In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the legendary wrestler, Hall of Fame inductee, and all-around legend joins the show to talk about his life, his career, and the sport of wrestling. He also talks about the recent death of an Iranian wrestler who was killed in a peaceful protest, and what it means to be a national hero in a country where wrestling is considered a controversial sport. Joe also discusses his favorite part of being a wrestler, and why he thinks it's important to have a strong sense of community in the sport, even in a world where there are so many people who don't see wrestling the way he does, and how important it is to have respect for the athletes who make it what it is. Joe also shares some of his favorite memories of growing up in his hometown of Waterloo, Iowa, and reminisces about his time as a professional wrestler in the late 60s and early 70s, and his love for the sport he grew up watching on the World Championship Wrestling Network, The Tonight Show with Jay Lencio. And, of course, he talks about his favorite thing to do in the world, which is wrestling! And he does it all while looking out at the stars of the wrestling world. Joe Rogans Experience, all day, all day. Check it out! Subscribe to the show and tell me what you think! and what you thought of it on the pod! on iTunes! Thanks for listening and Don't Tell a Friend of the Show: or the podcast? Timestamps: 8:00 - What's your favorite wrestler? 9:30 - What do you think of a wrestler you'd like to see on the next episode? 11:15 - What would you want to see him do next? 13:00 16:40 - Who's the best wrestler you're watching the most? 17:00 | What does your favorite sport? 18:30 | What's the most important thing you're most passionate about? 19:40 | Who's your biggest rival? 22:00 -- What are you looking forward to watching wrestling? 26:30 -- What do they're you're looking for? 27:40 -- How does he think of the sport you're going to be the most beautiful thing? 29:10 -- How do you feel about it? 32:00-- Is he a hero?
00:01:39.000It might irritate my family a little bit once in a while, but they love the sport too, so they got to expect some of this stuff.
00:01:45.000Well, coming from a guy that has accomplished what you've accomplished and has become this legendary feature in the sport, it comes with the territory.
00:01:56.000I mean, you're a beloved character in the sport of wrestling, to the point where I told people that you were going to be on my podcast and their eyebrows raise up.
00:02:05.000Well, I'm glad you said that because every time I tell somebody, their eyebrows do the same when I'm going on this show.
00:02:12.000And so, of course, I knew about this show, but I had to do a lot of homework just to see, wow, it's pretty big.
00:02:19.000So I'm excited to be here because I know the effect it can have, not just on me because...
00:02:25.000But on the sport, and I love the sport.
00:02:29.000My hometown of Waterloo, that's why I got started in it because it was just dominating wrestling at the time.
00:02:35.000And you know what's funny is that just from a world situation, Sport brings people together.
00:02:43.000And, you know, it's like, who better than a sport with Russia or Iran or North Korea?
00:02:51.000Because, you know, it's like, or Turkey, you know, they just, you know, especially the first two, you know, they just, we're always in conflict, it seems like, with them.
00:03:01.000But when it comes to wrestling, we have something in common.
00:03:04.000And, you We usually end up losing to both Russia and Iran, but sometimes we beat them too.
00:03:10.000We are well known for good wrestling and that has helped, I think, the country be better off.
00:03:17.000I had Jordan Burroughs on and he was describing to me what it's like to wrestle in Iran and how massive the sport is over there and he's a giant star over there and he's like and people are so friendly and so so inviting and so accepting and just so happy to see great wrestling and just wrestling is just an enormous sport over there and immensely popular Well,
00:03:39.000when I won the Olympics in 1972, their most popular athlete was the guy in my weight class, the Iranian.
00:03:50.000I'd been in the Worlds a year before, but before that he had two Olympic titles and every world title in between.
00:03:58.000And all of a sudden he became so popular that the government was a little concerned about him, that the people were more appreciative of him than the government.
00:04:08.000And so when he went to the Munich Olympics, even though he had lost the year before, Because I was there and I won the weight class.
00:04:19.000We didn't get to wrestle, but he was there and representing Iran in 72. And he won his first match by about...
00:04:26.00015 points, but he pulled out of the Olympics, and he ended up going to the United States because of his being so popular that he was scared they might do something to him at the government level.
00:04:40.000I'm sure you're aware of what happened recently with the wrestler who was killed, the Iranian wrestler who was killed because he was involved in a peaceful protest, and they made an example out of him.
00:04:51.000Yeah, and they claimed that he killed somebody, but, you know, You can claim whatever you want to satisfy the people, but chances are he didn't.
00:05:01.000It seemed like what they were doing was just making sure that people were scared.
00:05:05.000If they can kill a man who's so beloved and a national hero, they can kill anybody.
00:05:11.000Yeah, and the Iranian that came here lives still here in the United States.
00:05:20.000Wrestling, to me, is one of the most important sports because it's one of the very few sports that doesn't have a real...
00:05:28.000I mean, there's obviously WWE wrestling and a lot of guys go from wrestling into MMA, but there's not a real professional venue.
00:05:37.000I mean, Jordan Burroughs does some legit wrestling, actual amateur-style wrestling, and gets paid for matches and stuff now, and has sponsorships and the like.
00:05:47.000And I'm very happy that he gets recognized and some other wrestlers get recognized, but it's not like basketball.
00:05:53.000It's not like any other sport where you have Olympic champions go on boxing and become huge stars at a professional level.
00:06:05.000It's one of the few sports where the people that participate in it, they take pride in the fact that they work in silence.
00:06:13.000They take pride in the fact that they grind.
00:06:16.000They take pride in the fact that they are miserable, that their training is unbelievably intense, and that it's so much more intense than most sports.
00:06:25.000If you had to compare what an elite baseball player does, you're smiling, right?
00:06:34.000No, but I appreciate all the sports because I have so many grandkids and a lot of their dads are even baseball players, football players, and even coaches at that level.
00:06:44.000So, you know, it's pretty interesting because one of the baseball coaches for my local, where I live in Iowa City, he's got a son named Gable, actually, and he's first team All-State in baseball.
00:06:58.000But when he was back in college, he was dating my daughter and he came to our wrestling practice.
