, but I don't want to do Greco, Then stop doing it. If you're not going to do it right, just stop doing it, it's okay.
Speaker 2:Let's do it right.
Speaker 1:Right, so he has fun with it. But you know, and you think about it though, I mean Greco Roman, that's where it started, you know, I mean that's you go back to Greco Roman times. We're talking Olympiad of, before any of us could even think about having oxygen. That that was what was going on. There wasn't like attacking.
Speaker 2:No, and and, and you know, in Europe, the reason why Greco is so big is because it's the sport of kings. We just means in other people. They would wrestle Greco because they just a cane never gets on their knees. The world team never gets on their knees. So if we're going to wrestle, we're going to do it standing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I just think that you know. So there's a lot to that too and I love. I mean, I taught history for three decades at high school level and I, so I love all of that stuff, right? Oh, we start talking about Benny Hussain and 5000 years ago, and each of them on the wall and see actual wrestling matches, all ties. It's right. You got a history that just can't hardly be replaced, right? Well, and you can't, that's the other thing too, and that's kind of where you know.
Speaker 1:I know where Lucas is coming from, but that's kind of where you got to. You got to give Greco its place. It may not be popular, I think, as far as states go, I think Wisconsin's one of the top ones when it comes to producing Greco In my eyes. That's my opinion. But when you, when you look at, when you look at what's come out and what's been going out, and think I mean we got Austin Nutter, we got Macy Kilty who I'll be talking to her, I think, when she's back from France, you know we have all all these kids and she did she did it quite a bit of Greco.
Speaker 1:I know she's freestyle, but she did some Greco. But I mean all these kids that are coming out of the state, I mean I think you know, I think you know, I think you know all these kids that are coming out of the state. I mean, now that we have a good groundwork, I mean have you seen growth in every state or is it still kind of? Is it still kind of a slow going thing with all the other states, with Greco?
Speaker 2:I mean we're seeing significant growth right now. We really are. We're excited about it. We have a group of developmental coaches now called US GRIT. Okay, they're, they're across the country literally and they're going to do some exciting things this spring. If we can just get on the mat full time again, yeah Now, and if we can get that done, there's going to be an awful lot of things there. But I agree, it's, it's, it's growing now At times, at times it seems to rich get richer because there's this tradition in there, right, I mean, if, if, if you're a Wisconsin Greco-Wilman wrestler, then you've plowed through the troops, you, you, you came through a long fight. You didn't, you didn't go to the state tournament and have two matches. You want, right, you know, go to the state tournament and have three or four matches and you want, you, you, you went through a regional, you fought, and now you got to the state tournament and it's deep, yeah, and we both know there's depth, sometimes just in numbers. Yep.
Speaker 2:But in space, like Wisconsin and Minnesota and these states that are around you guys up there, yep that Michigan, or I mean all of the states are very well versed in and and when you look at the number of, I mean Nutter World Bronze Madness, I mean so many Many may see. I mean watch your wind titles and watch your do great things at at at world levels. Yep. And if she hand fights, she is obviously one of my favorites to watch. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so just I think that part of it is is it's cultural. Yeah. And we know that that for wrestling to really excel, I think it takes that culture of toughness. I think the other thing that the the Northern, that Northern Plains that you're talking about right there, that group. Yep. I think it's the stoicism of their people. Yeah, as individual people, right. Yep. And and that culture blends itself well with hand to hand hand fighting combat. Yep.
Speaker 2:And so I just, you know, there's certain states that have advantages. I mean, first of all, what are you guys going to do in the winter up there, because you're not going outside?
Speaker 1:No no.
Speaker 2:And I know you guys do, because you're crazy and I know that I was talking to this somebody their day up in Minnesota, up in Northern Minnesota. Yep.
Speaker 2:And they're like hold on, coach. I got to run a few things out to the boys because they're out ice fishing. I'm like why would you do that? But but you know I just I used to every time I would land to to officiate up there. I got out of a plane one time in Minneapolis to to go over to U of M and it was like 13 below zero with with wind blowing like at 40 miles an hour and I was like who would want to live up here? So I think that I mean we had winners in Missouri, but we don't even call you, don't even call that a winner. So I think that that you know I. But I don't like being cold either.
Speaker 1:So yeah.
Speaker 2:I think that that you know here in South Dakota, but I mean whether today it was like something's going wrong, cause it was 45 years. Yeah. And, yeah, I suppose to snow tomorrow, of course, but I think that that you know, I just some of that. I mean when you well, it's like baseball, right, baseball in the Southern States, my goodness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's.
Speaker 2:it's a mistake. I think it's a stat. Yeah, you know, the the thing that I that I think about the most is like when I when I was in high school wrestling trying to get a good good, good, good, good, good, good good good, good, good, good, good, good. I think that's a mistake. I think it's a mistake, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think that it's a mistake and I think that I that I think about the most is like when I, when I was in high school, wrestling, trying to compete and compare to what my brother did, cause he was he was way better at wrestling than I was, and I was way better at soccer than he was we just kind of did things cause we were very competitive. Did you have, did you hit siblings? Did you have siblings that were in wrestling?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:My siblings were much larger, my brothers and sisters they were normal people, okay, and I was tiny, brad, you have to understand. I was 62 pounds to freshman in high school.
Speaker 1:I don't get that.
Speaker 2:I don't either. I can't even fathom now, but I mean again. Not very many people can be proud of the fact that I've more than doubled my weight since high school.
Speaker 1:That is fantastic.
Speaker 2:Right and so, but no, my brother is. They played football, and that's why I wanted to play football, and, luckily, you know, man plucked me out and said no, you're going to do this other thing, and he stayed with me though, too. I mean, I was 62 pounds as a freshman in high school, I mean by today's rules, unfortunately, I couldn't even wrestle.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:And let me, and that that bothers me a little bit, because I think that you know, I was two thirds the size I was supposed to be. And I was wrestling, and so I took a lot of beatings right. Yeah. I can't, you can't hardly measure up against size. I mean, that's the reason why there's weight classes, and you know. So I think that that's, that's one of those things, that that again, that overcoming part.
Speaker 1:but but I was still afforded the opportunity to do that and that's that's huge, it's huge, it's huge, yeah, and I, you know, it reminds me of a kid that I that I coached for soccer, and the kid was afraid of a ball. The ball went in the air and he ducked like nothing happened, no loud sounds. He just knew there was a lot of action coming around when that ball was up in the air by him. So you duck, so I'm a, I'm a, I'm a trial by fire kind of guy. So it's not to, not to put someone in a bad position I know where they're going to be at.
Speaker 1:I put them in that goalie cause you're not going to avoid a ball if you don't want to be, I guess, embarrassed for a lack of a better term in the goal. Well, I put him in a couple of times. He got hit by a ball a couple of times. He kind of you know, of course he got. He thought he was hurt. So I brought him up, put another guy in. I put him right back in a goalie again because he didn't, he wasn't, he wasn't like telling me no, no, no, no, I don't want to go in. I'm like, all right, he's got the mentality. He wants to do it by the end of that season that kid was able to.
Speaker 1:He was taking a ball to the chest and was able to withstand all the stuff. When that happened, when he was, when the ball went up in the air and he actually went to go for a header, I took him out and I think I treated him like Rocky Balboa just won, you know, like the national championship of boxing, cause I was like that's it, that's all you need to do. You had that, you have, you had a, you had a fear, you had something wrong, but you, but I was also able. It was nice to see a kid being able to go out and accomplish something as simple as just not being afraid, you know, and Well, I mean when you see someone overcome their fears and then and then, at some point begin to excel.
Speaker 2:Is there anything better than that?
Speaker 1:Never.
