The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1627 - Dan Gable

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00:00:03.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

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00:00:13.000 Is that, so you're telling me that this mask is, this is a wrestling, does this have anything to do with your museum?

00:00:21.000 Yes, it's the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

00:00:24.000 But this is the one out of Stillwater, Oklahoma.

00:00:27.000 And the one we have is a subsidiary one.

00:00:31.000 It's called the National Wrestling Hall of Fame Dan Gable Museum in Waterloo, my hometown.

00:00:37.000 But they own it.

00:00:38.000 See, Oklahoma and Iowa are big rivalries in wrestling over history.

00:00:43.000 And these museums kind of help bring us together.

00:00:47.000 So it's pretty interesting.

00:00:52.000 So these actually masks are just the ones out of Stillwater.

00:00:58.000 I don't know if we have ones in Waterloo or not.

00:01:02.000 Lex Friedman told me that you have a hard time even walking around in Iowa, that people will swarm you.

00:01:14.000 When they don't swarm me is when I'm going to have to worry.

00:01:17.000 Because I'm for the sport of wrestling.

00:01:20.000 And I love that sport.

00:01:21.000 And it's been my life.

00:01:22.000 And I want it to continue to be.

00:01:24.000 And it's a little bit difficult sport.

00:01:27.000 So, you know, it's something that keeps me appreciative.

00:01:32.000 But it also...

00:01:33.000 I promote it out there.

00:01:35.000 And as long as people...

00:01:38.000 I'm okay with it.

00:01:39.000 It 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.

00:01:45.000 Well, 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.

00:01:55.000 There's no way around it.

00:01:56.000 I 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.

00:02:04.000 People get very excited.

00:02:05.000 Well, I'm glad you said that because every time I tell somebody, their eyebrows do the same when I'm going on this show.

00:02:12.000 And 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.

00:02:19.000 So I'm excited to be here because I know the effect it can have, not just on me because...

00:02:25.000 But on the sport, and I love the sport.

00:02:29.000 My hometown of Waterloo, that's why I got started in it because it was just dominating wrestling at the time.

00:02:35.000 And you know what's funny is that just from a world situation, Sport brings people together.

00:02:43.000 And, you know, it's like, who better than a sport with Russia or Iran or North Korea?

00:02:51.000 Because, 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. 1.00

00:03:01.000 But when it comes to wrestling, we have something in common.

00:03:04.000 And, you We usually end up losing to both Russia and Iran, but sometimes we beat them too.

00:03:10.000 We are well known for good wrestling and that has helped, I think, the country be better off.

00:03:17.000 I 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,

00:03:39.000 when I won the Olympics in 1972, their most popular athlete was the guy in my weight class, the Iranian.

00:03:50.000 I'd been in the Worlds a year before, but before that he had two Olympic titles and every world title in between.

00:03:58.000 And 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.

00:04:08.000 And 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.

00:04:19.000 We didn't get to wrestle, but he was there and representing Iran in 72. And he won his first match by about...

00:04:26.000 15 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.

00:04:40.000 I'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.

00:04:51.000 Yeah, 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.

00:05:00.000 Chances are he didn't.

00:05:01.000 It seemed like what they were doing was just making sure that people were scared.

00:05:05.000 If they can kill a man who's so beloved and a national hero, they can kill anybody.

00:05:11.000 Yeah, and the Iranian that came here lives still here in the United States.

00:05:20.000 Wrestling, to me, is one of the most important sports because it's one of the very few sports that doesn't have a real...

00:05:28.000 I mean, there's obviously WWE wrestling and a lot of guys go from wrestling into MMA, but there's not a real professional venue.

00:05:37.000 I 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.

00:05:47.000 And I'm very happy that he gets recognized and some other wrestlers get recognized, but it's not like basketball.

00:05:53.000 It's not like any other sport where you have Olympic champions go on boxing and become huge stars at a professional level.

00:06:02.000 With wrestling, it's...

00:06:05.000 It's one of the few sports where the people that participate in it, they take pride in the fact that they work in silence.

00:06:13.000 They take pride in the fact that they grind.

00:06:16.000 They 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.

00:06:25.000 If you had to compare what an elite baseball player does, you're smiling, right?

00:06:30.000 Versus an elite wrestler.

00:06:31.000 I mean, it's not even comparable.

00:06:34.000 No, 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.

00:06:44.000 So, 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.

00:06:58.000 But when he was back in college, he was dating my daughter and he came to our wrestling practice.

00:07:04.000 And 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.

00:07:25.000 They train different ways, but he made one really good lap, and he stayed right with the group, right in there.

00:07:32.000 I think he claims he might have made another one.

00:07:35.000 I don't know if it was the second or the third, but we were going to do eight.

00:07:39.000 And so I think by the second or the third, he was in a full squat and he couldn't.

00:07:43.000 I mean, his legs just went out on him and he couldn't do it.

00:07:46.000 And I tell you, I think it showed appreciation from him right away from that point of view.

00:07:52.000 So that's...

00:07:54.000 Pretty interesting that you bring that up.

00:07:56.000 I 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.

00:08:06.000 At the elite level, there's so many great wrestlers, both on the national level and the international level.

00:08:13.000 That it really requires this insane level of dedication to rise to the top.

00:08:19.000 Well you mentioned Jordan Burles and you know Jordan Burles was a good wrestler in high school and he was a good wrestler in college.

00:08:25.000 He 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.

00:08:34.000 I don't think he really realized his talent and abilities.

00:08:38.000 A 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.

00:08:45.000 But if you stick with it long enough, the mind can develop as well.

00:08:51.000 When Jordan Burrell's mind...

00:08:55.000 Developed 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.

00:09:03.000 But 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.

00:09:16.000 So once he got that mind, that made the big difference.

00:09:19.000 And that's what carries him through right now.

00:09:21.000 And again, it's like right now, he's in a big battle to make the Olympic team, which is going to happen here shortly.

00:09:30.000 Because we eliminated some of the weight classes.

00:09:33.000 See, people don't understand in our sport.

00:09:36.000 Because 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.

00:09:44.000 But in a wrestling match, a few pounds makes a difference when you're at that high level of excellence.

00:09:52.000 It's because of, like, physics.

00:09:55.000 You 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.

00:10:07.000 And so, for me, it was like I could wrestle anybody.

00:10:11.000 I wrestled 150 pounds at the World's and Olympic Games.

00:10:14.000 And I could wrestle the heavyweight who weighed 450. And they go, why could you wrestle him?

00:10:19.000 I said, because I knew the leverage and I knew the skills and the strategy.

00:10:25.000 And because of that, it gave me the opportunity to feel heavier than him.

00:10:30.000 And I think that's what a lot of people said.

00:10:32.000 They say, you don't look that heavy, but when I wrestled you, you felt like so heavy.

00:10:36.000 I said, well, it's because I knew my positions.

00:10:39.000 So, you know, that's where like Jordan Burroughs is now.

00:10:42.000 He's so much better, but not just in his skills from on the mat.

00:10:48.000 It's a lot in his brains that he knows he's good.

00:10:51.000 He's had a lot of practices where he's done well.

00:10:54.000 I don't think I lost a practice.

00:10:58.000 From my junior year in college.

00:11:00.000 So I had my junior year, my senior year, then I had two and a half more years.

00:11:04.000 So that's four and a half years where I went to practice and never lost a wrestling practice.

00:11:10.000 And by that, I mean I pretty much dominated.

00:11:12.000 And I usually wrestled the bigger guys in the room, even though I was a lightweight.

00:11:16.000 It's because I could.

00:11:18.000 And because of that, it gave me a lot of confidence.

00:11:22.000 And so people always ask you, how do you think you're going to do?

00:11:25.000 Well, I think I'm going to win.

00:11:28.000 I don't really think.

00:11:31.000 I pretty much know I'm going to win.

00:11:34.000 It's one of these things that when you have that much success, it works.

00:11:37.000 That's where I feel Jordan Burroughs is developed to.

00:11:39.000 Like I said, he's got only six weight classes as compared to eight or nine or ten, what we normally used to have.

00:11:45.000 He's got a world champion coming down named Dake that will challenge him at his weight.

00:11:53.000 They're both Highly credentialed and so that's gonna be a big match coming up here probably pretty soon.

00:12:00.000 Mental toughness is one of the most important aspects of wrestling.

00:12:05.000 Obviously 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.

00:12:19.000 When they come over to MMA, you recognize there's something special about them as athletes.

00:12:27.000 And I think that it comes from the fact that wrestling is so difficult.

00:12:31.000 The practices are so hard.

00:12:34.000 But in the world of mental toughness, where mental toughness is one of the cornerstones of You're known as a guy that stands out.