00:07:04.000And we were just doing a running practice that morning, early morning, and we were doing a little less than quarter-mile runs, and I'd give him a little time in between, of course, but he just wanted to try out what we were doing to see how it compared to how he trained that way.
00:07:25.000They train different ways, but he made one really good lap, and he stayed right with the group, right in there.
00:07:32.000I think he claims he might have made another one.
00:07:35.000I don't know if it was the second or the third, but we were going to do eight.
00:07:39.000And so I think by the second or the third, he was in a full squat and he couldn't.
00:07:43.000I mean, his legs just went out on him and he couldn't do it.
00:07:46.000And I tell you, I think it showed appreciation from him right away from that point of view.
00:07:54.000Pretty interesting that you bring that up.
00:07:56.000I don't think there's any sport like it, in terms of the amount of effort that's required, and also the margin of fitness and of technique required for victory.
00:08:06.000At the elite level, there's so many great wrestlers, both on the national level and the international level.
00:08:13.000That it really requires this insane level of dedication to rise to the top.
00:08:19.000Well you mentioned Jordan Burles and you know Jordan Burles was a good wrestler in high school and he was a good wrestler in college.
00:08:25.000He became a great wrestler at the end of college but I shouldn't even say great because You have another level, and that's that world and Olympic level.
00:08:34.000I don't think he really realized his talent and abilities.
00:08:38.000A lot of it's just because it is a tough sport and that every practice is somewhat of a grind and everything that you do.
00:08:45.000But if you stick with it long enough, the mind can develop as well.
00:08:55.000Developed to where he felt he was a great wrestler, instead of just, he's a good wrestler, but this other guy is good and it's going to be a tough match.
00:09:03.000But he stayed in it long enough, worked at it hard enough, where he was able to develop beyond the tools that you need for being on the mat, just technically or strategically.
00:09:16.000So once he got that mind, that made the big difference.
00:09:19.000And that's what carries him through right now.
00:09:21.000And again, it's like right now, he's in a big battle to make the Olympic team, which is going to happen here shortly.
00:09:30.000Because we eliminated some of the weight classes.
00:09:33.000See, people don't understand in our sport.
00:09:36.000Because they say, well, they don't do it in baseball, they don't do it in football, people weigh 100 pounds, people weigh 200 pounds, they're on the same team, and you're competing against them.
00:09:44.000But in a wrestling match, a few pounds makes a difference when you're at that high level of excellence.
00:09:55.000You know, if you understand physics pretty well and positioning, then you can probably be a better wrestler just because of the amount of weight and skill that you have within your own positions.
00:10:07.000And so, for me, it was like I could wrestle anybody.
00:10:11.000I wrestled 150 pounds at the World's and Olympic Games.
00:10:14.000And I could wrestle the heavyweight who weighed 450. And they go, why could you wrestle him?
00:10:19.000I said, because I knew the leverage and I knew the skills and the strategy.
00:10:25.000And because of that, it gave me the opportunity to feel heavier than him.
00:10:30.000And I think that's what a lot of people said.
00:10:32.000They say, you don't look that heavy, but when I wrestled you, you felt like so heavy.
00:10:36.000I said, well, it's because I knew my positions.
00:10:39.000So, you know, that's where like Jordan Burroughs is now.
00:10:42.000He's so much better, but not just in his skills from on the mat.
00:10:48.000It's a lot in his brains that he knows he's good.
00:10:51.000He's had a lot of practices where he's done well.
00:11:34.000It's one of these things that when you have that much success, it works.
00:11:37.000That's where I feel Jordan Burroughs is developed to.
00:11:39.000Like I said, he's got only six weight classes as compared to eight or nine or ten, what we normally used to have.
00:11:45.000He's got a world champion coming down named Dake that will challenge him at his weight.
00:11:53.000They're both Highly credentialed and so that's gonna be a big match coming up here probably pretty soon.
00:12:00.000Mental toughness is one of the most important aspects of wrestling.
00:12:05.000Obviously technique and fitness are huge but mental toughness is what defines wrestlers in my opinion because when you see successful wrestlers in the UFC in particular There's no one like them.
00:12:19.000When they come over to MMA, you recognize there's something special about them as athletes.
00:12:27.000And I think that it comes from the fact that wrestling is so difficult.
00:13:18.000Lose with dignity, but damn it, don't lose!
00:13:23.000And he put those last two lines together real quick, so you kind of had to listen to him.
00:13:28.000But it was pretty neat because you win with humility, you lose with dignity, but damn it, don't lose.
00:13:34.000And so, you know, that was my first major coach.
00:13:39.000That really taught me a lot of those type of principles.
00:13:42.000But before that, I was a kid that was at the YMCA when I was five, six years old.
00:13:47.000And basically the reason why I was there because, you know, you want to learn how to swim because if you're an outdoors guy and you want to be around water and you want to You want to make sure you know how your kids swim, so my mom and dad got me into the YMCA, but what they got me into the YMCA really for was they needed help.
00:14:03.000My dad was a full-time worker, and my mom, she stayed at home a lot, but she also helped my dad.
00:14:09.000He had an office at home, but I was a little hellion.
00:14:12.000And they needed me to learn how to swim, but they also needed me to learn how to be a little bit sociable.
00:14:17.000They needed me to learn how to get along with kids.
00:14:22.000My first job was at the YMCA. I actually competed.
00:14:26.000My first sport competitively was, besides practicing, was swimming.
00:14:30.000And I won a YMCA state championship when I was 12 years old, believe it or not, in the backstroke.
00:14:37.000Which, you know, in wrestling, you know, I know in fighting you can go to your back and there's lots of tools that you can do there.
00:14:43.000But I hate going to my back, you know.
00:14:45.000And I think if I was a fighter, I would think I hate gravity coming down on me.
00:16:12.000You still got to make sure that the help you're getting is the right help.
00:16:17.000But the YMCA was perfect for me because, I mean, I can remember the first day they took us to a wrestling room.