Speaker 2:It doesn't get better than that Never. You can get your hand raised all you want, but at the end of the day getting your hand raised. It depends on who you're wrestling with. Yeah, You're winning. Yup. But in that you were winning with yourself. Yup. Nothing better. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, you know we used to take. I had a team that I didn't think was physical like the first three teams I had that I was fortunate to have on the soccer field, yup, so. So we just we went inside in the gym and the bleachers were there. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was on a slick floor and I put a little bitty ball down and so we're playing with this. And then that little ball did was they brought an awful lot of physicality, sure did. And the bleachers they could check them into the bleachers and, brief, soon, it didn't matter how bad people were slacked tackle. I've already. I've already been hit by my teammates much harder than that. Yeah. Drilled me into the bleachers. Now, luckily again, no one got really injured and I got lucky.
Speaker 1:Yup.
Speaker 2:Cause I had a bunch of mistakes in my job, that's all right.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day. Those guys went out at the end of the year and just played like warriors, yeah, and he bothered them. I mean, go up for a header and get, get your feet swiped from you and land on your head. And they just got back up and let's go, and so you know. I mean, and I wanted to, because you know when someone pulls on your shorts or trips you in the wrong way and they don't get called for it and you want retaliation. These guys didn't do that anymore. They were like I got put in a bleachers. This doesn't bother me. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then they went and it's that and again, coming from a position of and again. I don't think my guys were actually full blown fearful of it, like they should have talked about that but they didn't like it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then. But then you turn it up another level and you know again I might be able to say that if I could live in Wisconsin for a couple of winners I might adjust. But I don't want to adjust.
Speaker 1:Nope, nope, I'm trust me. I'm 40. I'm gonna be 40. I'm gonna be 42 next week and I'm already kind of looking like. I'm in Washington right now and it's the middle of January and it's like 50 degrees and raining and I'm, like, you know, I kind of kind of like this. This is kind of nice, I could handle, yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's gonna come a day I'm gonna be on a beach with a bunch of books, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's. I can't, you know, I can't wait. I can't wait for that day, Because I mean you put so much time into the sport and dedication, I mean especially with, with Greco. Okay, so you, you started out as a, as a folk style wrestler. What was your first Greco competition?
Speaker 2:I was a sophomore in high school and again had a great coach and I had gone to a tournament my freshman year. But because of you know, it's one of those you weigh in. And then I wrestled one guy. No. And and and. So I think he was mainly a folk style wrestler too. So I don't even count that match because I don't think we actually wrestled. Greco, you just didn't shoot on the right. Sure.
Speaker 2:Right. But but my sophomore year, I mean we actually started training it and luckily we had a. We had a, my coach had a great friend and he brought this friend in a couple of times and then the friend allowed us to go down to his practices and he was, he was a Greco. I mean, he understood Greco. So we went down there and you know the rest is, I fell in love with it and I wanted to do both.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:In 80, in the trials in 80, I went to post-strikes and the sophomore in college. So I went down to 105. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But then after that, then then my college coach came to me and said look, you can't keep wrestling 105 because I need you at 118. And so you're just too small and you're getting you know. So I did, I went up to, I went up to 114 then in the spring and summer and then I went to 118 in college and so but but that was again a good start and and that's what we're trying to get to right now. I mean whether it's for, you know, women's wrestling the opportunity is now blossoming and that you're just going to be a pay off. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I feel the exact same way about Greco. The more coaches we we have to stop having Greco be an elitist sport.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Right. I mean sometimes because of small numbers, we look at it and go well, we're elite. We should not want to be elite. What we want to do is we want to seat at the table and pull up a chair and be part of the full blown wrestling community, and we're going to do that we have to have. One of the struggles that women's wrestling has right now is what with, with, with such an upsurge in such a short period of time. You've got more coaches now. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Across the country. A lot of high school coaches for women are male coaches right now that you just like a head. One of my old high schools I mean this walked in one day and said a coach, you need to do both, because that's simple, right, you're coaching both, and so you know. And then, luckily, the next year, because it grew so rapidly they had to hire another coach. Yeah, right, right, yup. Well, a whole other staff is what they ended up doing, which is good. I mean, they hired another staff. Right.
Speaker 2:So those are things where there there may be a shortage of coaches, and coaches drive everything. Yeah, I agree. And so I mean, if we do not expand our coaching pool in Greco, we need to stop talking about grow wrestling, yeah, in the family. Yup, we need to make that happen, and I really do believe that we're starting to move that direction. So it's exciting.
Speaker 1:And speaking of that, I think you guys recently gained another another coach up at NMU for Greco with BISIC. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, what I know of James, what does he? Does he have experience in it? Has he been in it a while?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you know Greco wise, and this is. This is one of those things where, if we're not careful, one of the things that you hear sometimes, that I mean it really makes me shudder as a human. But when I hear someone turn to someone say, you don't know Greco, we're trying to get people to understand is that you know Greco. If you work with athletes in the style of Greco women wrestling and then you take them to a tournament, sure, if you do those two things, then you are a Greco coach. And you know, and I got so fortunate I was, I was actually getting ready to to come on this trip, and so I ran out to you know, I don't know a department store, real quick, yeah, and pick up a couple of things, because I need a couple of things to the trip.
Speaker 2:And somebody in the aisle says Mr Brooks, and I turn and look and everybody's got their mask on, and and I looked up and I'm like so it was one of my strikers days, right. And now when I went over and kind of gave him an elbow bump, you know, and and I said, hey, listen, how's your son doing? And he said great, and talked about him and everything and what is good, and and and I finished out I just said look, I cannot thank him, you, everybody that allowed me to chance to walk in and go to work in a sport that I knew nothing about. Right, that's right, you know we're not there at NMU. I mean, james understands this thing, sure, and he brings to the table, I think, some unique qualities that they were looking for, because what's one of the areas we got to do? I mean, in wrestling, we always talk every day about technique, technique, technique.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:The idea today will really need is we need more people recruiting to get us where we need to be Right, right. You think about. You think about major programs at universities and major anything companies, it doesn't matter. One of their number one duties is recruitment. Yep.
Speaker 2:And I think this man's going to be great at it. That's good. I bring that up not to diminish the knowledge of Greco. That's not my point. Sure, my point is, I think, that that while we're talking about I mean we we can talk technique and all that all the time, and that's what wrestling is all about. Yeah, and he's going to pay for that, and not only that. You have, I believe, one of the best technical coaches we have in America, with coach Bezic there.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, hands down, hands down.
Speaker 2:So I mean, when we're really talking about needs and wrestling, I mean I think if I was to go back and try to run a scholastic program again, I'm just hire somebody that their full time job is that universities do that, yep. They have departments in it, and then you look at how successful college wrestling is in America. I don't think any of that is by by chance.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:I mean last Monday, we were on a grit call and we were fortunate to have Jamie Nelson on RTST, director for the Gophers.
Speaker 1:I know Jamie well.
Speaker 2:Right, yep, and that man doesn't think like most wrestling people. Right. But what he does is he brings something to the table that says, if you want to really grow wrestling, then we need to quit thinking about single leg zoning. Yep, and every coach, every coach will tell you that. The technical, technical aspects Well, first of all, that's the fun part, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean I, the other night I got done working around three in the morning and and I, I, I just couldn't go to sleep yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I still fired up camp and everything, yeah, and, and you know, because when the camp starts, the other work doesn't stop, as you know, just like you still got work. So, it's long days right.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:But I I I watched another three matches at Russian national. Yeah, I want to learn something new every day.
Speaker 1:Every day.
Speaker 2:I think that I do think that Northern, I think that you know another thing that you're always looking for is a balanced staff, and when you, if you have three people and they're the same, you failed somehow.
Speaker 1:Correct.
Speaker 2:Yep, and and and people say, well, it's easy to get them all on one page. Yeah, but it's one page and you're not going to whip anybody with one page. Nope, you better get a volume. Yep, and if you have people that are going to super 32s and all these things how do I? Get those onto your team, because everybody's talking to those kids.
Speaker 1:Well, right, right, everybody wants yeah. Well, I mean guys, when we're over there watching the high school kids at super 32, man, I mean that's, that room is filled in the high school room is filled with college recruiters filled. I mean there's, they have a. They have a dedicated section in the bleachers for college recruiters and it's filled. And it's like holy cow, like I can't.