00:12:43.000 You stand out amongst, like David Goggins likes to say, you're uncommon amongst uncommon men.

00:12:50.000 What is that?

00:12:51.000 What made you stand out from these other wrestlers?

00:12:58.000 Well, I'm going to jump forth to my high school coach, even though I got a lot before that.

00:13:03.000 But I just remember what he said in the room.

00:13:06.000 And he was like the best high school coach in the state at the time.

00:13:11.000 He said, guys, win with humility. 0.99

00:13:18.000 Lose with dignity, but damn it, don't lose! 0.97

00:13:23.000 And he put those last two lines together real quick, so you kind of had to listen to him. 0.99

00:13:28.000 But it was pretty neat because you win with humility, you lose with dignity, but damn it, don't lose. 0.89

00:13:34.000 And so, you know, that was my first major coach. 0.96

00:13:39.000 That really taught me a lot of those type of principles.

00:13:42.000 But before that, I was a kid that was at the YMCA when I was five, six years old.

00:13:47.000 And 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.

00:14:03.000 My dad was a full-time worker, and my mom, she stayed at home a lot, but she also helped my dad.

00:14:09.000 He had an office at home, but I was a little hellion.

00:14:12.000 And they needed me to learn how to swim, but they also needed me to learn how to be a little bit sociable.

00:14:17.000 They needed me to learn how to get along with kids.

00:14:22.000 My first job was at the YMCA. I actually competed.

00:14:26.000 My first sport competitively was, besides practicing, was swimming.

00:14:30.000 And I won a YMCA state championship when I was 12 years old, believe it or not, in the backstroke.

00:14:37.000 Which, 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.

00:14:43.000 But I hate going to my back, you know.

00:14:45.000 And I think if I was a fighter, I would think I hate gravity coming down on me.

00:14:50.000 So I don't mind putting it down.

00:14:52.000 But, you know, and there's skills there you have to learn.

00:14:54.000 But I really liked the YMCA because it gave me...

00:15:03.000 A chance to learn something away from home.

00:15:05.000 I was home with my mom, I was home with my dad, home with my sister, four years older than me.

00:15:10.000 But, you know, it's just something...

00:15:14.000 I call it going for help.

00:15:16.000 And I think my mom and dad realized at that time...

00:15:21.000 That they needed some help with this kid.

00:15:23.000 And I think that's a really good thing to think about as people in the world when you have kids growing up.

00:15:30.000 And if you're not giving them what you need to give them, why not go for help?

00:15:34.000 And there's organizations out there.

00:15:36.000 Now, you've got to be careful who you're putting them into or even if you're giving them to a babysitter or whatever like that.

00:15:41.000 But If you're pretty confident that you have a good place to get some help, you get some help.

00:15:49.000 Same way with me as a coach.

00:15:51.000 Same way with me as a husband.

00:15:52.000 I mean, I got my wife.

00:15:54.000 I got my family.

00:15:55.000 I had my assistant coaches.

00:15:57.000 And I got my fans.

00:15:59.000 I mean, I always had them.

00:16:02.000 Looking out for me.

00:16:04.000 I built that kind of trust with them, or more than even trust, just they want to help.

00:16:09.000 And that was the way.

00:16:10.000 Now, you can't go overboard.

00:16:12.000 You still got to make sure that the help you're getting is the right help.

00:16:17.000 But the YMCA was perfect for me because, I mean, I can remember the first day they took us to a wrestling room.

00:16:24.000 We 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.

00:16:34.000 So 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.

00:16:44.000 In Waterloo.

00:16:45.000 But 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.

00:16:58.000 But 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.

00:17:09.000 And this kid came out, and he goes, you know, you can...

00:17:13.000 You know, maybe you beat me in wrestling up there.

00:17:15.000 But he goes, how about a street fight?

00:17:20.000 And I said, whoa.

00:17:21.000 You know, I was probably eight, nine, eight years old at the time.

00:17:26.000 And, you know, it was downtown Waterloo, Iowa.

00:17:30.000 Tough town.

00:17:31.000 I was on one side of the river and he was on the other side of the river growing up.

00:17:37.000 And so he probably had been in more fights than me, but I wasn't going to fight him.

00:17:48.000 I was waiting for my dad to pick me up, and all of a sudden, he punches me.

00:17:55.000 And so, you know, what do you do?

00:17:58.000 You've got to fight.

00:17:59.000 I mean, either that or run.

00:18:01.000 And I fought, and I did all right.

00:18:04.000 I mean, just like in the wrestling room, I did all right.

00:18:06.000 And so I had some of that in me, too.

00:18:09.000 But when I had the guy on the down, and I kind of let him up, We both looked over.

00:18:17.000 My dad was there standing watching me, and that guy's dad was standing there.

00:18:21.000 And my dad and his were talking to each other.

00:18:24.000 And so, you know, that's part of an experience that you kind of grow up in.

00:18:28.000 And I don't know if they even knew each other, but they were kind of supervising, yet we didn't know they were there.

00:18:35.000 And that was kind of one of my first experiences with understanding a little bit about competition outside organized sports, you know.

00:18:45.000 Yeah, raw competition.

00:18:46.000 Right.

00:18:47.000 Yeah.

00:18:47.000 Primal.

00:18:48.000 Yep.

00:18:49.000 So, you know, actually, speaking of the story there, it was a really good one.

00:18:55.000 This is about my mom and dad.

00:18:56.000 My mom and dad were great people.

00:18:59.000 But they like to drink a lot of beer and smoke a lot of cigarettes.

00:19:04.000 That's why they probably didn't live so long and they probably had some trouble at home.

00:19:10.000 And by that I mean the cops visited a home quite often just to break up fights or my mom would probably call the cops on my dad.

00:19:23.000 The first time I ever really took notice was when they came the first time and they took my dad away.

00:19:31.000 He had been rough with my mom, so I probably understood.

00:19:36.000 But I saw him kind of throw a handcuff on him.

00:19:39.000 I think they just threw one on and kind of took him out the door.

00:19:43.000 I didn't really see from there.

00:19:48.000 He came home that night later on.

00:19:51.000 They brought him back later.

00:19:55.000 So the next day I went to school and the policeman that had come and picked him up was actually a neighbor down the street.

00:20:07.000 Just lived about a block from us.

00:20:09.000 And I was really bad, you know, at the police taking my dad away, even though probably it was a good thing.

00:20:17.000 But I didn't really understand what was going on at that time.

00:20:20.000 And this is different today.

00:20:22.000 It probably wouldn't go on.

00:20:23.000 But the neighbor policeman about a block away had a son in my class at school.

00:20:31.000 So after school that day, We were both walking home, and I was really mad.

00:20:40.000 And I pulled out of my pocket a wire, and I took this kid down on the ground, and I wired his wrist together.

00:20:54.000 And 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,

00:21:22.000 and wow, did I get in trouble.

00:21:25.000 I mean, he used to hit me on top of the head with a ring, probably why I don't have much hair.

00:21:30.000 And he looked at me and he said, you know what?

00:21:35.000 I was intoxicated last night.

00:21:38.000 It was good they took me out of here.

00:21:39.000 But you know what they did to me when they got me down to the police department?

00:21:43.000 He said I played pool with them.

00:21:45.000 They had a little billiards room down there and they played pool with me until I sobered up and then they brought me back.

00:21:51.000 And you did that to his son?

00:21:53.000 I said, Dad, I was just protecting you, I thought.

00:21:58.000 And everybody understood.

00:22:00.000 But it's kind of funny how things are.

00:22:02.000 And that's the old days, good old days, compared to...

00:22:07.000 They'd probably do a lot more.

00:22:11.000 They'd lock you up, probably.

00:22:12.000 They don't give you too many breaks.

00:22:14.000 But it's kind of funny how that's the kind of house...

00:22:18.000 The difference between 40 years ago 50 years ago, 60 years ago, I forget.

00:22:23.000 What do you think is better, though?

00:22:25.000 Are the good old days the good old days, or is it better today?

00:22:28.000 I think I like the good old days.

00:22:31.000 I mean, I got picked up one other time, and it was my former...

00:22:36.000 I was back home from college, and he was my gym teacher in eighth grade, Mr. Blue, and he...

00:22:52.000 He ended up being a policeman.

00:22:53.000 So 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.

00:23:09.000 You know, he actually let me go.

00:23:13.000 But he picked me up again the same night.

00:23:17.000 So he took me down a second time.

00:23:19.000 And he put me in his office in the police station.

00:23:23.000 We talked for quite a while.

00:23:25.000 But he let me go, too.

00:23:31.000 You just can't get away with that.

00:23:33.000 I mean, there's just more rules, regulations.