00:16:24.000We had a little wrestling room at the YMCA. I was already wrestling before that because my dad was a wrestler, not a great wrestler, but his friends were.
00:16:34.000So when they came to the wrestling, learning the sport, my first wrestling room was at the YMCA there, even though I had been in a wrestling room because these older guys had drug me around into the wrestling rooms.
00:16:45.000But I can remember wrestling a kid, and I handled him pretty good because I had already been wrestling on my carpet at home, wrestling outside in the grass, and these people had had a little experience with me.
00:16:58.000But the kid kind of got mad, so I was waiting for my mom and dad to pick me up after the wise couple hours where you spend there.
00:17:09.000And this kid came out, and he goes, you know, you can...
00:17:13.000You know, maybe you beat me in wrestling up there.
00:17:15.000But he goes, how about a street fight?
00:20:23.000But the neighbor policeman about a block away had a son in my class at school.
00:20:31.000So after school that day, We were both walking home, and I was really mad.
00:20:40.000And I pulled out of my pocket a wire, and I took this kid down on the ground, and I wired his wrist together.
00:20:54.000And not real hard but like there were handcuffs and I grabbed the wire and I said this is what your dad did to my dad last night and I'm gonna do it to you and I'm gonna take you and I'm gonna take you home this way and I took him home because they lived about a block away and I untook the things off and let him go in but it's like probably fourth grade but My dad found out about that,
00:22:53.000So when I came home to college, so that was about in seventh grade, so we're talking six, seven, eight years later, when I was home for the weekend and I was driving and he picked me up and I probably had a beer in the car or something.
00:23:33.000I mean, there's just more rules, regulations.
00:23:36.000If people find out, it's like, whoa, whoa.
00:23:38.000You know, I think the good old days probably gave you a chance to actually realize things better than you can today.
00:23:44.000You can actually get a second chance, maybe, and, you know, that type of thing.
00:23:50.000So today is not the best day to ask me about the good old days, just because today is, I would say, definitely the good old days, because these days are...
00:25:06.000One of my former wrestlers who was a school teacher right at the campus at the University of Iowa, and he's pretty strong in his beliefs because he grew up in a family that didn't have a dad, and the government took pretty good care of him also.
00:26:25.000What I'm talking about is the intent behind what you said was entirely innocent.
00:26:29.000And the reason why that guy gave you shit about it is because he's got an opportunity to force you to comply with what he thinks are new rules.
00:26:37.000So he thinks he can force them on you and he has a position to have the moral high ground and he has a position to make you feel bad or to make you listen to him.
00:26:46.000That guy can eat shit because people like him are the real problem with this fucking country.
00:26:53.000Most people are kind, and most people are friendly.
00:26:55.000The problem is, whenever this new thing, a new movement comes along, and this one is particularly divisive, because there's so many dipshits that have adopted it, and people that are low-status, unsuccessful, non-disciplined individuals, and they want to force it on other people,
00:27:13.000and it becomes a big part of their life, is enforcing this kind of language And this kind of ideology on other people.
00:28:13.000They want to use this power of the group Of having a bunch of people who also believe what they believe and attack folks and think that it's right.
00:28:23.000And they get together and reinforce each other constantly online.
00:28:25.000And if you pay attention to them, there's a few people like that that I follow just to see how crazy folks have gotten.
00:28:32.000They're online 12 hours a day just doing that.
00:28:34.000You can't get shit done if you're on Twitter 12 hours a day arguing with people.
00:29:18.000The other day, I was having breakfast with my family on a birthday breakfast for one of my grandkids.
00:29:25.000And we had a big table, you know, full of...
00:29:27.000We have 23 of us, but one family wasn't there.
00:29:29.000This one here, the one that's with me today, Danny Olste, he wasn't with me, so he has five of them.
00:29:34.000So we had 18, and we just had a breakfast, and we had a birthday party at a restaurant, and so I'm going to go pay the bill, and the bill was, you know...
00:32:45.000My first state championship in wrestling.
00:32:47.000First year as a high school sophomore, because that high school started then.
00:32:53.000Anyway, long story short, this neighbor kid ended up murdering my sister.
00:33:00.000And he had walked to school with me a couple weeks before that and said something to me who I, if I would have communicated, It might have saved her life, you know, just because she probably would have never let the guy into her house.
00:33:20.000He just said, like, boy, you got a hot sister, you know, and he was kind of my age, one year older than me, but my sister was four years older than me, so he was probably 16 and she was 19, and she had a boyfriend, and she was living at home yet,
00:33:40.000So, the funny thing is, I actually was going to come home and say something to her, but when I got home, I got distracted, and I said, oh, it's just boy talk, you know, it's just boy talk.
00:33:50.000It was mostly about, he just thought my sister was really hot and that he would like to do something with her, you know, but he never really said it outright.
00:33:59.000I just figured something, you know, the boys would like to do, you know, but...
00:34:03.000Anyway, two weeks later, we're on a fishing trip with my mom and dad, and my sister's supposed to join us, and she doesn't show up because she worked for my dad.
00:34:16.000She went to college for a year, and then she worked for my dad after that as a secretary in the real estate business.
00:34:25.000She didn't show up, so we called the neighbor.
00:34:28.000Back in those days, she didn't have cell phones, so we had a phone call.
00:34:33.000That was outside a cabin that we rented.
00:34:36.000I can date you because the cabin we rented for four bucks a night.
00:37:09.000And then I told him the story about the two weeks before that me walking to school with a neighbor kid and what he had said.
00:37:18.000And he just hugged me and threw me back in the car.
00:37:21.000And we stopped at the next town, which is about 15 miles later, and went into the police station.
00:37:26.000And we told the police what had happened as far as my sister and daughter getting murdered the night before, and we were on our way there, but my kid told me a story that I think if you could help me, As soon as possible.
00:37:42.000So they called ahead to the Waterloo Police Department.
00:37:45.000The Waterloo Police located, he was at work sacking groceries the next day in a grocery store.
00:37:52.000And he'd actually admitted right there that he did it, you know, after they got him.