Speaker 1:I came from a world and you may feel the same, but I came from a world when wrestling was. You might have drove, driven two and a half hours maybe to go to a local tournament. You didn't have Iowa's, you didn't have preseason nationals, you didn't have super 32s and and and. Even in the Greco, you know like I'm sure they still had that. You know they still had the worlds and stuff like that. But my brother and I didn't know where to go compete for that stuff. You know it's everywhere now. And, and I think you're right in the, in the thinking of, especially with whoever you're putting together in a program, not only just fresh eyes, but you want fresh minds, and not fresh minds that always think alike and are like yeah, I love that. You know they got to argue, they got a fate, they got to be able to figure a middle, because I Mean it's just like wrestling everything comes down to wrestling. You have to have different angles.
Speaker 2:You're right, you, you have to attack every problem from multiple angles anymore right. I mean, you cannot ask an athlete in today's world to do what we did. Yeah, standpoint. If one of my coaches would have said, gary, that's a wall, go through it, do not go through that door. I Wouldn't have stopped and said, well, why not use the door? Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm going to walk and I'll hit it, and until he stops me. Yeah or I fall asleep. We fall asleep, right way I mean, and luckily for us athletes today are so much more sophisticated right. And I'm even the point now where I'm not so sure.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm blessed because I get to take a lot of Olympic courses, yeah, and they have Continuing ed program nice and I just I was working tonight and and I Look at my phone and I just get a text from one of the directors of education there and said, hey, I haven't heard from you in a month and I think it's going type thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I shot back. You know that I finished two courses that she had worked with people to get Started. Yeah, and it wasn't her course in anymore. But I was on these other two courses and, like, one of the courses I took was a three-week course on resiliency Learning how to be more resilient.
Speaker 2:Wow, no one taught me that before no no hard way, and and so I mean coaches, and with the internet I mean Whether it's the master's courses or whatever you want to take. I mean you can get on the internet and learn anything you want to learn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So if you want to do a deep dive in resiliency, you can if you want, and resiliency, if you're not finding ways of teaching resiliency, you're really not teaching wrestling right, because this will be a long-term struggle big time. You're going to overcome injury, you're going to set for a year and then come back, and you got to go right back to taking on another human and getting it done again.
Speaker 2:So much of this it's out there that I there's not enough time to learn everything that we want to learn for the, for the safety and welfare and the advancement of our athletes. Yeah, yeah, and so so again, I hope that none of your viewers takes my comments before it's saying I just I'm not ready to talk about the accolades of technique or tactics with with that, with which coaches Sikorsky, you know they're in one issue there with an immune.
Speaker 2:I mean, oh, and Greco we're so thankful for in a new anyway. Yeah, my goodness to have a university that dedicated its entirety in Greco. Yeah yeah, but this if we had, if we had 10 in MU's in the United States, just 10.
Speaker 1:Oh man.
Speaker 2:We wouldn't even be having this conversation about Brecco forget about it.
Speaker 1:Forget about it. Well, it's, you know with with Bill Bill Kali, and you know what he's done with ringers, starting that program at that high school. I mean that's that was huge, and obviously COVID kind of put a burn on it, and it's unfortunate. I was, I was literally. I contacted him to find out what was going on with it, because I was on the verge of sending Liam down there.
Speaker 1:I said that this is the to me, because, okay, he's, he loves folks, dolly does it, but I think, in a kid's mind, you know, they're like oh, I don't like it because they, because they can't get a grasp of it, because they don't have the time and, like you said, coaches, they don't have the coaches that have the knowledge to be able to do it. The coach would probably love to, but he's probably thinking in his head I, I don't want to coach him in this because I don't, I'm gonna screw him up. But at the same point, though, too, when you have these programs in and I hope and I'm gonna talk to Bill I'm gonna have those guys on too I hope and pray that they do it again, because it saw the kids that they had in there and watching the development that they had moving along was huge. It was huge.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, first of all, it's an idea that I believe is coming. It's time. Mm-hmm and I'm like you. I hope that there's a way to to go right back to the drawing board. I mean, we just we just got caught in a bad time. Yep, there's bad, that was all it was. Yep the idea right and the way that he was.
Speaker 1:Losing a little bit. There you are.
Speaker 2:There you go. No, I was just saying that. You know, coach Callie, I mean, you know he opened up doors and he gave the power of choice to people. If this is what you want to do, you know Lucas Delft talked to me. He wants people to wrestle Greco. Yeah, and to his, to his. Really accolading of his is that he's willing to say something that other people say all the time. I just wrestle folk style and no one looks at them like really Right. Or someone might say, well, I just love three dollars, the only thing I want to do, mm-hmm, pretty awesome. But if someone says the only thing to do is Greco, you know it's like what are you talking about? Huh, so what's it take? Again, it takes a coach to open a door and say we're going to do this and it does. And the other thing is that just the sheer thought of what we do in our sport anyway is all based on commitment. Yeah, I have an X and Y axis, and the X and Y is trust and commitment. Yeah.
Speaker 2:If you give us athletes as coaches, if you give us athletes that are trustworthy and fully committed, there's nothing that can't be done then Right, it's like the way you describe yourself to your son is that he's fully committed. He's fully in he is. He's to the point where he's so sold on it and with a personal expectation of exceptionalism. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:He's seeking out whoever's going to make a difference for you? Yes, he is Right, it's a partner, another coach going to next tournament, and once they get that, all that's based on their own personal trust. Mm-hmm and again how often are we actively coaching that?
Speaker 1:Not often enough.
Speaker 2:Not enough. I mean, what we tend to do is we put a whole bunch of bodies in the room and go fight each other and we'll figure out who wins and then we'll call you. We could get more people like that stuff than we are doing, right? I agree, success and hard work and all of it, the commitment, the trust, all of it is contagious. Yeah, yeah, you can win a room like that. It's just like you go to places in the northeast where you go down to the local pizza shop and they've got pictures on the wall of four generations of wrestling. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I sometimes hope that. I just hope that the fifth generation kid loved wrestling, because there's an expectation there, right?
Speaker 1:There becomes one correct.
Speaker 2:And that young person doesn't male or female. They don't get to come home and unfortunately there might not be five generations of female right. Sure. But right now there's five generations of wrestlers in that home and now the sixth ends up being a female. I don't think that matters anymore. No. I think that you're a wrestler, which is that's a beautiful thing too. Yeah. But I think that when you look at that them coming home and going dad, I got thrown down today just once yeah, you get a new partner, you're not going.
Speaker 1:Son, that's correct. That's it, and you know, thinking about the partner portion of it now, when we'll get back, we're getting back to you here. When you wrestled, you were small. We know you were small, we're okay. So you started training Greco, but did you have did you have, like partners that were already in the world seeing that had accomplished things, or did you just have great guys that were just there like, just like your coaches? But did you have teammates and guys like that to push you constantly, or did you have to seek them out?
Speaker 2:Well, okay, so that was one of the unique things about what happened to me is that the school that I grew up in I mean, you think about it, you've got two coaches that were going to elementary schools back before there was even big kids wrestling. I mean, there wasn't these massive tournaments that there are today. Right.
Speaker 2:Right, they would drive us two and a half hours. I mean, at one point I went to my mom's hometown, which was like two and a half hours away, to wrestle match and a duel. So I mean you'd come out of kids wrestling with your career with 25 matches. So Two Right Two. They can't even imagine that world. Right. But the thing was they said that's the kind of coaches I had there. So now I go to a bigger farm community, but they thought wrestling was three months a year. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I knew it wasn't three months a year and luckily I had friends and, just like you know, going back to Charles Scott, I mean his parents let him come to college. Well, you know what they also did when I was 17 and he was 16, they let us drive to Kentucky. I think that happened, isn't it? And we just stuck three of us in my Mustang hatchback and we drove to Kentucky Bird Tournament, and then, and we didn't have money, so we would sleep in the hatchback oh, the good news about being small there were three of us.
Speaker 1:My God.