00:23:36.000 If people find out, it's like, whoa, whoa.

00:23:38.000 You know, I think the good old days probably gave you a chance to actually realize things better than you can today.

00:23:44.000 You can actually get a second chance, maybe, and, you know, that type of thing.

00:23:50.000 So 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...

00:24:00.000 We're divided.

00:24:02.000 That's the way it is.

00:24:03.000 And so it's not as much fun.

00:24:04.000 You're almost scared to talk.

00:24:06.000 I came here in an airplane and out of the airplane magazine, I picked up something because I thought it was interesting.

00:24:18.000 It'll probably help me.

00:24:19.000 Because I don't want to get in trouble, you know?

00:24:21.000 I don't want to get in trouble.

00:24:22.000 And it said, curious about using...

00:24:24.000 This article was in the...

00:24:27.000 It said, curious about using gender-neutral language in your everyday life.

00:24:34.000 Are you curious about using gender-neutral language in your everyday life?

00:24:39.000 Well, some guy just texted me the other day after a speech and gave me really a lot of hell.

00:24:46.000 A guy you knew?

00:24:47.000 He texted you?

00:24:47.000 Yeah.

00:24:49.000 A friend of yours?

00:24:50.000 Well, I haven't seen him in about 30 years.

00:24:51.000 What did he give you hell about?

00:24:53.000 He said I used the word she and he and all this kind of stuff.

00:24:56.000 You can't use she and he? 0.55

00:24:57.000 I don't know.

00:24:58.000 You can. 1.00

00:24:59.000 Tell that guy to fuck off. 1.00

00:25:01.000 You know what? 1.00

00:25:02.000 Unbelievable what you said.

00:25:04.000 Because, listen...

00:25:06.000 One 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.

00:25:21.000 He just sent me a note.

00:25:23.000 I told him that story, and he told me that, well, here's how you can talk, and he told me how I can talk. 1.00

00:25:33.000 But then when he got done, he says, And then go tell that guy to fuck off. 1.00

00:25:40.000 So that's exactly... 1.00

00:25:42.000 Well, here's the thing, Dan.

00:25:43.000 This is great.

00:25:44.000 Here's the thing.

00:25:45.000 I think the reason why that guy gave you hell for something as simple as saying he and she, that highlights what's wrong here.

00:25:53.000 What people are doing with not just gender-neutral language, but with the whole woke movement, politically correct movement...

00:26:01.000 Is they have an opportunity to yell at people and tell people what to do. 0.97

00:26:06.000 It gives assholes and low-status individuals power over other people by enforcing this ideology. 0.98

00:26:13.000 And it doesn't make any sense. 0.99

00:26:15.000 Like, you can say she and he, it doesn't make you a bad person.

00:26:18.000 And if, by the way, if you change genders and you say she and he and it switches back and forth, that's fine too.

00:26:24.000 That's not what I'm talking about.

00:26:25.000 What I'm talking about is the intent behind what you said was entirely innocent. 0.96

00:26:29.000 And 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. 0.97

00:26:37.000 So 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. 1.00

00:26:46.000 That guy can eat shit because people like him are the real problem with this fucking country. 1.00

00:26:50.000 It's not that people aren't kind. 1.00

00:26:52.000 It's not that people aren't friendly.

00:26:53.000 Most people are kind, and most people are friendly.

00:26:55.000 The 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,

00:27:13.000 and it becomes a big part of their life, is enforcing this kind of language And this kind of ideology on other people.

00:27:21.000 That's what's going on today.

00:27:22.000 Well, I like you saying it, because you can say it a lot better than me, but I feel it.

00:27:27.000 Yeah, we all feel it.

00:27:28.000 People feel pressure, but more of us need to stand up against that and highlight who the humans are that are pointing it out. 0.98

00:27:35.000 These are piss-poor humans. 0.97

00:27:37.000 Most of these humans have very little discipline. 0.99

00:27:40.000 Most of these people that are doing it, they're weak of character.

00:27:42.000 The people that are pointing it out and yelling at people for things like, don't use gendered language. 1.00

00:27:48.000 Those people are dipshits. 1.00

00:27:50.000 That's the problem. 1.00

00:27:50.000 And it happened so quick. 1.00

00:27:52.000 It happened so quick because they recognized that through social media, they could form these little bully gangs.

00:27:58.000 And all of them together... 0.96

00:28:00.000 Because a lot of them are losers and they spend a lot of time online and they don't spend a lot of time socializing in the real world. 1.00

00:28:06.000 They live in these fucking Twitter groups and they go attack people for shit that's not that big of a deal. 1.00

00:28:12.000 But they want you to comply. 1.00

00:28:13.000 They 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.

00:28:23.000 And they get together and reinforce each other constantly online.

00:28:25.000 And if you pay attention to them, there's a few people like that that I follow just to see how crazy folks have gotten.

00:28:32.000 They're online 12 hours a day just doing that. 0.95

00:28:34.000 You can't get shit done if you're on Twitter 12 hours a day arguing with people. 0.97

00:28:38.000 You can't. 0.98

00:28:39.000 So these are the type of people that are involved in this sort of behavior.

00:28:42.000 They're not people that you should aspire to be. 0.99

00:28:46.000 They're losers. 0.99

00:28:47.000 You know what? 1.00

00:28:50.000 I like when you're saying that, but I like you're saying it, not me.

00:28:54.000 Because, you know, I have...

00:28:57.000 You're a coach at a university.

00:28:58.000 Well, not anymore, but yeah, I was.

00:29:01.000 You were, I mean, for a long time.

00:29:03.000 But I like...

00:29:05.000 To somehow get those people that you're talking about to see the light.

00:29:12.000 I really would.

00:29:12.000 I would like.

00:29:13.000 And that's kind of a goal of mine, to see the light like that.

00:29:16.000 But I do have my setbacks.

00:29:18.000 The other day, I was having breakfast with my family on a birthday breakfast for one of my grandkids.

00:29:25.000 And we had a big table, you know, full of...

00:29:27.000 We have 23 of us, but one family wasn't there.

00:29:29.000 This one here, the one that's with me today, Danny Olste, he wasn't with me, so he has five of them.

00:29:34.000 So 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...

00:29:43.000 It's not bad.

00:29:44.000 It was $135, but that's $135 for breakfast for a nice little restaurant.

00:29:50.000 And so I went up there, and you have to wear your mask until you get in and sit down and eat.

00:29:57.000 And so then I just got up from eating, and I had my mask in my hand.

00:30:02.000 And I was looking down at the cash register, and the girl that was there said to me, she goes...

00:30:10.000 And I didn't even look at her.

00:30:11.000 She goes...

00:30:13.000 I was looking down, reading the bill, and she said, put that mask on. 1.00

00:30:20.000 And I'm looking down, and I'm not looking up.

00:30:23.000 I'm not looking up, but I lost my cool.

00:30:28.000 And I put my mask on.

00:30:30.000 Because I had it right there.

00:30:31.000 And I was going to put it on anyway, but I just hadn't put it on yet.

00:30:34.000 So I put it on, and I said...

00:30:39.000 You really pissed me off.

00:30:44.000 And she just didn't know what to say.

00:30:47.000 She didn't say a word.

00:30:49.000 It wasn't her place.

00:30:50.000 She was just working there and stuff like that.

00:30:53.000 Pretty young gal. 0.99

00:30:56.000 And then she gave me the bill and she didn't say anything and I didn't say anything.

00:31:00.000 And I gave him the right tip because it was a different lady. 1.00

00:31:05.000 So then I finally looked up and I said, I never forget.

00:31:10.000 That's what I said to her.

00:31:11.000 And the funny thing is, I didn't mean to do harm to her, but... 0.94

00:31:16.000 Probably scared the shit out of her. 0.78

00:31:18.000 Yeah, I know.

00:31:18.000 Because the owner is probably pretty decent friends of my family and all that.

00:31:24.000 Well, there's a way to say it that's nice.

00:31:25.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:31:26.000 Sir, could you please put your mask on?

00:31:27.000 And you would say, oh, I'm sorry.

00:31:28.000 I would have.

00:31:29.000 Because you forget sometimes.

00:31:30.000 It's not a normal thing.

00:31:32.000 I mean, it's become normal over the last year, but it's not a normal thing to remember to put a mask on.

00:31:38.000 No, it's not.

00:31:39.000 Especially when you're working out every day, too.

00:31:43.000 Because you don't really want to wear a mask when you're working out. 0.96

00:31:46.000 That's ridiculous.

00:31:47.000 A lot of people have to at gyms. 1.00

00:31:51.000 I can't wait for this fucking thing to be over. 0.99

00:31:54.000 But that's the thing with the mask thing. 0.99

00:31:56.000 I'm not saying that in this case.