00:37:58.000But the thing is, what's amazing is...
00:38:04.000This guy, then he escaped from prison after about 20...
00:38:07.000He was only 16. He got life in penitentiary.
00:38:11.000And he escaped, and that pretty much doomed him to ever getting out.
00:38:18.000And then, because he was out for a month before they caught him, and he actually, in the trial, he was so mad about getting sentenced to life in prison that he pointed to the Gable family on the way out, and he said he was going to kill us all.
00:38:35.000So anyway, this guy goes to prison and he lives and he dies in prison after he broke out.
00:38:46.000He never really got a chance to ever let him out.
00:39:10.000Actually, me and my wife had been at our cabin that my mom and dad owned, and I inherited it when they passed on.
00:39:18.000But we were at that cabin, and we were coming home, and we were going right by the spot where that payphone was and where we had learned about her death.
00:39:43.000And the warden told me that The guy that murdered your sister just died.
00:39:52.000The exact same spot where I learned of the murder, I was driving by, and it's about 115 miles from, well, actually a lot further than that.
00:40:27.000I mean, this is years later, but that he had told, and he had been rehabbed somewhat, and he goes, and the reason why, he said, I knew I was going to kill somebody, but he said, because she was such a nice girl.
00:41:01.000But, you know, as bad as my dad felt, my mom felt, and, you know, I felt probably, I kind of got rid of a lot of hatred when he told me that he admitted that she was such a nice girl and that he shouldn't have done it.
00:41:30.000It helped me because even though I cried for an hour and I think the stuff you build up inside you sometimes, you don't know what it's going to take to get it out of you.
00:41:41.000And I think that really helped me with my situation because you always feel a little guilty because maybe you could have saved her life.
00:41:51.000But more than that, it's been something that I based my whole life on too.
00:42:46.000I probably don't stand public, but I'm probably trying to help some people too and heal some people or even maybe get them to change or not feel like...
00:42:57.000Because I've been through so many kids and...
00:43:00.000I've just seen some of the things that you've done with these kids and how you've made big differences.
00:43:07.000Just like Rico Ciparelli, which you're talking about.
00:43:09.000Just like a kid named Brad Penrith, who had a twin, and he was not going to make it in life very far.
00:43:19.000By changing him, like, for example, Brad was, he needed to stop drinking, you know, for good.
00:43:43.000What's funny about this kid, Brad Penrith, he won a national championship for me as a sophomore, and he got in trouble within a week or two after he won the national championship.
00:43:57.000And it was the first time he ever made the paper.
00:47:07.000Yeah, and Brad was right with Rico, you know, and Roy Selger, that's another name that's crazy, and these guys were hellions, but they could kick butt on the wrestling mat, but they liked to go downtown, and that's when those days, that was the hard days on me, because I had to go downtown and kick them out of the bars.
00:47:23.000Well, they actually warned the bar people that owned the bars that I would be coming in at 12, so they would be hiding out the back, so let us know and we'll run out the back door.
00:47:34.000Those days, they should have probably happened.
00:47:37.000But when you're winning seven, eight, nine straight national titles, sometimes you give a kid a break or two and it comes back to haunt you.
00:47:48.000It became kind of a ritual for me to go leave home about 11.30 every night to go downtown to Iowa City to walk into bars to see where some of the guys were and try to get them home.
00:48:00.000And You know, that was probably not the right way to go about things.
00:48:04.000I should have had them to where I didn't have to do that.
00:48:07.000But, you know, you just, you have, you're winning the Big Tens every year, you're winning the Nassos every year.
00:48:49.000But for scholastic wrestling, high school I was undefeated, and then I was undefeated in college until my last match.
00:49:03.000My coaches, and here I was going to become a coach.
00:49:08.000I didn't really know it for sure, but I didn't know anything else, you know, because I was always a team captain, team leader, and all these kind of things.
00:49:15.000So I'm going into the national championship, and it's like, wow.
00:49:32.000And every place I'd go, people would come up to me and all this kind of stuff.
00:49:38.000So from a coaching point of view, if my coaches had to do it over again, and they actually apologized to me years later, but it was like nobody thought I was going to lose.
00:53:22.000Usually, what I did for warm-ups is probably within a half hour of my match, I would get match heartbeat rate up and go for three or four minutes that way so you don't get real tired.
00:53:37.000But then after that, you'd probably have a little...
00:54:12.000And then right before your match again, you might get your heart rate up again.
00:54:16.000Because your heart rate didn't really go down below 100 probably.
00:54:20.000And in a wrestling match, it's probably going up to 170, 180, stuff like that.
00:54:25.000But you wanted to have your heart rate up to that match pace heart rate for not 7 or 8 minutes because you're not going to recover quick enough.
00:54:35.000So you'd get it up there and spike it up and down for 2 or 3 minutes and hitting some really good execution of wrestling holds.
00:54:42.000We do hand fighting, a lot of hand fighting.
00:54:44.000And that hand fighting can really get that heart rate up and pushing and shoving and hitting some live techniques where the guy was letting you do it, but you're doing it at live pace.
00:54:55.000And you do some sprints and do some tumbling, gymnastics tumbling.
00:56:07.000That loss took me to unbelievable heights that I would have never had without that loss.
00:56:13.000What's unbelievable is if you ask the guy that beat me, Larry Owings, He said, if I had to do it over again, I might have lost that match on purpose.
00:56:22.000Or not even on purpose, just because I didn't know how to handle it.
00:56:54.000Sometimes I stayed at the bar for a little while and then came home.
00:56:57.000But, you know, I probably shouldn't have stayed at the bar.
00:56:59.000And there's a lot of times when I was on my way home that after coming home at 6.30 or 7 o'clock at night, then I had kids at home and a wife, and they had dinner, and they probably got tired of waiting for me, that they did get tired of waiting for me.
00:57:14.000And the time I'd get home, I'd probably have to walk in the bedroom, kiss the kids goodnight, because they were already in bed.
00:57:20.000And that was a tough time in my life, too, because the next year we end up losing the 10th championship, going for the all-time record again.