Speaker 2:We had fleeting bags, dropped the backseat down and we stayed there. So we're in. I think we're in Memphis, maybe, okay, and on one of these wrestling trips and a storm blows through and has a tornado with it, and it comes through and we're in the park.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:And after 10, it can't leave the park because we're not supposed to be there. And we get up like this freight train's coming and one of them's like we gotta get out of here and I'm like don't get out of the car. There's things hitting the car, you know. So we just gotta hunker down and the neatest thing was the car got moved from this side of the road over to the other side of the road and that was it. Oh, oh, I mean there's, but you know you have moments like that. I mean, come on, you don't get better friends.
Speaker 1:You can't buy that.
Speaker 2:You had friends for life when you do that stuff. Yeah, you didn't have money. So I went to Chicago. One time I was a freshman in college, I think we went up for a regional event and went up there and I just took a sleeping bag and it got so cold in the car I said I can't do this all night. So we didn't have enough money to keep the car running. So it was like I took the sleeping bag, went up to the seventh or eighth floor and then camped out in the hallway to sleep.
Speaker 2:Guy comes up, not real security, but one of those kind of security people they come up and kind of taps me on with the flash light and he goes hey, you can't sleep out here. Now I'm like, hey, they're in there, my buddies are snoring so bad I gotta wrestle tomorrow and I just I won't be able to do this. I mean I gotta sleep. Yeah, and he goes, oh, wrestle. And I was like yeah, I wrestle and he goes, so did I. You know, I didn't sleep in the hallway.
Speaker 1:So Gives you passes, gives you special passes. You're right.
Speaker 1:So you know, with that being said, I own an 82 Ford Mustang hatchback. Mine had T tops. However, I did not sleep in it and I did not get thrown almost thrown out in a tornado in it, but that again. You know these unique situations. I mean, everybody's got a life story and things like that. But with a sport like this and you like you told the guy in the hallway I'm a wrestler, oh man, never mind, do what you gotta do, I get it. But exactly.
Speaker 2:This is one thing and it's no knock against the other sport that goes on in the wintertime. But you know, when people look at somebody and they say who are you and I'm a wrestler. But when you hear people talk about another sport, they say I play basketball.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's a little difference there, because when you wrestle, there's a cut weight moment that no one likes and everyone has a story about weight cutting or probably just 300, and everyone has a bad experience with that at some point. And you know, I mean it's just, it's like I said, whether it's the entry time out or whatever it is, or you go out there all by yourself At the end of the day, it's just, there's so much blending of these things that's so foreign to almost everything else we do. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That it really does become the greatest teacher.
Speaker 1:It does. And I, you know I can't count on hands toes anything with when I discuss things with Liam about school. You know Everything from. You know if you've got an assignment due and you really don't want to do it because you've been working on homework for four hours, sometimes you have to face that fear of you know coming out to us and saying I don't, I don't, I'm done, my brain, my brain's going to explode Because kids think that they're going to get in trouble with something if they don't do their homework. Things like that I said that still takes courage to come out and tell us that you just don't have it right now. You know that's being honest with yourself and I think wrestling teaches honesty. It teaches all of it. And I, I think Liam gets tired of me telling stories of, like, comparing everything to wrestling. He's like Dad, I get it, I get it. I'm like, yeah, but I don't think you do.
Speaker 2:Just keep doing it, dad, just keep doing it, because I mean today, literally about two hours ago, one of our heavyweights here and we've got an unbelievable group of heavyweights, yeah, and one of the heavyweights great, big, huge human comes up to me, coach. I'm like, yeah, you know, we're not practicing, I don't know what's going on. And he goes. It's really serious. And I'm like what's wrong? And he goes I made a mistake.
Speaker 2:I'm like we talked about it, he goes I was in a NormaTech gear, so NormaTech, you know they provide us with recovery gear, you know they're awesome, I breeze. You know these companies that help us out, and so NormaTech is one of those companies and unfortunately and no one knows this yet, so hopefully you don't put this out right away we have to send their controller back to them, because he's like you know, he's in this chair and so he bends over to change the dial on it and when he comes up, he touches the cord and he kicks out of his hand so it turns on and off, but the little LED screen isn't working right.
Speaker 2:Tomorrow I'm going to do the phone call to our sponsor and say, hey, thanks a lot for loaning us. Two of us and I know last camp you loaned chairs to us and we sent them back to you and everything is good. Unfortunately, we've had naps that have, so you know. But here's the thing, though, at the end of the day, just what you just said, I mean, I could go on with so many stories like that. Where someone comes, they could have, hey this thing quit working yeah you tell me the whole story.
Speaker 2:Listen, I messed this up, you know, and I'm sorry, because now this chair is not going to work. Of course, they sent us two more, so we've got to make different cabins that we've got up here. Yep, yep, they didn't care of us, but still, it's one of those things where now we got to figure out what we're going to do with that too. But it always starts with this is what I did. I messed this up. Let's move on right.
Speaker 1:It drags the character out of you.
Speaker 2:Well, I think part of that. And again, this wrestling teach character and still it maybe not, but it definitely sends it to the surface. Yeah, it definitely comes out because of and of course, other sports do it too. It's just right. I haven't done those for 50 years. I've done this one for 50 years it makes a difference right To me and again I've got countless stories of things that just happened, like tonight.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's I don't know. It's why you love being around those people.
Speaker 1:Honestly, I don't think there'll be a moment where I'm out of the sport. I mean, you know, my son's 12, he's going on 13 in May. He's got four years till he's you know, five years. He'll be in eighth grade next year until he's out of high school. Honestly, I'm excited to see if I can't get in the coaching field. I have, you know, helping. Hopefully Josh Wagner and I at AWA can put together a girls team for AWA. That's kind of what we've been talking about and get something going with that.
Speaker 1:I'm a huge fan of women's sports. I think number one when you put it down flat, when you start watching women's sports in general. To me I'm sorry, even in soccer, but they put so much into it, watching just some of the heart, that they put into it just the physicality. I mean there's sometimes there's questions of me like if I played indoor soccer with some of these girls that went to universities, I wouldn't play against them on a grass field. They were hard, you know, they would beat on you and I was like, alright, I'm interested, I want to see what this is all about. I mean to me this women's thing and I can't talk about it enough. It's huge.
Speaker 2:And that's what draws people to it, right? I mean, as a parent, all you have to do is see your child do that one time, one time and you'd be sold.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter if it's wrestling or soccer. I mean, our two oldest girls were in. They were gymnasts and diaries. I used to go down there. You know I would drop them off at the gym at 6 pm, at 7 am in the morning and they were just a little bit teased and they, you know, I think one was a level 8 at the time, the other one was a level 5 or6.
Speaker 2:And so they go in the gym and I go to wrestling practice and by the time I get done, talking to the athletes and finishing out the workout and all that, seeing if anyone might want to be in the weight room. It's an M. But a lot of times I get back down there by 11, and they were going from 7 to 1 on Saturday and you go down there and sometimes you get out early. So sometimes I want to see something. I'd say it breaks over. I'm out of here. And you go down there and you watch them line up, one at a time and they just off the horse, they're on the bars and you just watch them just line up, fix the hands, go again and you well, it's all explosive movements, it's taking its toll out of them and they just keep going.
Speaker 2:And it's like I swear I would. I'd go back to wrestling practice and go. Don't talk to me about this right now. I'm not in the mood. You need to go again you need to get a rep.
Speaker 2:I just watched these little pixies do 15 reps of an explosive action and there wasn't even a change on their face, and I think that all sports have those moments that make a difference. But again, for my money, I kind of like to step out and take care of it yourself. And it's all your fault, that's right, I don't know. I hope that the people that tuned into you wasn't waiting to hear some good technical wrestling story or something, because it's not what it's about.
Speaker 1:No, no, that's not, you know. And the big thing too, like, especially with anything that you know, like either Joe or I are doing, we're always looking for ways not to just grow the sport, we're trying to grow as people too. So I mean I'm always like, I always tell everybody, I'm like a dad that knows nothing about it and I'm coming at you like I know absolutely nothing. So I mean you have a ton of stories, there's no doubt. So that means this is not going to be the last episode we have with you. So, especially with the knowledge in the background that you have in, with the knowledge comes, you know, great stories, but also growth.