00:31:57.000 I mean, this lady was at work and she probably does feel nervous about people not wearing masks. 0.99

00:32:02.000 But there's a thing where people like to yell at people, put your mask on.

00:32:05.000 Because they know that you have to.

00:32:06.000 And they also know that it's an opportunity for them to tell you what to do.

00:32:10.000 People enjoy telling people what to do. 0.99

00:32:12.000 That's why that dipshit that texted you about gendered language. 1.00

00:32:16.000 He's just telling you what to do. 1.00

00:32:18.000 He enjoys telling you what to do.

00:32:20.000 And, you know, I don't find any of those people to be of impressive character.

00:32:25.000 You know, here's another thing.

00:32:28.000 Because it's quite along the same line.

00:32:31.000 And I hope I don't get emotional on this one.

00:32:34.000 So, you know, when I was 15, I'd won a state championship.

00:32:41.000 And...

00:32:45.000 My first state championship in wrestling.

00:32:47.000 First year as a high school sophomore, because that high school started then.

00:32:53.000 Anyway, long story short, this neighbor kid ended up murdering my sister.

00:33:00.000 And 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.

00:33:19.000 What did he say?

00:33:20.000 He 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,

00:33:36.000 and so...

00:33:40.000 So, 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.

00:33:50.000 It 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.

00:33:59.000 I just figured something, you know, the boys would like to do, you know, but...

00:34:03.000 Anyway, 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.

00:34:16.000 She went to college for a year, and then she worked for my dad after that as a secretary in the real estate business.

00:34:25.000 She didn't show up, so we called the neighbor.

00:34:28.000 Back in those days, she didn't have cell phones, so we had a phone call.

00:34:33.000 That was outside a cabin that we rented.

00:34:36.000 I can date you because the cabin we rented for four bucks a night.

00:34:41.000 It's just unheard of.

00:34:43.000 That would have been 1964. We were at a payphone about a half a block from the cabin that we were renting.

00:34:54.000 We rolled the window down and you put the dime or nickel in the phone.

00:34:59.000 My dad called the I was in the back seat.

00:35:02.000 My mom and dad were in the front.

00:35:03.000 My dad was driving.

00:35:05.000 He called the neighbor and asked if my sister's car was still in the driveway.

00:35:12.000 He said yes.

00:35:13.000 She was supposed to be with us 90 miles away that morning.

00:35:17.000 She didn't show up.

00:35:20.000 So my dad and my mom get really nervous, and they tell them to go break into that house.

00:35:25.000 If you can't get in, break into it, or if she hasn't answered the door, get into that house and call us back.

00:35:32.000 So you can see the tension in the front seat of the car.

00:35:36.000 I can see my mom and dad worrying.

00:35:37.000 The phone rings finally about 15 minutes later, and all of a sudden, my dad drops the phone.

00:35:47.000 My mom was starting to go hysterical to know what was wrong.

00:35:54.000 He looked over, and I'll never forget this, being a 15-year-old kid.

00:35:57.000 My dad said to her, Diane's not alive.

00:36:04.000 And oh my God.

00:36:05.000 You know, it's just my mom opened the door of the car.

00:36:09.000 She took off running back to the block to the cabin. 1.00

00:36:12.000 I got out and ran after her. 0.96

00:36:14.000 And when I followed her into the cabin by that time, she was already on the floor.

00:36:18.000 And she had grabbed her hair and she was pulling her head, hitting the wooden floor.

00:36:23.000 And she looked up and she had blood all over her forehead.

00:36:27.000 And So my dad then followed in, and we packed up real quick.

00:36:34.000 In about 10 minutes, we left half the stuff there, and we took off from my hometown, 90 miles away.

00:36:39.000 But within a half hour of that phone call, I was in the back seat, and there was a lot of trauma going on in that front seat.

00:36:48.000 And I said to my dad, Dad, I may know something about this.

00:36:56.000 I don't know for sure, but I may.

00:36:58.000 And he overreacted.

00:37:00.000 He slammed the car, the brakes on the car, got out of the car, came around, opened the door, pulled me out, slammed me against the door.

00:37:07.000 What do you mean?

00:37:08.000 You may know something about it.

00:37:09.000 And 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.

00:37:18.000 And he just hugged me and threw me back in the car.

00:37:21.000 And we stopped at the next town, which is about 15 miles later, and went into the police station.

00:37:26.000 And 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.

00:37:42.000 So they called ahead to the Waterloo Police Department.

00:37:45.000 The Waterloo Police located, he was at work sacking groceries the next day in a grocery store.

00:37:52.000 And he'd actually admitted right there that he did it, you know, after they got him.

00:37:58.000 But the thing is, what's amazing is...

00:38:04.000 This guy, then he escaped from prison after about 20...

00:38:07.000 He was only 16. He got life in penitentiary.

00:38:11.000 And he escaped, and that pretty much doomed him to ever getting out.

00:38:18.000 And 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.

00:38:35.000 So anyway, this guy goes to prison and he lives and he dies in prison after he broke out.

00:38:46.000 He never really got a chance to ever let him out.

00:38:48.000 But here's the thing.

00:38:50.000 So it's just about, I don't know, say it's seven, eight years ago when he passed away.

00:38:55.000 But we got another cabin now.

00:38:57.000 It's about 30 miles north of the cabin that we were in that time.

00:39:01.000 And that was a rental cabin that's torn down now.

00:39:04.000 And we go right by that place.

00:39:07.000 So we're going right by that place.

00:39:10.000 Actually, me and my wife had been at our cabin that my mom and dad owned, and I inherited it when they passed on.

00:39:18.000 But 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.

00:39:30.000 And there's a cell phone call.

00:39:33.000 It's the warden.

00:39:36.000 Of the prison he's in.

00:39:38.000 I think it was Indiana.

00:39:41.000 He was in Indiana, the prison.

00:39:43.000 And the warden told me that The guy that murdered your sister just died.

00:39:52.000 The 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.

00:40:02.000 So it's like spooky.

00:40:03.000 It's like real spooky.

00:40:04.000 And then what's really amazing is what he said to me, the warden.

00:40:09.000 He said, before he died, He was seeing a counselor, and the counselor told me this, that he said, you know, he repented.

00:40:21.000 He said, I really shouldn't have.

00:40:23.000 I feel bad about killing Diane Gable.

00:40:27.000 I 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.

00:40:45.000 You know, oh my God.

00:40:46.000 He said he knew he was going to kill somebody? 0.94

00:40:48.000 He said he knew he was going to kill somebody.

00:40:50.000 Just who he was? 0.62

00:40:52.000 Yep.

00:40:52.000 And they told me that.

00:40:54.000 And, you know, I cried for an hour.

00:40:59.000 And it got a lot out of me.

00:41:01.000 But, 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.

00:41:22.000 And it was probably not too flory.

00:41:24.000 He probably did it on his deathbed or something, but he probably had all this guilt.

00:41:27.000 But it helped me too.

00:41:30.000 It 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.

00:41:41.000 And I think that really helped me with my situation because you always feel a little guilty because maybe you could have saved her life.

00:41:51.000 But more than that, it's been something that I based my whole life on too.

00:41:58.000 Just communication.

00:42:00.000 I mean, this is your business, communication.

00:42:02.000 I mean, sometimes my wife tells me I'm telling her too much.

00:42:06.000 You know, you don't need to tell me.

00:42:07.000 You know, we don't need to talk about this.

00:42:08.000 I said, yeah, I do.

00:42:09.000 I do.

00:42:10.000 You know, I need to talk about it.

00:42:12.000 It's not just that.

00:42:13.000 It's just anything that crops up.

00:42:14.000 I need to go home and I need to have a conversation with somebody that I like and love.

00:42:23.000 And to be able to see whether I'm doing the right thing or I'm not doing the right thing or I'm getting feelings.

00:42:29.000 It's like right now talking to you.

00:42:31.000 I love the conversation and I love what you're saying.

00:42:35.000 Even though I may not feel exactly the same way you do, I love it that you're saying it because you're saying it the way I want to say it.

00:42:44.000 And I probably do behind my back.

00:42:46.000 I 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...

00:42:57.000 Because I've been through so many kids and...

00:43:00.000 I've just seen some of the things that you've done with these kids and how you've made big differences.

00:43:07.000 Just like Rico Ciparelli, which you're talking about.

00:43:09.000 Just like a kid named Brad Penrith, who had a twin, and he was not going to make it in life very far.

00:43:19.000 By changing him, like, for example, Brad was, he needed to stop drinking, you know, for good.

00:43:25.000 You know, he couldn't drink.