00:57:26.000Going for the all-time record once, you'd think a guy learned, because then you got 10 years later, you kind of forget, and you do the same damn thing.
00:57:34.000But you do it not as an athlete, you do it as a coach.
00:57:38.000And I think about ending my marriage because my wife, I think, was pretty upset with me.
00:57:47.000And then I got upset with my wife about things.
00:58:18.000But you think the loss was very important.
00:58:20.000That's what almost everybody always says about moments, real low moments in their life, when they thought everything was untouchable, and they thought that they were just...
00:58:45.000It's pretty amazing that Those low light, those low points can bring you out and get you back on track, even though it's hard to say that there was good in it.
01:00:06.000They didn't want to move back in, but I convinced them that we should move back in.
01:00:12.000One of the ways I convinced them was about a month after the murder, when we did move back in, so it was probably the second month, they were up arguing,
01:00:27.000and I was in bed, and I heard my mom say something that I thought was really stupid.
01:00:36.000She said, I wish I would have raised her a whore because she didn't give in.
01:01:47.000And I never thought they would stay married, and so that was one of the reasons why, besides my sister, I just give them something to really focus on and concentrate.
01:01:58.000So when you went away, they could go to all these events.
01:02:01.000Hell, my dad, when I won the World Championship, it's the only time he didn't go to my event that was a major event, my mom and dad, because it was in communist Bulgaria, Bulgaria.
01:02:12.000And when I won the World Championship, he was down at the Waterloo Courier paper with the editor down there, and it was an odd hour, and he was waiting for the teletype or the machine to come over and see how I did in that event.
01:02:29.000And it was a headline across the paper.
01:02:32.000It said, Dan Gable wins world championship.
01:02:35.000My old man ripped that paper right off that teletype machine and he ran outside and it was early morning and there were people coming to work and he was running down the street swinging that little newspaper yelling, hey, my kid's a world champion!
01:03:34.000And in those letters, We used to drink a lot of high C. And when you take the labels off, you could send seven or eight of them in and they'd give you money back.
01:05:06.000And so my dad says, you know, I want to get you a job this summer going into your senior year because the job you're going to get, you're going to want it because, you know, you like working out hard and stuff like this, but this job's going to be a workout all day long.
01:05:33.000You're going to be doing all this hard work, carrying buckets of mud, and by then they called it cement, and so on and so forth.
01:05:42.000You're going to swing in a sledgehammer because you're going to be dealing with a lot of basements because my dad was dealing with the house business.
01:06:11.000It was one of those, you know, where you had to be 18. And I was 16, but my dad was a house builder and he'd always hired this guy to build the basements.
01:06:23.000And he told the guy he wanted me to get a job and the guy says, well, I can't really put him on the books.
01:06:29.000So he says, I'll keep him off the books.
01:06:43.000So after about three days of work, because my dad had scared the daylights out of me, telling me how hard I'd have to work.
01:06:52.000I didn't realize there was people that were just putting their hours in, some of them.
01:06:57.000And I was working arms and legs around these guys, carrying, running.
01:07:02.000And the people kind of looked at me funny for a while, but then they realized I was on a mission.
01:07:09.000Finally, the owner of the cement company, Martinson Construction, Jerry Martinson was his name, called my dad after three days and said, Mr. Gable, you're not going to pay your son.
01:11:53.000So somebody heard that, and they liked it, so they come up with a Gable Gold Nutrition drink, and it's up in New Lisbon, Wisconsin.
01:12:01.000There's a former wrestler, again, Brian Slater, who, and one of my former wrestlers, Barry Davis, works up there, used to be the former Wisconsin coach and was a three-time national champion for me.
01:12:11.000Olympic silver medalist, Olympic bronze, Olympic silver medalist as well.
01:12:15.000He works up there and they made a nutrition drink in the last year.
01:12:44.000I've got to get my glasses here a little bit better.
01:12:46.000He says, but in commemoration of his Olympic triumph in Munich, 1972, we've crafted a beer much more appropriate, approachable, Then adversaries found Dan to be on the mat.
01:14:40.000I don't know if I can still do that limit.
01:14:43.000Because if I look at the times that I've been in trouble with something at all, it's always been a little beer, had a little beer in me, whether it be with the police or whether it be with my wife or whatever.
01:15:54.000It was my last year of coaching, actually.
01:15:57.000And I didn't know it was going to be my last year of coaching.
01:16:01.000But So I went to the doctor and the doctor, Dr. Marsh, a great doctor, orthopedic surgeon, actually he was a surgeon, actually he was a, when you get in an accident, I can't remember the term, not a crisis,
01:16:17.000but a certain doctor where you bring him in when there's a big accident.
01:17:35.000By that I meant that there was a certain way of life that you have lived.
01:17:45.000And if it didn't happen, Like, second place was just not acceptable.
01:17:52.000And so, you know, to me, it was like, I gotta get that other, I gotta get my life back.
01:17:57.000You know, and I went back to my mom, now that I'm thinking.
01:18:00.000Because my mom is what got me out of the sport as a wrestler.
01:18:04.000Because she saw me coming home from, I was in Iowa City and I came home and I went to the high school for a workout and when I walked in the house just to have dinner because I was visiting Waterloo, Iowa, I walked in and I sprained my ankle in practice over there.
01:18:58.000Yeah, I was the only guy, you know, high school, back in the high school days, when I first came there as a sophomore, I lived across the street from the high school.
01:19:09.000My coach knew that I was a little bit of a fanatic, and so he says, Dan, I live five miles away from West High School, and I'd like to have the doors open in the locker room for the team if they want to come early,
01:19:27.000even during football or even during wrestling especially.
01:19:30.000He says, I'm going to give you a key to the locker room.
01:19:34.000To where you can just come right in from the outside.
01:19:37.000Because you can come right across this.
01:19:40.000Because I know you want to come, right?
01:19:41.000He goes, I go, yeah, I want to come in the mornings.
01:20:22.000And even the wrestlers that didn't wrestle or didn't play football, they weren't about to go in the mornings yet because wrestling practice at 3.30 was a bear.