Speaker 1:If I do wind up coaching somewhere, I can take anything that I've learned and talked to people. And you know I've done comedy for a good eight years, doing stand-up, and I've done who's line of design anyways, type comedy. But like paying attention to, I was a landscaper Going into doing comedy. I knew nothing about it. So I want to. If somebody wants to talk about going out of their comfort zone, I'll talk to him about it because I was dealing. I was dealing with guys that went to school for acting and television and radio and stuff like this. And they're like no, no, no, you got to do it this way. And the guy who ran, he's like hold on, no, no, no, don't change that. And I'm like why? What do you mean? I did it wrong. He's like no, because that's different. We like different, we don't want to see anything. That's, that's the same thing, you know, okay.
Speaker 2:I'm. I'm embarrassed right now because I have forgotten where I was because of what I was doing, but I was in LA at another one of these Course functions for inset or national coaches education program. Mm-hmm and we were there in LA and they took us down to one of the schools that's most famous for improv second city and that was well. There was one of those, and this is another one that okay that and I cannot remember the name of it.
Speaker 2:I'm embarrassed now that I'm tired, and what they get is they brought in and you'll like this because they brought in a soccer specialist Nice and all he does is he studies pk's, really, yes, that's what he does for a living. Oh, so he, he knows everything about pk's, yeah, and so you know, england had that huge drought for 28 years, whatever it was.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I had lost a series of eight, eight Contests in that time period at World Cup type levels of competitions Yep, eurocups, yep and they lost them on shootouts. So they were like oh and seven or oh and eight in those shootouts. Mm-hmm this guy, they get to their ninth opportunity and they win the dang game Because he looks at everything.
Speaker 2:Yep not just play some of the ball, not what, what. What they're doing with their, their feet going in Angle is where are they looking? Are they diverting the? If they played a mind game with the goalkeeper, have they? You know what are they doing? But one of the biggest things is we have noticed on film watching World Championship in wrestling. So in Breco, force parterre, right, no, you put down. So what the many of the Europeans do is that when they're called the referee, they'll walk away from the referee. And the referee had to like hey, what do you want? No, go, I want him down. And then they walk away from again and then they ask him to come back in a wrestling. They get the guy set and they walk in late. They take their time and they get down.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm they do the exact same thing in soccer and there's two ways of looking at this. Sometimes they place the ball down and they look and they just go backwards, yep, yep. They turn their back and walk away from it and make the officials say, hey, well, the whistle go. Hey, let's go. Mm-hmm the same thing, like on on a penalty kick or you know, off, off the angle or whatever it might be. Yeah but still the same thing. Well, what they're doing is when they walk away from it. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:They're clear their head of all the. This is the game. It's on the line right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:This is the you're overthinking it. For the last 14 minutes. There's only two minutes left in this game. This is everything in my life. Mm-hmm you do, it's probably gonna go back. So they clear it and then, when they turn their whole focus, then changes to how am I gonna strike this? Yeah, what am I gonna do to be successful? Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:And in their confidence goes this way, yeah, and they walk back up and they get the shot your life, yep, and so the same thing that we've been looking at, but we didn't have any identifiers to it. So I mean make sense again back to your here fan base. I mean, they tuned in and like, okay, this guy's supposed to be a technical guru, but I Do pride myself in looking at details.
Speaker 1:But they know.
Speaker 2:What it's about, right? Yep, so, but stuff like that Really excites me. We go out there to learn about this, so I'm enthralled with this for a whole day, right, yeah, this teaches us for like seven hours. Next day we go back we're supposed to hear him again, but when we get there, they've got these people that know comedy and they teach comedy. Yep so they put us in separate rooms in small groups. Yep, and all this, they taught us how to be comedians yeah scared.
Speaker 2:So now we get to the end of the course and the courses of two and a half year course right. Yeah pretty intense. Yeah and it is 19 Olympic level coaches from 17 different sports. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:But we all have things in common and we all have things that are different. Yeah and when we did our post interview stuff, more than half of us said the scariest thing that we did was that that one event. I don't even sing in the shower because I'm horrible. I know that I'm so bad that I wouldn't even sing to myself. Yeah still my wife. You know she's an announcer, she beautiful voice.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:She's a great announcer because she has passion for the sport. But she everybody, she's very clear and people can and she's got a passion to it and but I'm horrible, so I Draw this card. I'm supposed to sing.
Speaker 2:Yeah in front of coaches. Yeah, so when you say that, I get it. But but at the same point in time, the thing it's one of the things I told the instructors. At the end of the day, it's one of the things that truly helps me in the sport that we're in, because at the end of the day, the pressures that's on these young people anymore, is that such a younger age than it used to be? Yeah, and Everybody's got one of these.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Almost everybody has an internet account or four or five, right, and Anything that happens, it's bad. I mean, we used to mess up in school and no one on the earth knew it not a person. They make a single mistake in a match now that they should have won? Yep. Yeah in scrutinized. Yeah. I mean we. I Am so thankful I grew up in the age that I've grown up in.
Speaker 1:I can't even tell you how happy I am.
Speaker 2:So Look at how we train athletes now and how good they are, but all of a sudden they're supposed to have the qualities of Jordan burrows, like he said tonight. No, when other people ramp up, I calm down. Yeah because I know, I know the outcome of this stuff. I'm going to be okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I've done all of this training, but not just. I mean mentally, physically, emotionally. He started all in DT2. I mean all of them on the car.
Speaker 1:Tonight was still yeah, they're great matches, I mean one of the most phenomenal athletes.
Speaker 2:But even his phenomenal athlete, even a better human right totally. Right. So I mean, there's so many great things about our sport, and this is one of the things we talk all the time about, because it draws those kinds of people here, sure. So I don't want to beat the drum over and over again, but that's the drum. Yeah but hey, if I'm going to really help that Athlete at the right moment, Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Know when the right moment is. It might be in a practice, it might be in a match, but in order to do that, one of the things we've got to recognize is how fearful what we do is. Yeah then, and so that that whole weekend, what I thought was the best part of it was learning about Technical ability, of this answer that we've been looking for yeah and all of a sudden, right here in front of us, and you know this guy's, he's been paid by everybody, real Madrid, I mean yeah.
Speaker 2:Manchester United. I mean, everybody's hired this guy. Yeah he's that good. But then the next day where people that no one will ever hear about because they're either ex comedians that did or didn't make it Doesn't matter Mm-hmm. Now they're teaching the next. But, like you said, there's there's some formalized training, but formalized training in stand-up comedy doesn't look like any other formalized training.
Speaker 1:Absolutely not, absolutely not in when I, when I started doing it, I I did an audition and you know I did what I had to do and I had. You know that one of the guys that that ran the place was kind of like he goes, what do you do again? And I said, well, I, I'm a landscaper, I just my buddy, noah he's. I happened to catch him coming out of his apartment and I was walking my lab at the time and he said, hey, because we talked about movies, my wife history major, so you and her would get along extremely well, her and I, when she, when she waitress the the friend, actually was a bartender, we would recite movie lines constantly, just comedy movie lines all the time. So he saw me walking. He was like Brad, come here, I got something for you got to do this. And I was like what is it? And he goes well, we're gonna start a comedy club and it we still, we still do it. It's online once in a while. But I said okay, I'll check it out, I'll come and check it out. And I did it and that, oh, the co-owner of the place is just like you do what again?
Speaker 1:And I said I just do landscaping. I said you know I've done sports and stuff. I said, but I like making people laugh, I like entertaining people and I like talking to people. That's why this is this is easy. I like to kind of, I like that to flow or whatever it is, and he's like he's. I don't think I've ever seen anybody that, ever since I've been in college, that's able to just jump in and do something especially like this. And I said there's a lot of athletes in the world that do the same thing. I said I'm just not like that anymore. I said but if this is one of those things, I said I'm willing to do it night. We had a blast. I did it for two or three years straight and then, you know, my, my son got older and wrestling kind of took over. But it's one of those things where now you know I think about and I even tell you know again, I tell Liam there are so many other things that you need to worry about other than now going out and just losing. Don't worry about loss. And he's getting there and kids his age Because, like you're talking about, you see on the internet all these high-level athletes competing and these kids and Unfortunately the parents feel that their kids need to get to that level, they don't let them grow and develop.