00:43:26.000 I mean, like, right now, I can drink a beer.

00:43:28.000 I'm not going to go crazy.

00:43:29.000 But if he drank a beer or two, he'd go crazy.

00:43:31.000 I'd get in trouble every time.

00:43:32.000 Every time he had a...

00:43:37.000 Got in trouble.

00:43:39.000 It was alcohol-related.

00:43:40.000 And I didn't even know it.

00:43:43.000 What'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.

00:43:57.000 And it was the first time he ever made the paper.

00:43:59.000 They picked him up for intoxication.

00:44:02.000 Well, you know what?

00:44:03.000 Once they looked him up, He'd already been arrested quite a few times the year before, and they never even put his name in the paper.

00:44:13.000 But once he became a famous guy, he made the headlines.

00:44:17.000 And so I didn't even know.

00:44:18.000 If I'd have known he'd been getting in trouble, I'd probably been working on him before.

00:44:21.000 But it's one of these things that...

00:44:26.000 It's like who you are.

00:44:28.000 It's who you are sometimes.

00:44:30.000 But he did well.

00:44:32.000 He ended up being a three-time All-American.

00:44:34.000 He got in the national finals three times.

00:44:37.000 And he won.

00:44:38.000 He got beat both times, the other ones.

00:44:40.000 But, you know, it was controversial.

00:44:42.000 There's calls.

00:44:43.000 Could have went his way.

00:44:45.000 And he went to become a world silver medalist in the world championships.

00:44:49.000 But you know what he had to do?

00:44:51.000 He had to He's one of these guys that he can't drink.

00:44:55.000 So he gave it up.

00:44:56.000 And he hasn't had a drink ever since.

00:44:59.000 And he's in his 50s now.

00:45:01.000 And he's doing really well.

00:45:02.000 Good wife.

00:45:03.000 Good kids.

00:45:04.000 Here I am.

00:45:05.000 I have a beer.

00:45:05.000 And we're probably going to drink a beer here sometime.

00:45:08.000 But some people can't drink.

00:45:12.000 That's just the way it is.

00:45:13.000 It is just the way it is.

00:45:16.000 So this guy just figured it out.

00:45:19.000 Well, let me tell you.

00:45:21.000 Going into his senior year, he got in trouble.

00:45:24.000 And my AD called me in.

00:45:27.000 His name was Bump Elliott.

00:45:28.000 He just passed away a couple years ago.

00:45:30.000 He's a great, great AD. And he said, Gable, you're winning all these titles.

00:45:36.000 You don't need this kid on your team.

00:45:39.000 He's been in trouble too many times.

00:45:42.000 And I want you to kick him off.

00:45:44.000 I don't know if he said kick.

00:45:45.000 I want you to take him off the roster.

00:45:48.000 And right there, I just froze because I knew this was his only thing.

00:45:56.000 And if this is his only thing that's holding him together, we've got to figure something out.

00:46:00.000 And I told my athletic director about his history, where he come from.

00:46:06.000 He's got a twin brother.

00:46:08.000 His twin brother's not getting any wrestling.

00:46:10.000 He's all kinds of this and that.

00:46:13.000 And I said a few things, and I said, the one thing in his life that is good is wrestling.

00:46:18.000 I said, do we want to take that out of him?

00:46:21.000 You know, after actually talking to a guy that would listen, he looks at me and he goes, you know, I'll buy that.

00:46:28.000 But let me tell you, this is what we got to do.

00:46:31.000 In-house treatment for 30 days in a hospital.

00:46:34.000 And if you can't do that, and he can't successfully come out, then he's off.

00:46:40.000 And he went in 30 days.

00:46:42.000 He came out, never drank since.

00:46:44.000 And that was 1988, 1987 or 88. And here it is, 2021. He's got a nice wife, nice kids, and he's doing well in his life.

00:46:55.000 And some good decisions by a coach and an athletic director.

00:46:59.000 That's awesome.

00:47:00.000 Yeah.

00:47:03.000 I love hearing stories like that.

00:47:05.000 Some people really can't drink.

00:47:07.000 Yeah, 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.

00:47:23.000 Well, 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.

00:47:34.000 Those days, they should have probably happened.

00:47:36.000 I shouldn't have let it go that far.

00:47:37.000 But 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.

00:47:48.000 It 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.

00:48:00.000 And You know, that was probably not the right way to go about things.

00:48:04.000 I should have had them to where I didn't have to do that.

00:48:07.000 But, you know, you just, you have, you're winning the Big Tens every year, you're winning the Nassos every year.

00:48:16.000 Sometimes you just, you lose control.

00:48:18.000 And, uh, It's kind of like how I lost my last match in college, and that's another whole story.

00:48:23.000 But you win a lot, and sometimes you think you can cut corners.

00:48:28.000 Well, you had gone undefeated your entire college career until your last match.

00:48:34.000 Entire high school career and entire.

00:48:36.000 So seven years.

00:48:37.000 And that was in Scholastic Wrestling.

00:48:40.000 Not freestyle wrestling, because I didn't start wrestling freestyle until in college, but that's the international style.

00:48:48.000 And I did lose there.

00:48:49.000 But for scholastic wrestling, high school I was undefeated, and then I was undefeated in college until my last match.

00:49:03.000 My coaches, and here I was going to become a coach.

00:49:08.000 I 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.

00:49:15.000 So I'm going into the national championship, and it's like, wow.

00:49:22.000 I'm the show.

00:49:23.000 I mean, I couldn't look at a newspaper because I was on the front page of the Tribune and sports pages.

00:49:29.000 It was in Evanston, Illinois.

00:49:32.000 And every place I'd go, people would come up to me and all this kind of stuff.

00:49:38.000 So 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.

00:49:51.000 Except for one guy.

00:49:52.000 One guy actually said I can beat him.

00:49:56.000 But he didn't tell me.

00:49:57.000 He forgot to tell me.

00:49:59.000 So I didn't take him for granted.

00:50:00.000 I took him for granted.

00:50:02.000 And so I always went through routines, warming up, getting ready mentally.

00:50:06.000 We weighed in five hours before a match.

00:50:09.000 From then on, you ate and drank a little bit.

00:50:11.000 And then focus, focus, rest, focus, focus.

00:50:15.000 I was doing interviews with Wide World Sport.

00:50:21.000 Right during the national finals.

00:50:23.000 And I wasn't the talker.

00:50:25.000 Like, I could talk pretty good now.

00:50:27.000 Because I learned to talk.

00:50:29.000 But at that time, off the mat, I couldn't talk to anybody.

00:50:33.000 And so when they put a mic in front of me and they wanted to know about, hey, just say this.

00:50:40.000 Say, hey, I'm Dan Gable.

00:50:43.000 Come watch me next week on Wide World of Sport as I finish my career 182-0.

00:50:51.000 And I hadn't wrestled the match yet.

00:50:53.000 And so I was supposed to say that.

00:50:57.000 But you think I could say that?

00:50:59.000 Hell no, I couldn't say that.

00:51:01.000 I kept stuttering, not saying it, and they kept doing it.

00:51:05.000 So finally, after about 15 takes, they wrote it out on big cards.

00:51:11.000 And so I took about seven takes with that one.

00:51:13.000 I think I got it done in about 22 takes.

00:51:15.000 But then when I got it done, it wasn't good either.

00:51:17.000 They just finally said, oh, that's good enough.

00:51:18.000 Get out of here.

00:51:19.000 So I turned.

00:51:21.000 I'm on deck.

00:51:24.000 I'm on deck.

00:51:25.000 So they already went through the 118, 126, 134, and I was 142 at that time.

00:51:30.000 So 134 is just wrestling.

00:51:33.000 And I always warmed up for a good 45 minutes to an hour.

00:51:37.000 So I hit a quick warm-up and went out in that match.

00:51:40.000 And I didn't realize there was somebody that actually thought they could beat me.

00:51:47.000 Even though before, I always did the routine.

00:51:49.000 I went through it.

00:51:50.000 But I'll tell you what.

00:51:51.000 You skip once, you're vulnerable.

00:51:53.000 For the only time in my life that within a minute into the match, I could hear the crowd.

00:52:00.000 A minute into the match, I could feel how I felt.

00:52:05.000 And I was feeling tired and weak.

00:52:08.000 I mean, I never knew how you felt in a wrestling match until the match was over.

00:52:14.000 And once it was over, Yeah, sometimes I felt good, but sometimes I felt weak and tired.

00:52:20.000 But I didn't show it because I didn't think about it.

00:52:23.000 I didn't know it.

00:52:24.000 But the one time he didn't prepare, and the guy thinking that he could go with you, And you could.