01:22:09.000So then it was all of a sudden 3, 4, 5, 6. So by the middle season, the end of the season, we had just about everybody coming in the mornings.
01:22:16.000Not the day of the match or the day before, but like three days, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, usually, when you could not get ready for the big matches.
01:23:45.000So we go to the Big Tens, we go to the Nassos, and all of a sudden we're winning the day before the finals and we win the championship the day before.
01:23:55.000But whenever we won the championship...
01:23:58.000That night when I went to bed on Saturday night, or even a Friday night if we won the championship and we still had a bunch of guys in the finals, I would wake up the next day healthy.
01:24:10.000So I've been sick for two weeks, and I can wake up healthy as soon as we want.
01:28:11.000But anyway, you know, I'm one of these coaches that a little bit, I give a little bit, but I always, the first people I looked at After a match, when the kid won or lost,
01:28:27.000I looked at, I knew where their parents were, if they were there, and I'd look at them, and the look on their face when their kid won a big match, or was just a win, as compared to when they looked on when they lost.
01:31:26.000My mom and dad were already gone and hopefully they know that and that they can feel it.
01:31:32.000How much of a factor was that though for you as a competitor?
01:31:37.000Have you ever thought, obviously you would have much preferred your sister to be alive, Have you ever thought about how much different you were because of that anger and because of that guilt?
01:32:35.000But with my sister, it makes a difference today in my life.
01:32:41.000For people that don't understand, maybe people that don't follow wrestling, I just want to let them know, in a world of extreme athletes, like the world of wrestling, you were very unusual.
01:32:55.000You were one of the few people ever in the history of the Olympics to not have a single point scored upon you.
01:33:02.000I mean, that's just phenomenal when you're dealing with world-class wrestlers from all these different countries that are also training the same way you are, just knowing the Olympics is the pinnacle of the sport.
01:33:18.000And for you to go there and not just win, but not get a single point scored on you is just extraordinary.
01:33:26.000That kind of intensity that you carried.
01:34:49.000You know, I had to look and see who did.
01:34:54.000If I felt a certain way about this guy, maybe I was just happy he showed up.
01:35:00.000To me, it's like once you got there at practice, it's what you did during the time of practice, not whether you were here on time or left early or all that kind of stuff.
01:35:15.000And if you got accomplished an unbelievable a lot that I felt good about, well, And again, it's bad to say that, that you have different standards.
01:36:14.000He only could do a certain style of practice.
01:36:17.000He could most like, if you play pickup basketball, throw the basketball out there, play pickup, just go, go, go.
01:36:22.000No time period, no referees, no nothing.
01:36:25.000So if he come to practice, if you roll the basketball out there, roll the headgear out there, roll the mouthpiece, put it in, and say, Russell, he could go.
01:43:46.000Olympics are going to be in the summer.
01:43:49.000And I'm defending world champion, and I'm predicted, you know, I'm one of the top seven favored to win the gold medal in the Olympics for America.
01:43:57.000And he knows he's moving up to be a head coach, and he put his eyesight on me.
01:44:06.000So, he had this guy that lived in Iowa City, but he had been away from Iowa City and working out in New York, and he had been working with my Olympic coach, my Olympic coach that I was going to have, because the Olympic coach had a company that was a wrestling company,
01:44:26.000mats and products and shoes and all this kind of stuff.
01:44:35.000He happens to be an Iowa City guy, but he's out there in New York working, and I'm working with him a little bit about you getting a job over in Ames, Iowa.
01:44:45.000So he went to work for Dr. Harold Nichols' business, who was the head coach of Ames, who was my coach, and he went to work there because he had a good reputation and he did a good job on that type of business.
01:44:58.000But University of Iowa, Gary Kirtlemyer, sent him over as a spy.
01:48:08.000I thought I was being an idiot, not taking it, because everybody told me to take it.
01:48:11.000So I took it, and then Coach Nichols found out about it, and he got upset, and he came up, because I was visiting home that weekend in Waterloo, Iowa, and so he said, had you signed anything?
01:48:37.000There's no way I'm going to stay over there.
01:48:40.000But what I forgot, and I didn't understand, it's just like me with my teams, that I was kind of the leaders on the teams, really liked the kids on the teams, and I had an effect on them.
01:48:57.000But, you know, it was one of these things that, That once you realize something and you don't really know what to do, you just kind of go for help again.
01:49:14.000And when I went for help, I told them, because I was getting ready for the Olympics, I told them, okay, I'll take it.
01:51:01.000People didn't know I was going to be a good coach.
01:51:02.000Yeah, but still, you understand wrestling.
01:51:03.000People tell me today that when I came over as an athlete, they said, we never thought you could be a good coach.
01:51:09.000People tell me that today, and they said, we sure found out wrong, didn't we?
01:51:13.000So, you gotta remember, that's the beginning of my coaching.
01:51:16.000I understand that, but don't you think part of what being a coach is, is inspiring the athletes?
01:51:22.000And there's no one that's gonna be more inspirational to an athlete than someone who is literally one of the greatest of all time at the sport.
01:51:31.000There's a thing about athletes when they're in the presence of greatness.
01:51:34.000It inspires them to raise their own level.
01:51:39.000When you're in the presence of someone who has done what you aspire to do and they're one of those people that's achieved what you aspire to achieve and they're one of the legends of the sport.
01:53:00.000But you remember when I talked about the key to the door and then all of a sudden I had to be successful before others, even though they...
01:53:08.000Well, I didn't really have any credentials at that time.
01:53:36.000He's running practice with me, but he's the head, but he's being my assistant in the room.
01:53:42.000And we're only there for a couple, we've only been there for a week or two.
01:53:45.000And a security guy comes into practice.
01:53:49.000And when he comes into practice, he called me over, or he called Gerdelmeyer over, and then they called me over and they talked to us.
01:53:56.000And he said that there's been a gas leak in a pipe in the building.
01:54:01.000And we are going around telling everybody this, that's here working out, that they have the right to know this and that they can leave or should leave if they want to.