Speaker 1:We have parents that are cutting their kids way too much weight and now I I'm seeing the progress of that now, and I shouldn't say progress, I'm seeing the results of that now with some of the kids that we've come up with. They were cutting for so long because they were worried about a track wrestling profile and their scores on it and it's like Now what? Now your kid can't handle the weight that he's wrestling anymore and that that brings up attrition. You know, like so many kids, they they were in the sport doing really well and if they were just allowed to just develop and grow, do you notice that in in what you guys do at your program? Do you are you like? You know he would be great, but God, he's got a lot of, he's got a lot of weight training. He's got, he's got a bulk up. I mean what do you notice? A lot of like and as much. We don't want to talk about it, but the negatives.
Speaker 2:Well, absolutely. I mean. First of all, there's so many stories I could give on this. It's, it's crazy. It is again For all that we've talked about for an hour or so. That's great about our sport. Yep, that right there. That was really bad. Mm-hmm. Especially the way that we did it in the 80s. Oh really bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm good at it now and say I'm this, I'm the size and I am now, but I rested one 14. Okay and so I went from 155 to one 14 and you can't. You can't lose almost a third of your body, yeah, and in any way that you're, but Everyone is doing it and everyone back then was doing it. Yeah, then we were all in the same boat.
Speaker 1:It eels underperforming. Yeah, it's about one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I have athletes now that age group and I know that. You know, a couple years ago we were at worlds and you know people wanted to use plastics and I was like Against USA wrestling and we're not gonna do that. Yeah. Like well, how am I gonna make weight? I go hold on, I don't know. But I promise you I can get you down in a different way. But it's gonna be a lot more work than you're used to, because you're used to throwing on something. Yep.
Speaker 2:Working really, really hard for a short period time, almost draining yourself, and then Sitting down and letting it soak or whatever, and letting it just suit to the work for you Yep. I'm full. Okay, that's not how we're gonna get it done. Mm-hmm but you still got to learn a lesson, and what we never want to learn is that the worst lesson that we could ever learn and that is someone dropped down and going to heat exhaustion or stroke right, because we that's the scariest thing, because you can't stop that train right right and for the foreign country?
Speaker 2:Oh, come on, I mean there's then there's no way, and so it's stuff like that. That's the most extreme version of it. But you know, we do things in America and we get away with it because we're Americans and we've got the ability to rehydrate all these things. We can.
Speaker 2:Again, part of wrestling just says that, guys, my size, I can whip him. No, and because of that as a wrestler it's like I'll take that on. I mean, just like you, you saying before me, I've never done it, but I can do it. Yeah, when they brought me in the office that day and told me I was gonna be the soccer coach you know, gary, next year You're not gonna, you're gonna coach a different football I was like I'm gonna what? Yeah, because we've got an opening in soccer and we need you to do it. I was like, well, I can be your assistant, I can be someone's assistant. I'm really good at conditioning and weightlifting and all that. I can help out the program, sure. And then two weeks before we're supposed to start, they call me back and go. We didn't hire anybody else, so you're it. It's like, oh no, you know that's against. The kids need better than me. But I got so lucky that I knew I knew wrestling really deeply. Yep.
Speaker 2:You know. I said, you know what I can fix this. Mm-hmm so at the end of the day and I didn't, and I know soccer, but I got so lucky that every Monday night I got to go over and eat black beans and rice, cuban style, nice. The man that I got to learn from was a Cuban national player and he knew the game.
Speaker 1:They know the game, those guys know the game for sure.
Speaker 2:And then on a Wednesday, I went over to another guy's house. He was he was a big fan of the English Premier League, had all the video on it. Yes, at the end of the day, they taught me a sport that I didn't know, and I don't profess to know it today, but I Want a lot of game, hey, and like you said, I think a lot of times it just takes the determination.
Speaker 1:I mean you can now with the information. We have it our fingers now. I mean, if you can't figure it out, I'm sorry, but I think you put your head in the hole and you're not doing the job that you need to do. You know, and I think I come to the point now, especially with with this sport, because of, like you said, where we come from, the kids nowadays it's, it's. It's a whole different world, it's a whole different sport.
Speaker 1:I think even Greco was grown to that point where it's not, it's not your mom and dad's Greco anymore, it is high intensity, it's, it's high flying. I mean that's. That's why I think someone, someone complained the other day about the International styles because they go so quick, because a kid could be eliminated from a tournament in five minutes. Well, that's a good thing. I think that breeds the competition and the drive to be better. So, instead of going out in the mat and just you know, oh, I'm gonna try Greco and freestyle today. If the kid really likes it, it's gonna drive him to last Four or five minutes, six minutes. You know that the whole point is to not go out there and get beaten 30 seconds. If you do, you do it happens. I mean, we just watched some cards where it could have happened, but those they've been practicing and put the time and they know that well, I can, I'm gonna battle this out, I'm not just gonna go like, oh, I tried. They actually put the time and effort into it to get better at it and I think now that we start to grow with with Greco, and it's growing, I think if people just paid attention to what the reality of it is instead of what they, what they think it should be, a Lot of people have ideas and a lot of people have some good ideas.
Speaker 1:But at the same point, though, too, I think we get lost in the newness of everything and what it's really about. It's okay. So a kid got beaten 30 seconds. Now, if he's, if he has a good background and has good support systems, like a lot of us have in sports, that coach or that parents gonna tell them you can last longer than that, and that's the whole point. You know you you need to fight for your place on the mat, not just to go out there, just to be on the mat. But if you don't like getting beaten 30 seconds, don't get beaten 30 seconds.
Speaker 2:I you know you're so right. I mean, as a high school coach I really had this affinity about getting pinned, don't get pinned, and I got pinned once in high school. I got pinned once internationally and I got pinned once in college.
Speaker 2:Yep and I know it's a horrible story, but I don't. I wasn't pinned in college, but the referee pinned me and I Got up. It was a college tournament, second round, and I got up and I was like I was pinned and he looked right at me said I saved your life, I was getting beat. Remember this is before technical falls right, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'm getting beat 16 to 2. And the beating is actually a little worse than 16 to 2. So yeah, at the end of the day you're right, but I didn't Now good or bad. I never had a wrestle off in my career. Sure, now I wrestled off, but I didn't conduct a wrestle off. Sure, I said other coaches pick their teams, soccer coaches, you know, Correct For wrestling.
Speaker 2:I felt in the safety of the athletes it was better that I chose the team, because then I didn't have someone say well, I'm going to go down three weights because I can wrestle this way. No, no, no. What is best for you and our program is this yeah, well, you accept it, and if they did, then it's fine. When I had athletes move away from our program, but I had athletes move to it too, so it's OK, yeah, but everybody has their own choice. So those kinds of things like that I just think that you're so right. I mean, if you don't want to be beaten badly in public and everybody see it, sorry.
Speaker 1:Life goes on.
Speaker 2:So anyway, I just think that if you don't want that, then, like you said, you'll train differently. Yep. And our high school teams. We said you don't get pinned, you just don't. And if you get thrown on your back, then figure a way to not get pinned. And sometimes it means not to get off your back, because there's a lot of times you can't get off your back.
Speaker 1:Right, right.
Speaker 2:Yep, because if you get pinned, if you faint the fall and you hope that time is not that far away that's what's going to save you. But you're not laying down Right. And you know, I met Fargo two years ago, three years ago now, and I'm standing next to a college coach and he is looking down three maps at an athlete that he's seriously looking at, I mean, has had a lot of communication with. Yep.