00:52:33.000 You take on everything.

00:52:36.000 So you take on way more than just your opponent.

00:52:39.000 And so I talked myself into wrestling after minute one.

00:52:44.000 I kept saying, I gotta keep going.

00:52:46.000 I gotta keep working hard.

00:52:47.000 And so I got an early lead.

00:52:49.000 Just a quick first takedown.

00:52:52.000 But I kept feeling how tired I was.

00:52:55.000 And I kept hearing the crowd.

00:52:56.000 Why do you think you were so tired?

00:52:58.000 Because I didn't warm up.

00:53:00.000 I was doing talking.

00:53:02.000 I was not focusing on my match.

00:53:04.000 Concentration.

00:53:05.000 No warm-up had that much of an effect on your conditioning.

00:53:08.000 I used to be a pretty...

00:53:10.000 Well, even today, as you get older, you notice how if you don't warm up and you hit something really hard, you get exhausted.

00:53:18.000 It's probably kind of like that...

00:53:22.000 Usually, 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.

00:53:37.000 But then after that, you'd probably have a little...

00:53:39.000 Drink and get ready to go.

00:53:42.000 What would you do for a warm-up?

00:53:43.000 You had a very specific routine?

00:53:45.000 Pretty much.

00:53:45.000 Pretty much, you know, stretching and jogging and then actually wrestling.

00:53:51.000 Actually wrestling pretty hard.

00:53:53.000 And to where you would actually sweating good.

00:53:57.000 And then I actually got to the point where if I had a lot of time before my match, I would actually go take another shower.

00:54:05.000 But usually when you're the fourth guy out or something, you just kind of stayed loose.

00:54:11.000 But you didn't really.

00:54:12.000 And then right before your match again, you might get your heart rate up again.

00:54:16.000 Because your heart rate didn't really go down below 100 probably.

00:54:20.000 And in a wrestling match, it's probably going up to 170, 180, stuff like that.

00:54:25.000 But 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.

00:54:34.000 You'd still be tired.

00:54:35.000 You'd want to be tired.

00:54:35.000 So 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.

00:54:42.000 We do hand fighting, a lot of hand fighting.

00:54:44.000 And 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.

00:54:55.000 And you do some sprints and do some tumbling, gymnastics tumbling.

00:54:59.000 But in this match, no warm-up at all?

00:55:02.000 When I got done with the 20-second take of the...

00:55:08.000 And I had that match to warm up.

00:55:10.000 So I probably had 10 minutes instead of my normal 45 minutes or so.

00:55:16.000 But I thought I was still ready.

00:55:19.000 But it was something out of my control, actually.

00:55:22.000 And it took me over.

00:55:24.000 But I did talk my way into...

00:55:26.000 Because I got ahead, but then I got real far behind.

00:55:31.000 I mean, I was behind by six points.

00:55:34.000 And then I got ahead by two or three points.

00:55:39.000 And that was right towards the end of the match.

00:55:42.000 And then there was a flurry.

00:55:46.000 Could have went either way, but the referee went his way. 0.55

00:55:49.000 And that's the way it is.

00:55:51.000 I mean, it's just, it's just, that's calls.

00:55:56.000 Does that haunt you to this day?

00:55:58.000 Oh, of course it haunts me.

00:55:59.000 But guess what?

00:56:02.000 I needed that loss.

00:56:05.000 I really did.

00:56:07.000 That loss took me to unbelievable heights that I would have never had without that loss.

00:56:13.000 What'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.

00:56:22.000 Or not even on purpose, just because I didn't know how to handle it.

00:56:26.000 I wanted to be an Olympic champion.

00:56:28.000 I wanted to be a world champion.

00:56:29.000 But when I won that match, there was so much hype.

00:56:32.000 I didn't know how to handle it.

00:56:34.000 He said, even broke up my marriage.

00:56:37.000 He was married, I guess.

00:56:38.000 That's what he claimed.

00:56:39.000 He claims.

00:56:40.000 And he probably came home and just didn't know how to...

00:56:44.000 You know, you're not supposed to be...

00:56:45.000 It's kind of like with me when going downtown that night.

00:56:48.000 You know, I probably shouldn't have been...

00:56:49.000 But my wife is behind us and everything, but I probably shouldn't have stayed there.

00:56:53.000 Sometimes I didn't tell you this.

00:56:54.000 Sometimes I stayed at the bar for a little while and then came home.

00:56:57.000 But, you know, I probably shouldn't have stayed at the bar.

00:56:59.000 And 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.

00:57:11.000 They would...

00:57:13.000 Go have dinner.

00:57:14.000 And 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.

00:57:20.000 And 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. 0.86

00:57:26.000 Going 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.

00:57:34.000 But you do it not as an athlete, you do it as a coach.

00:57:38.000 And I think about ending my marriage because my wife, I think, was pretty upset with me.

00:57:47.000 And then I got upset with my wife about things.

00:57:51.000 And so we struggled pretty hard.

00:57:53.000 And you'd think you'd learn, but sometimes you forget.

00:58:04.000 And that loss...

00:58:07.000 Well, I don't forget.

00:58:09.000 Yeah, I'd love to have won that match.

00:58:10.000 I would have loved to have won that match, but not how I won it.

00:58:13.000 Because I could have got the call at the end, too, and maybe still won the match.

00:58:16.000 Could have went overtime.

00:58:18.000 But you think the loss was very important.

00:58:20.000 That'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...

00:58:29.000 Well, look at my sister. 1.00

00:58:30.000 Low moment in my life of all time.

00:58:33.000 And pretty much dedicated my life to that moment as far as how I was going to make her proud.

00:58:42.000 You know, that type of stuff.

00:58:45.000 It'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.

00:59:04.000 Right.

00:59:05.000 But, you know, another thing that I really was scared of in my life, that when My mom and dad wouldn't make it together.

00:59:18.000 And it started at a pretty young age.

00:59:21.000 And it went all through high school.

00:59:24.000 Because even after my sister was murdered as a 10th grader, it didn't let up in my household.

00:59:30.000 A lot of late night drinking and yelling.

00:59:33.000 And before that 10th grade, it was just mad at each other about something.

00:59:39.000 But then after that, a lot of it was about that murder.

00:59:43.000 And they'd blame each other and stuff like that.

00:59:48.000 We did move back into the same house because they never found the murder weapon.

00:59:54.000 It was a knife.

00:59:55.000 It could have been one of our knives.

00:59:58.000 And there was a lot of blood all over our house.

01:00:03.000 And...

01:00:06.000 They didn't want to move back in, but I convinced them that we should move back in.

01:00:12.000 One 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, 0.98

01:00:27.000 and I was in bed, and I heard my mom say something that I thought was really stupid. 0.99

01:00:36.000 She said, I wish I would have raised her a whore because she didn't give in. 1.00

01:00:42.000 She could have gave in. 1.00

01:00:43.000 She would still be alive when I heard that.

01:00:46.000 I got up and I came out.

01:00:50.000 And our home really hadn't become a home again.

01:00:53.000 It had been a house.

01:00:53.000 We moved back in it, but it hadn't gone.

01:00:55.000 Her bedroom was like just there.

01:00:57.000 It was just there and the door was always closed.

01:01:01.000 And so I looked at him and I said, you know what?

01:01:04.000 I'm tired of this fighting.

01:01:05.000 And I just heard the conversation that was going on.

01:01:08.000 I am moving out of my bedroom.

01:01:10.000 I'm moving it right now.

01:01:12.000 I'm going into her room and her room is going to become my room and I'm staying there starting right now.

01:01:18.000 So I went in, opened the door, went in, closed the door, went to bed, got underneath her covers, went to bed.

01:01:23.000 That room probably hadn't been, nobody had been in that room for 30 days, probably 45 days.

01:01:31.000 About 10 minutes later, I heard the door.

01:01:34.000 They thought I was sleeping.

01:01:35.000 They looked inside and saw me sleeping in there, but I wasn't sleeping.

01:01:39.000 I don't think I slept that night at all.

01:01:40.000 But that is the turnaround for the Gable family in that house.

01:01:45.000 We stayed in that house.

01:01:47.000 And 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.

01:01:58.000 So when you went away, they could go to all these events.

01:02:01.000 Hell, 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. 0.88

01:02:12.000 And 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.

01:02:25.000 It wasn't that easy to find out.

01:02:27.000 So all of a sudden, it comes over.

01:02:28.000 It's typed.

01:02:29.000 And it was a headline across the paper.

01:02:32.000 It said, Dan Gable wins world championship.

01:02:35.000 My 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!

01:02:51.000 My kid's a world champion.

01:02:53.000 That kind of stuff is just...