01:54:16.000And I said, well, I look at Gary and I said, we better get the heck out of here because we don't want to get blown up or anything, you know.
01:56:18.000And it was kind of like those guys that didn't show up until I proved that I won.
01:56:22.000So once we started winning a little bit more, once some of these freshmen started making varsity and all that kind of stuff, these guys, they would have stayed.
01:56:38.000And the Kirtelmeyer goes to me, the coach, he says, you know, Gable, we're on a, like I said, we're on a four-year plan to win the Nationals.
01:56:46.000And I looked at him and I said, we'll win it this year.
01:57:18.000I'm going to tell you something about jujitsu.
01:57:21.000There's one team, the Henzo Gracie team out of New York City, that is, they dominate, in particular, the guys that are coached by this guy named John Donaher.
01:57:34.000And they were in town this past weekend for a jujitsu match.
02:01:40.000Yeah, obviously I work extremely hard, or I have and do and will, and I won't let up on that.
02:01:48.000But I also know how to adjust a little bit.
02:01:53.000Now, when science didn't tell me and I just went with what science was and now it's different, well, I'm sorry because I messed up, but I went with the rules at that time.
02:02:06.000But if there's something that changes that's better, I'll go with that.
02:03:08.000I do it every day, and lately I haven't been able to do it for about a week because the place I'm at in Florida right now, they're putting a new one in, so it's kind of being constructed.
02:03:19.000What temperature do you like to do with that?
02:04:21.000Did you learn this from foreign athletes in other countries?
02:04:25.000I learned it from a guy that I trained with from my hometown named Bob Buzzard, who was about six or seven years older than me, who was a great wrestler at Iowa State.
02:04:37.000But, you know, at that time, he probably, you know, he showed me, he took me into one of them and showed me how, I think we probably used it for losing weight then, but But over time, eventually, we learned how to use it for recovery.
02:04:52.000Because once you're done with practice and you go to heat right away if you want to, you don't have to do anything.
02:05:24.000After we get done practicing Olympic training, a lot of times I would come back, I'd be the last guy to leave practice, and I'd get there after everybody had been done eating and everything, and I'd go eat, and I'd be about an hour after I'd been done eating, and I'd say, guys, I feel pretty good.
02:05:44.000And even the guys that won the gold medals with me and stuff like that, they just couldn't figure out how I could recover so quick.
02:05:50.000But none of them were there sitting with me that hour of recovery in the hot, in the cold, back in the hot, back in the cold, getting a massage.
02:05:58.000They might have been getting a massage, but they probably skipped some of that stuff.
02:08:07.000What do you think about people that don't think you should do that?
02:08:10.000Well, I do it to where I don't overdo it anymore.
02:08:14.000I may have overdone it at times when I didn't know better, or that was my philosophy.
02:08:20.000Sometimes you've got to overdo things, but you really don't want to do something that's going to hurt you.
02:08:25.000So, if I had to do it all over again, I'd have that same attitude.
02:08:30.000But I'd be more educated, and I would do things differently.
02:08:33.000In fact, I coached differently at the end of my career as I did at the beginning of my career.
02:08:38.000Some of these days that I took these kids up on Carver Hawkeye Arena, and it's about a quarter mile along the top of the arena, and it's concrete, and I ran the hell out of them, and I ran the stairs, 44 steps, concrete,
02:08:58.000I wouldn't do it the next day anymore.
02:09:00.000If I worked you really hard in something, I would give you more recovery time to make sure that in the long run, you're going to be healthier.
02:09:31.000I'd be a lot healthier now with my knees if the doctors didn't take all the cartilage out of my knees because one year they said there was no function in cartilage.
02:09:39.000And I said, but what's the recovery time?
02:09:42.000Well, if we take the cartilage out, it won't be very long.
02:11:07.000So the next year- On the right side, on my outside of my knee.
02:11:11.000So then they said, okay, I came in the next chair and I go, well, just take it out because I want to get out of here and I want to get healthy quick.
02:15:21.000I want to talk to you about the difference between the way the Russians approached wrestling versus the way the Americans approached wrestling.
02:15:30.000Because I know that you are a big fan of the Russians and their technique.
02:15:37.000When did you realize that they had a different approach?
02:15:44.000I mean, at the beginning, you know, I just a tough guy, you know, just throw the ball out there and turn me loose.
02:15:50.000In fact, in college, that's kind of how we trained.
02:15:53.000We had enough good athletes so we could just wrestle each other.
02:15:55.000We didn't have to have structure and all that kind of stuff.
02:15:57.000And I'll tell you, once you started watching, once you got a little bit and watched the practice from the Russians and the coaches, you realized they were technicals crazy.
02:17:39.000So when I went to these world championships that summer...
02:17:46.000In Canada, I really followed a lot of the top wrestlers.
02:17:51.000Sometimes I followed them right after matches, right into their locker rooms or right back where their team was staying.
02:17:56.000They just thought I was the guy that was there.
02:17:59.000They didn't really know that I was doing spying.
02:18:01.000I was just surprised how things were different a lot than how I was myself trained.
02:18:10.000I knew that when I lost that match to Owings, I didn't know how to finish a match, even though I didn't know how to start it on that one because I wasn't ready.
02:18:18.000But I knew that I didn't know how to strategically finish a match.
02:19:30.000I didn't really have much of a defense until I got beat by Owings, and then I realized that I've got to learn how to finish, and I've got to have a better defense and how to score from a defense.
02:20:12.000There was 12,000 Bulgarians rooting for the Bulgarian, and I just tied him up for about a minute to win the match easily.
02:20:20.000I was ahead 8-3, and so I didn't take any risk, and I won solid.
02:20:25.000So in the Olympic finals, the only way he could beat me, actually, he could take me down and still beat me, but the only way he could beat me is he had to pin me to beat me.
02:20:35.000And so when I'm up in the last minute or two, I just kind of tied him up and stayed with him and didn't worry about too much for me scoring.
02:20:47.000So there's strategy that I didn't really know at the beginning.