Speaker 2:And this young person just laid down. They just shut down and laid down. He got his phone at that moment and went swipe and that was it. And it was like, and I looked and I thought you know, at the end of the day now what I hope happened at some point. That was an emotional response. I hope at some point there was another conversation and maybe I don't know what could have happened. It didn't look like anything really happened.
Speaker 2:And the way he got up and the way he walked off did not appear that there was anything physically injured on here, yep, and so and the college coach said to me that's not physical. No. And I can't accept that and I won't bring that to my program and walked away.
Speaker 1:Wholeheartedly agree.
Speaker 2:OK.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And that's a very harsh standard. But you know what? That's our standard.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:We're wrestling in our standard, and so I just, you know I don't go against that, I kind of praise it in a way. Yeah. And because, unfortunately or fortunately, that's what reality is. It is and we're wrestling. There's a very high standard and if you choose to wrestle at a higher standard, not everybody gets to wrestle in college, especially at a major division one university.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Correct, and they know their room. And they know their room is so compacted if you do that in this situation. You'll do that a lot of times in that room because they'll make you do that Correct, and so it's. You know it's again. It's another part of our sport. I'm just going to ask you, brent, yeah, do you know Greg Warren?
Speaker 1:Man does that sound familiar? I don't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, if you get a chance, you're going to love this yeah. I hope I give you something you've given me tonight. But Greg Warren he wrestled at Missouri, ok. Started his career at West Point and he is a big time comedian OK, really. And yeah, and I think you're going to love about him is most of his jokes are about wrestling.
Speaker 1:I'm going to. As a matter of fact, I'm going to while we're talking. I'm going to look that up.
Speaker 2:And the very first one that you want to look up is one star wonder, but he's got so many great stories and he is so funny, right. Yeah. So we're good friends and so he agrees one time to come into the high school that I'm working at and he's going to come in as a guest clinician.
Speaker 1:OK, yep.
Speaker 2:Because he's a very accomplished wrestler.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But he is so unbelievably funny and after you listen to him a little bit, you shoot me back a message and tell me how much you like, because I think you're alive.
Speaker 1:I just pulled him up, so I got YouTube sitting up with him before we get done, because I'm already looking at it and I think I've seen a couple of his things before, but I haven't watched the whole thing. That's awesome. I love the fact. And that's another thing about the sport. It's funny how OK like Jim Jordan, politician, came up. He's a resilient dude. There are a lot of people that don't like him Because of him being honest with himself and whatever it is and I can respect that avenue.
Speaker 1:Being able to get up and get up on a stage in front of whether you're doing it in front of 40 people or it's 400 people or it's four people, it's nerve-wracking. I did stand up shows where there are two people in the crowd. That's worse than 500. Because with at least 500 people, you know you're going to get someone laughing at you. With two people, you might not get anything. As a matter of fact, you might have zero people by the time you're done with a 15-minute set. So that's going to be awesome.
Speaker 1:The other thing, too, with wrestling and how we tie things all together with wrestling. Like you said, family and to me. I've played soccer for so long that I can honestly say that even in the soccer community the family isn't as tight as what wrestling is as far as closeness and, like I said once, you get into that elite kind of I don't know as far as elite, but you get into a small group of people in this world that we're in with wrestling and it's tighter and tighter and tighter. I mean how many opportunities. I mean look at where you're at and look at where you've come from and the stepping stones you've been through to get to where you're at. What was the most challenging portion of what got you to where you are now? What challenged you the most?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I think honestly that that's my best friend, was number one. I think that there's nothing in my past that you know. He perished the day after Christmas 1980. Now, as you think about that, and then tonight I go to speak about it and I'm instantly emotional again and it never dulls and I don't ever want to dull Right right. It's that moment that I got to be a part of something that is completely unique in any part of our lives. And you know, at our last camp we were coming up to camp and the day I left for camp for in December camp, coming up here for 10 days, I lost my brother, and so you've got athletes waiting.
Speaker 2:I know that many people look at them and go. That's family, Figure it out. Yeah. Deal. But at the same point in time wrestling becomes family and wrestling becomes that at the end of the day you'd said at the very start of this thing about sometimes it's a decision we make not to do treatment right.
Speaker 1:Correct.
Speaker 2:And that was the case with my brother. My brother had brain cancer and it was stage four and they told us right up front there was nothing. There was nothing. So at the end of the day it flipped it totally different where it was this moment of now. You don't want him to suffer, so it's a totally different setting. And yet, whether my brother or Charles, it's the same outcome. Now it's not the same in my book, because Charles was 20 years old, matt Brick was nine. Yeah, you know what I mean. I've been so blessed. I think I've lived the life of 10 men.
Speaker 1:They're right.
Speaker 2:I'm a kid from Missouri that's been literally around the world. Last year I actually circumvented the world in two and a half weeks. I started in Colorado Springs, I flew east to do a clinic and I flew from there. I went to Rome and, of course then the virus hit Rome and no one knew what was going on.
Speaker 2:I just knew everybody was getting sick and it was bad. And then I flew from Rome to Pongo Pongo, but I flew to South Korea where I spent nine hours in an airport where 80% of the flights were coming out Wuhan, so he was chasing me right. And then I flew back from Pongo Pongo to Honolulu, honolulu to Seattle, and I flew into Seattle when Seattle got hit, and then one of the first cities that really got hit is the city.
Speaker 2:So then I flew back to Kansas City, so I literally I had an opportunity to go around the world, and what your wife does I got to sit in the Sistine Chapel for an hour and 15 minutes and stare up at something that I'd wanted to see all of my life, and you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't.
Speaker 2:Whatever I had to do to get to here and the opportunities that I have because of the sport and then, even more important than any of that, I mean I'm in the Winter Palace in Russia getting to look at a picture, a painting that was shot seven times, about a hundred years and 13 months, 100 years and 11 months when it actually happened, when the Romanos were taken over. And look at that and say I had that picture in my classroom for 14 years Picture. I took a picture of it almost the third day.
Speaker 1:They were staring at it.
Speaker 2:They were standing in front of it and go, wow, I'm here. So I mean I don't know. I mean I'm lucky. I've been lucky all my life and I found a way not to make four Olympic teams, but I am still very lucky. I went 16 years pretty hard and I missed 80, 84, 88, 92. But, through all that. At the end of the day I've got friends that I took on during that time period that still coach with me now, and one of them, brandon Paulson. He wins a silver medal in 96.
Speaker 1:Just watch the podcast he did with him too, Yep.
Speaker 2:He's a youngster in 92, and I'm the old guy and I'm at 31. Yeah. You look at that and go OK, but what a great coach great human and I had the opportunity to interview him recently on a segment we did for wrestling. I saw that I had to do a 35, 40 minute deal on him. What an honor, right, yep, and someone that I personally know what's crazy about it. We share the same birthday.
Speaker 1:Oh really.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Nice. So yeah, Nice.
Speaker 2:But I don't know how to answer your because the woman that I get to be with is, I think, mostly because of that's how we met. She was a trainer and I was a coach. Really and she trained her in another school and then I got her to come over to my school. Yeah, but I mean, it's just things like that, that.
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 2:I, you know, we again. I think that wrestling molds us. Yep. And, like you said, it creates family at a level, because and I think that, because, at the end of the day, another big project we're working on right now up here in campus, we're working on building a team behind the team as we get our Olympic team set. Nice, I think being ready to go, it's behind them and having like six people.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Community leaders, former Crackler greats. Yeah, they're all standing right behind them. That everybody is communicating directly with that athlete.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:If you could put, if you could put 50 people behind an athlete, even though you're sitting them out one at a time, those 50 are helping mold that person, yeah. And so that's what I think the family has to do for a wrestler. All right, I had a college buddy of mine that is a judge now, a big kind of judge. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:His family during wrestling season. They put locks on their kitchen cabinets. So they put three. They took three cabinets, they put locks on them. Yeah, it's a radical thing to do, but the family used a key to get food out, so everybody in the family was pretty committed. Right, right, right right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Probably because they didn't trust trust and commitment. Again, they didn't trust their son.
Speaker 1:Correct.