01:02:56.000 You can't make that kind of stuff up.

01:02:59.000 It's just amazing that...

01:03:05.000 But anyway, so what happened is I found out once I went to college that my mom and dad really liked each other.

01:03:10.000 I never knew that.

01:03:11.000 Because now they only had each other.

01:03:14.000 And I wasn't there.

01:03:15.000 But they could follow me.

01:03:17.000 And they followed me for every...

01:03:19.000 And they wrote me every day.

01:03:24.000 So I'd get mail every day.

01:03:26.000 I'd go to the mailbox and I'd have a letter from my mom every day.

01:03:31.000 Seven days a week when I was gone.

01:03:33.000 Only 90 miles.

01:03:34.000 And 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.

01:03:46.000 So my mom would send me in.

01:03:49.000 She'd have a little letter and she'd say, here's some money from the high C and how you doing or something like that.

01:03:55.000 And there would always be a quarter, a nickel, a dime, you know, that type of stuff in there.

01:04:00.000 So it's pretty amazing.

01:04:02.000 And she did that three or four times a week.

01:04:05.000 I would get change in the mail.

01:04:07.000 But, you know, not a whole lot.

01:04:08.000 I was getting a full-ride scholarship.

01:04:10.000 That day, you got $25 a month for whatever you wanted to spend it on from the school.

01:04:16.000 And then my dad gave me an extra $20 a month.

01:04:19.000 And that was all he was costing him, $20.

01:04:22.000 Well, he did more than that because he bought me a car, a nice little car, to send me off to college and, you know, that type of stuff.

01:04:30.000 But, you know, it's pretty amazing that, you know, what...

01:04:34.000 When you find out stuff that they really like you, but yet they still need some common person to follow.

01:04:39.000 And I was that guy.

01:04:41.000 When I was in high school, I... I was a state champ as a sophomore, which is the first year of high school.

01:04:51.000 Then I won state champion as a junior, but I was wrestling.

01:04:54.000 My weight was 95 as a sophomore and 103 as a junior.

01:04:58.000 In college, the first weights were 118, and my dad thought I should be getting bigger.

01:05:02.000 Plus, I was pretty skinny.

01:05:06.000 And 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.

01:05:21.000 It's going to be with a cement crew.

01:05:23.000 He says, you're going to be hauling bags, 94-pound bags of Portland Bank of cement.

01:05:28.000 You're going to be digging and shoveling cement.

01:05:30.000 You're going to be digging holes.

01:05:33.000 You'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.

01:05:42.000 You'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.

01:05:48.000 And so he got me a job.

01:05:52.000 When I was 16 years old, I was still 16 yet in the summer of my junior year.

01:05:58.000 So he got me a job.

01:06:02.000 Little did I know.

01:06:04.000 Again, it's the old days.

01:06:06.000 This is what's good about the old days.

01:06:08.000 They had to be 18 to get the job.

01:06:11.000 It 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.

01:06:23.000 And 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.

01:06:29.000 So he says, I'll keep him off the books.

01:06:32.000 We'll hire him anyway.

01:06:34.000 But he says, you know, we'll just pay him under the cash under the table.

01:06:39.000 But my dad says, you don't even have to pay him.

01:06:41.000 I'll pay you.

01:06:43.000 So 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.

01:06:52.000 I didn't realize there was people that were just putting their hours in, some of them.

01:06:57.000 And I was working arms and legs around these guys, carrying, running.

01:07:02.000 And the people kind of looked at me funny for a while, but then they realized I was on a mission.

01:07:09.000 Finally, 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.

01:07:20.000 We're going to pay your son.

01:07:21.000 We'll just do it under the table as well.

01:07:24.000 We're going to pay him.

01:07:25.000 We're not going to let you pay him.

01:07:26.000 You're not going to have to pay him.

01:07:27.000 He's working everybody under the table.

01:07:29.000 He's getting along with everybody.

01:07:30.000 In fact, at lunches, before we eat lunch, he always wants to wrestle everybody on the crew.

01:07:36.000 And the first day, these guys, they're old-timers, but they're big guys.

01:07:40.000 He's wrestling 103, so he's probably up to 125 right now.

01:07:44.000 And he's 125 pounds, and these 250-pound guys, they can't beat him. 0.99

01:07:49.000 He said he's kicking the shit out of every one of them. 0.99

01:07:51.000 And they love him. 0.99

01:07:53.000 And they're having a great time with him.

01:07:54.000 In fact, they're giving him all the hard work.

01:07:56.000 In fact, when he moves those 94-pound bags of cement off the truck to where they're supposed to go...

01:08:04.000 That's not enough for him.

01:08:05.000 So they tell him to move those bags again to the other side of the house.

01:08:09.000 So it's just crazy, and they're all loving it.

01:08:13.000 So, you know, we're going to pay your son.

01:08:15.000 We're going to pay your son.

01:08:16.000 So, you know, my dad was looking out for me.

01:08:18.000 They looked out for my dad.

01:08:20.000 That's the good old days.

01:08:21.000 The police were looking out for my dad.

01:08:24.000 I don't know if we're looking out for many people today.

01:08:29.000 And if we are, it's probably of the like.

01:08:31.000 And you know what?

01:08:32.000 We all need to be of the like.

01:08:36.000 So you used that job as a workout?

01:08:40.000 Eight hours a day.

01:08:41.000 Did you gain any weight from that?

01:08:43.000 I couldn't.

01:08:44.000 But I gained strength.

01:08:46.000 Wow.

01:08:46.000 Because, you know what?

01:08:48.000 I wasn't carrying 94-pound bags.

01:08:49.000 I put three of them on there.

01:08:51.000 So you take 94 times three.

01:08:52.000 And that's what I was carrying as a 125-pound kid.

01:08:55.000 Jesus.

01:08:56.000 Yeah.

01:08:56.000 So I'd unload them because they'd load them up on me, on my arms, and I'd carry them over to where they're supposed to be.

01:09:00.000 Couldn't pick them up all at one time.

01:09:02.000 So, you know, I was crazy.

01:09:03.000 I was crazy.

01:09:04.000 I was definitely crazy.

01:09:05.000 And I used to run to work sometimes, and it was a couple miles away, and then run home.

01:09:09.000 But guess what?

01:09:09.000 I always had a fight.

01:09:10.000 So we'd get home about 530. My high school had an open practice for wrestling from 530 to 630 every night after that work.

01:09:18.000 So I'd go to work all day, weightlifting all day.

01:09:21.000 Then I'd go to wrestling practice for an hour.

01:09:23.000 Independent wrestling practice.

01:09:24.000 Just open the mat, and somebody would always show up.

01:09:27.000 I would always show up, and somebody would always show up that I could wrestle.

01:09:29.000 So I was getting all that work, eight hours of weightlifting in a hard type, because I would go crazy.

01:09:36.000 I'd run back to get the bags, run between things, and then I'd go to wrestling practice for an hour.

01:09:41.000 So then I'd go home and eat.

01:09:42.000 I'd go to bed.

01:09:43.000 So I was sleeping by 8 o'clock, 8.30 every night, because you had to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning and go to work.

01:09:49.000 But I'll tell you, it made you tough.

01:09:52.000 It made you tough.

01:09:53.000 And there's a lot of things that you did back in those days that you now know that maybe you can't...

01:09:59.000 There's easier ways to...

01:10:00.000 Not easier way.

01:10:02.000 Smarter ways to do things that you probably wouldn't take...

01:10:07.000 Give you some more longevity.

01:10:08.000 Because, you know, I've worn out my hips.

01:10:10.000 I mean, I've got six hips, you know.

01:10:11.000 I've got my own, too, and I've got four others.

01:10:15.000 You've had how many hip replacements?

01:10:16.000 Let's have some of your beer.

01:10:18.000 You've got some Gable beer.

01:10:20.000 Yeah, hey, you know what?

01:10:22.000 That's some of the rewards you get.

01:10:27.000 People name beer after you.

01:10:29.000 I got a nutrition drink.

01:10:30.000 This Gable beer comes out.

01:10:32.000 It's a brewery one half a block from the Gable Museum in Waterloo, Iowa.

01:10:38.000 What's the name of the brewery?

01:10:39.000 Single Speed Brewery.

01:10:41.000 Guess who owns it?

01:10:42.000 Dave Morgan.

01:10:43.000 Guess who Dave Morgan is?

01:10:44.000 State Champion Wrestler out of New Hampshire.

01:10:47.000 About 30 miles north of Waterloo.

01:10:48.000 That's a good beer.

01:10:49.000 It better be.

01:10:53.000 I sampled it.

01:10:54.000 It's good.

01:10:55.000 You don't think I want a bad beer?