02:29:04.000It's a really interesting documentary by this guy named Brian Fogle and it's all about...
02:29:08.000What happened was it was a very fortunate documentary in that he was making a documentary about one thing and it became about a different thing.
02:29:17.000He was making a documentary about a bike race.
02:29:23.000And he was going to do it clean one year, and then he was going to get doped up on performance-enhancing drugs and do it the second year and see what the difference is.
02:29:35.000And he hired Gregory Rychenkov, who was the head of Russian anti-doping at the time.
02:29:43.000And he was explaining to him what he was going to have to take and how to take it, this and that.
02:29:48.000Along the way, while they were doing this.
02:29:51.000So he filmed the first race, and then in the year leading up to the second race, the Sochi Olympic scandal happened.
02:29:59.000And Gregory Uchenkov was, he was a part of that.
02:30:04.000Where he explained he had to leave the country.
02:30:08.000He escaped and came to America because he was being implicated in this whole scandal where they were taking the urine from the athletes.
02:30:16.000They were opening up the supposedly...
02:30:19.000There was some container that couldn't be opened, but the Russians had figured out how to open it.
02:30:25.000They would take out the dirty urine and replace it with clean urine.
02:32:56.000But it's about exactly that, and how a guy comes home, a small little town in the United States, and I'm not sure if it's on the Pacific Coast, somewhere like maybe Washington,
02:33:11.000I think it was, where he came home, and the town hadn't seen him for years because his mom died, so he'd come back to sell her house.
02:33:21.000And when he comes back to sell her house, Believe it or not, the wrestling coach dies, and they want him to stay and to be the coach.
02:33:31.000So he actually stays and be the coach, and it gets into conflicts, and all of a sudden, he comes through with this conflict and makes it right.
02:33:43.000But it's really a good movie, and it's about exactly that.
02:33:57.000And there's this book out, and I couldn't believe it.
02:34:00.000I don't know what the name of the book was, but it said overseas in these places, because it takes you out of poverty, it takes you out of being nothing to somebody.
02:34:11.000They say that, like, give me whatever.
02:34:15.000And the statistics were, like, unbelievable that how many people would say they would take a pill that would win them the right to win a gold medal in the Olympics.
02:34:29.000But yet, a year, within a year after you won those gold medals, you died.
02:34:37.000And they had a statistical thing on it, and it was like, most people still take the damn pill!
02:34:55.000That is a thing about the Olympics in other countries, is that it's a way out of poverty for some people.
02:35:02.000Whereas in our world, in our country, it's almost in some ways a way into poverty.
02:35:08.000These athletes, they're dedicating their whole life in many ways.
02:35:13.000You've got your guys like Michael Phelps who go on and wins gold medals and has all these endorsements and becomes wealthy because of that.
02:35:23.000I mean, they dedicate this enormous amount of time to a sport.
02:35:28.000It doesn't pay off for them financially at all, but yet the Olympics reaps incredible rewards for it.
02:35:34.000They make billions of dollars every time the Olympics rolls around.
02:35:37.000The networks, these different countries, the windfall is incredible, but not for the athletes.
02:35:42.000It's a weird scam in a lot of ways, because it's an amateur sport, and it is an amateur sport, but only for the people that are the most important.
02:37:26.000And so I went to my dad when I was 29. I said, Dad, we're hurting for money a little bit, but didn't you tell me that you started me some kind of a plan in my life when I was young?
02:39:44.000So, you know, it's just like, it's just like right now, you know, it's, over all these years, I've been working for ASICs for, you know, I got a beer, we're drinking beer called Gable.
02:39:54.000You know, it's, I got a nutrition gold that's...
02:40:21.000It drives me nuts because I think it's a wild scam that the athletes aren't compensated and insane amounts of money are being generated by them competing.
02:41:21.000It's not just a regular professional sport either.
02:41:23.000It's the biggest professional sport because it's international.
02:41:27.000It's a gigantic world event every two years Every two years, where they have the Olympic Games, it's a gigantic world event, and the people that make the most money, the people that broadcast it on television, not the actual athletes.
02:41:40.000You're not broadcasting, you're not producing anything.
02:41:44.000The athletes are producing the entertainment.
02:42:24.000The same way they do with the NBA. The same way they do with the NFL. There should be money distributed to those athletes.
02:42:31.000And I guarantee you we'll have better athletes.
02:42:33.000Because you know in other countries they compensate their athletes.
02:42:35.000You know, they compensate their athletes in Russia.
02:42:38.000They compensate their athletes in China.
02:42:40.000Not as well as they should, but they do.
02:42:42.000In a lot of these countries, when you're talking about high-level athletes, they pay them to train, and they take care of all their expenses, and they make sure that they're properly prepared because they're representing their country.
02:42:55.000In our country, they rely on great corporations like ASICS or whatever the corporation is that can compensate these athletes after they're done competing.
02:43:08.000And I think we both are actually on the same page.
02:43:12.000I think the difference is, for me, it's like I've kind of had these opportunities Over time, it's not like great opportunities, but I just take this one, and I take this one, and I take this one.
02:43:26.000And instead of really getting compensated up front by what you're talking about, I'm able to, because I've stayed...
02:44:14.000They're working on it, I think, a little bit in the NCAA too, right?
02:44:17.000They should in the NCAA. That's a lot.
02:44:19.000The amount of money those teams, those colleges earn, those universities earn because of the fact their sports teams are successful, their programs are successful.
02:45:21.000Even though you get an Olympic gold medal, I mean, you're pretty young usually.
02:45:28.000I mean, an athlete's not going to win an Olympic gold medal unless you got a different kind of the ancient Olympics or something, you know, the old timers.
02:48:47.000I've been looking forward to this day, and it meant a lot to me that you came here.
02:48:51.000And I appreciate you as a human being, and I appreciate you as an athlete, and as a representative of what I believe is one of the greatest sports ever.
02:49:00.000Well, you know, it's one of the hardest, definitely.
02:49:02.000I mean, if you can go through one of my practices, you're going to be a pretty good person.