Speaker 2:But still, at the end of the day, that's a pretty neat, you know what I mean yeah, it shows that the whole wrestling, the whole family wrestling. Yep, yep. It doesn't take much to watch a mom up there.
Speaker 2:You know she's wrestling the match while it's going on, right right, and you're going to see this with Greg Warren. But he's got this one deal where this stick, where he says he goes. I walked in and my dad is watching wrestling on BHS it's my matches and I walked past him to go in the house late at night and he looks at it and he goes Greg, Greg, stop, greg, look at this. You stopped wrestling right here, dad. I stopped wrestling 16 years ago. That's good stuff.
Speaker 1:I didn't want to video you. That's good stuff. Well, the first one that comes up, and it's funny, because what does it say? Running isn't for old people? That's his full special. There you go. That one I'm probably going to watch right now. I'm going to be on like a rabbit hole all night. I'm just watching this guy, I'm sorry. No, it's OK.
Speaker 2:But yeah, my wife Dorothy called her Dord, so he says he says my friend Dord just recently ran a hack marathon and I'm so lazy I said congrats, she runs a hack marathon. And I can't even finish a word.
Speaker 1:Can't even type a whole word. Nope, nope, exactly.
Speaker 2:He is hilarious, you'll love it. So, like I said, I don't know if I have a good answer for your original question. Sure, I don't know it because I think that wrestling is one of those things that you have to pass all of these tests incrementally, I mean just like we're talking about. I mean, unfortunately, some of these 14, 15-year-old athletes that's got this amazing profile right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:If all of a sudden, now they can't lose, they're not supposed to lose. I mean come on, I mean we've got one wrestler that's undefeated at division one level. I mean one One, and now that he's a coach he's just as amazing doing that as he was doing this other.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so I don't know that we to judge someone that harsh at 14 scares me, because I know how bad I didn't know anything at 14. Yeah, and I certainly wasn't as good as these athletes are, but what I hope for them, though, what I hope that they have the opportunity to have the experience that I've been afforded in our sport, right, yep, I mean, it's been a lifetime. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm lucky enough that I've stayed around long enough that I'm fully immersed in it. I mean, I had a year where I actually closed out my high school coaching career by getting to sit in the corner of a state championship team.
Speaker 1:Nice and watch them perform.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then I get to go to all four world championships as a coach that later on that year and I got to officiate the NCAA finals, both division one and two and the big 10 championships. Yeah. That's one year of my life. Yeah. That's not to mention the other great things that happened that year family wise or whatever. But rest of the year, I mean one year.
Speaker 1:One year.
Speaker 2:It's ridiculous that you get to do something like that Well and get to work the national finals division one at 125 with my lifelong best friend no, colin, I mean, I don't know how you get this lucky.
Speaker 1:Time and dedication you know and you talk about with these kids nowadays and like, obviously we didn't have it the way that they have it. But you know, like a kid that just can't lose and doesn't appreciate, like what we're talking about, the good things that come along, like the friends you make and the dual teams, the team environment and the kids that they get to meet. You know I always explain to Liam this way I watched myself evolve as a parent, coming up with a wrestler. You know, when he was young we were to the point where if he went to a tournament and didn't take first this we're talking little, we're talking six, seven, eight, little before things really mattered. But he would take first place at a lot of tournaments and we're to the point that if he didn't take first, something was off, he wasn't giving his full effort. So in hindsight, yes, we were looking at it as if you're not taking first, you're doing something wrong. But we also were always kind of in the push of we know something's up in your head, You're not doing it. But these kids now get to the point where if they lose they lose their mind. But I remind Liam, how do you eat an elephant or a whale, One piece at a time. But I eat an elephant, you know if you got. He wants to go to the Olympics, he wants to win an NCAA championship. He wants to do these things. And I look at him with the goals that he has.
Speaker 1:And I said you can't always be staring at these huge ones. You have to take these little ones first. Then you have to pass these tests. You can't pass an SAT without studying beforehand and having knowledge before that. And I said it all goes hand in hand. You have to break it down.
Speaker 1:And I said you have to fractionalize your athletic life. And, as much as it sounds like, how do I do that Every day? Every day, Write down notes. I didn't finish a single leg properly or I didn't have the correct tie up, Got to work on it. When you get it done, cross it off. When you get this one done, cross it off. I think a lot of students also lose sight of the progress that they can make. Coaches can make the same progress, just like I did coming up with Liam, seeing that it doesn't matter In the long run it does. I mean, when you have a program and you're trying to build a program, that stuff does matter. But at the end of the day, if they're making the progress that they need to make, as long as it's in line with the timeline they have, it's going to happen.
Speaker 2:Right, you know. So again, that's a scary thought where you're getting that dogfight match and that's so you know. You're down in points and all of a sudden the clock becomes your enemy. Yep. And the deal that we do with wrestling is there's a tremendous amount of preparation for the moment that you can overcome to create a win out of what should be a loss.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And each of these are all lessons that at some point the great wrestlers, they learn them. Yep. You know you were talking about nutrition earlier. I can't tell you how many times I would go into officiate and after the duel was over I already called it. I'm heading out to my car and an athlete that I had been able to coach on a world team or something like that, or former athlete, they'd say coach and I'd stop. I'd say hey, you are having a great year this year. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Goodness, what are you? You just won the last 16, 17 matches in a row, right? Mm-hmm, he goes. I'm on a pretty good role. I said what's doing it, what's doing it. He said and they would almost always say I finally got my nutrition in check. You know, yeah, and I would call that the fifth thing. It's that there's kids that can get into a weight room and really push hard enough to do squats.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And we all know that's very painful stuff. Yep.
Speaker 2:And it takes a long time and maybe even hamstring work is even worse than that. I don't know. But leg days, leg days are hard, and to be able to go in and do that in the middle of a hot summer when you're. I always say that Olympians are different than the rest of us mortals Because they will train on average six and a half years to get whatever. And I don't mean six and a half years, I mean six and a half years at the level that they need to for the Olympics.
Speaker 1:Sure Yep, yep Makes sense.
Speaker 2:And it might be a 15-year cycle, Like all their blood. At the end of the day, the six years like Liam, I mean, at some point he graduate, goes to college Somewhere in there, coming out of college on average three and a half years to get what you really want to get to. Yep, yep. And there's people that don't have to follow. That we know that. Right.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:But directly we can train, but we'll never get there Right, and it takes talent, character, skill, all of those. You have to have everything, yep, and so I really do. I think that it's just one of those things. That's the nature of the mountain that they chose to climb how high it is Agreed. And to the athletes they're only getting half with the mountain. They still did a lot of climbing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, definitely. Well, you've been gracious enough to put about two hours of time in with me. I appreciate it. I'm humbled to be able to hear stories and you allowing me to hear the things that you've been through. This is by no means over. We're going to rewind because there's a lot more to talk about. I know you've got stories. I've got questions still and more keep popping into my head. My brain never stops working. So I want to extend out another invitation. We'll figure out another time and date, but again, from girl wrestling and myself, we appreciate you and everything that you're doing and having you around with this sport right now and the direction it's going in.
Speaker 1:I'm a big fan of Greco. I'm watching every minute that I can. I mean, I'm like you. I sit here and I'll watch. We watch these cards that we have, but then I wind up watching Russians and I wind up watching Estonians and it's a rabbit hole, but I love it. It's the best rabbit hole I've ever been in. So we're going to talk again, but we're going to end it right now. It's laid out by you. It's only 841 by me. So it's what? 1041 by you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:You got to go. I got a little work to do down tonight. You got to go, so I'm going to get out of your hair Again, much appreciated. This is the end of episode four. We've got Coach Gary Mayab Again. Thanks for your time, buddy. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:We appreciate you and grow wrestling and Joe and you and I hope that Liam and Jack and all the young guys grow up Right yeah, but by what you guys are doing, you're setting a base that will be better for them.
Speaker 1:Right, right.
Speaker 2:That's what we've got to get to, so I can't thank you enough. I appreciate you guys.
Speaker 1:Not a problem, all right, we'll talk to you soon.