01:10:56.000 No, it's a good beer.

01:10:58.000 No, it's a good beer.

01:10:58.000 Yeah, it's a good beer.

01:10:59.000 You know, here's the thing.

01:11:01.000 It's been in two contests.

01:11:03.000 It's the biggest contest, two out in Denver somewhere.

01:11:07.000 And the first year, I didn't get an award.

01:11:12.000 So I said, you know, like, what are we going to do about that?

01:11:16.000 Because...

01:11:17.000 I don't like a beer out there without an award.

01:11:20.000 I wanted one of these prizes.

01:11:21.000 And they said, well, you know what?

01:11:23.000 We got the information that the judges gave us.

01:11:26.000 We're going to take that.

01:11:27.000 We're going to make it better.

01:11:28.000 So they made it better.

01:11:31.000 So the next year they went back and they got...

01:11:33.000 They might have got a bronze medal or they might have got one round of placing or something.

01:11:40.000 But they survived the cut and went a long way.

01:11:43.000 And they felt pretty good to me.

01:11:45.000 And I said...

01:11:50.000 It's not gold.

01:11:53.000 So 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.

01:12:01.000 There'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.

01:12:11.000 Olympic silver medalist, Olympic bronze, Olympic silver medalist as well.

01:12:15.000 He works up there and they made a nutrition drink in the last year.

01:12:19.000 It's called Gable Gold.

01:12:20.000 So I got a Gable beer.

01:12:22.000 It's a Munich-style Helles.

01:12:24.000 That's where I won the Munichs.

01:12:26.000 And if you read it on there, what's it say?

01:12:28.000 It says, Gable.

01:12:30.000 One word can say so much.

01:12:33.000 In our city, few words, if any, resonate with the name Gable.

01:12:43.000 I can't even read it.

01:12:44.000 I've got to get my glasses here a little bit better.

01:12:46.000 He 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.

01:13:05.000 He says, it's crisp and cold.

01:13:07.000 We can't think of a more fitting tribute.

01:13:10.000 So Dave Morgan got this beer.

01:13:13.000 People love it.

01:13:14.000 They want to get it outside Iowa, but it only is in Iowa.

01:13:17.000 Because I found out you can't sell it outside without going through a lot of...

01:13:20.000 So it goes to the border.

01:13:21.000 Now, I've snuck it across the border a few times.

01:13:23.000 We've got it here.

01:13:24.000 We're in Texas.

01:13:25.000 We snuck it across the border.

01:13:28.000 We hid it in a package.

01:13:30.000 It's kind of a shame that you can't sell this out.

01:13:32.000 It's very good.

01:13:33.000 Well, it'd probably go to another level.

01:13:36.000 Yes, it would.

01:13:37.000 I'd buy this.

01:13:39.000 100%.

01:13:39.000 I'd keep it stocked here in the studio.

01:13:41.000 Well, we're talking about me, but all my friends, when they found out I'm coming down here, They all have got a hold of me.

01:13:49.000 And they all want to tell me, tell them hi, and tell them this, tell them that, and tell them I'm their number one fan.

01:13:56.000 And so, you know, you're a big deal.

01:13:58.000 I just want you to know that.

01:13:59.000 You're a big deal.

01:14:01.000 And you know that, but it's not like you care as much as like me.

01:14:06.000 I want to be successful, and I want to win.

01:14:08.000 I want to do all this great stuff, but that's just part of what I want to do.

01:14:12.000 It's not a big deal.

01:14:13.000 It's just what I want to do.

01:14:15.000 And so if people have a beer to celebrate with, great.

01:14:18.000 Now, I do have a limit.

01:14:20.000 And I've got a book here, too, and it says, Know Your Limits.

01:14:24.000 There's a chapter in that book.

01:14:25.000 What's the limit?

01:14:26.000 Well, for me, it's a little different than most.

01:14:28.000 Whatever you think you can limit.

01:14:30.000 For me, it's...

01:14:32.000 32 ounces.

01:14:33.000 And I usually just say two beers, but these are 12 ounces, so I could have two and a half of these.

01:14:37.000 But that was back in a few years ago.

01:14:39.000 I'm getting older.

01:14:40.000 I don't know if I can still do that limit.

01:14:43.000 Because 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.

01:14:55.000 So you've got to be smart.

01:14:58.000 Got to know your limits.

01:14:58.000 Yeah, you've got to know your limits.

01:14:59.000 How many hip replacements have you had?

01:15:01.000 Well, I owned my own, too, because I had two pretty good ones.

01:15:05.000 But when I was, let's see, when I was 48, well, actually, I went out to run when I was 38. And all of a sudden, my hip started hurting.

01:15:20.000 So I ran through my hip for 10 years.

01:15:24.000 If you run far enough, you didn't have a hip pain.

01:15:27.000 The pain of running.

01:15:28.000 The arthritis, right.

01:15:29.000 Right.

01:15:29.000 The pain of running.

01:15:31.000 Just the hurtness.

01:15:33.000 You can't breathe.

01:15:34.000 You're running hard. 1.00

01:15:35.000 So for 10 years, I was stupid. 0.99

01:15:38.000 Because I didn't really know what it was. 0.99

01:15:40.000 And I didn't really pay any attention.

01:15:41.000 You just gutted it out.

01:15:42.000 Yeah.

01:15:42.000 So finally, when I was 48, I jumped out of bed one morning.

01:15:47.000 And when I jumped out of bed, I collapsed.

01:15:50.000 And I felt something crunch.

01:15:53.000 Couldn't get up.

01:15:54.000 It was my last year of coaching, actually.

01:15:57.000 And I didn't know it was going to be my last year of coaching.

01:16:01.000 But 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,

01:16:17.000 but a certain doctor where you bring him in when there's a big accident.

01:16:22.000 And they brought me into his place.

01:16:25.000 And he looked at it and he says, wow.

01:16:30.000 You got a bad hip.

01:16:32.000 Really bad.

01:16:32.000 And you just fractured it.

01:16:34.000 It just splintered.

01:16:35.000 It splintered.

01:16:36.000 When you jumped out of bed this morning.

01:16:38.000 It has been so fragile.

01:16:39.000 It just splintered.

01:16:41.000 And I had been kind of working through the pain for 10 years.

01:16:44.000 So I had to get it fixed during that season.

01:16:49.000 And so when I got it fixed, Immediately it felt good.

01:16:53.000 Immediately.

01:16:54.000 But then I didn't realize my other one was hurting.

01:16:58.000 Because that one had the most pain.

01:17:00.000 So it was overtaking the other one, even though the other one was bad.

01:17:03.000 So he says, we've got to do that other one.

01:17:06.000 I said, wow.

01:17:07.000 So it took a while.

01:17:09.000 It took four, five, six months to heal, to get back going.

01:17:12.000 So then they had to wait a little while, and then they did the other one.

01:17:15.000 So I, you know, it was...

01:17:21.000 Made me think a lot.

01:17:24.000 And you know, I don't think that's what got me out of wrestling.

01:17:27.000 I think what got me out of wrestling is what I kind of referred to earlier.

01:17:33.000 The mind.

01:17:35.000 By that I meant that there was a certain way of life that you have lived.

01:17:45.000 And if it didn't happen, Like, second place was just not acceptable.

01:17:52.000 And so, you know, to me, it was like, I gotta get that other, I gotta get my life back.

01:17:57.000 You know, and I went back to my mom, now that I'm thinking.

01:18:00.000 Because my mom is what got me out of the sport as a wrestler.

01:18:04.000 Because 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.

01:18:20.000 At West High, my high school.

01:18:22.000 And so I was limping.

01:18:22.000 And my mom looked at me and she said, my God, you're limping?

01:18:26.000 He said, you know what?

01:18:27.000 You've got to get out of this.

01:18:28.000 You've got to get on with your life.

01:18:29.000 And I was already on with my life a little bit.

01:18:32.000 But I was still contemplating whether I should wrestle again.

01:18:35.000 How old were you then?

01:18:36.000 Well, I was 23 when I won the Olympics.

01:18:38.000 So now I was probably 24. Because wrestling season, October 25th is my birthday.

01:18:43.000 So wrestling season probably is in December.

01:18:45.000 So she was just concerned from injuries and...

01:18:49.000 Well, yeah, she was just tired of seeing me being lamed up.

01:18:53.000 But 24?

01:18:54.000 You're not even in your prime yet.

01:18:55.000 Yeah, but I worked pretty hard.

01:18:57.000 Yeah.

01:18:58.000 Yeah, 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.

01:19:09.000 My 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,

01:19:27.000 even during football or even during wrestling especially.

01:19:30.000 He says, I'm going to give you a key to the locker room.

01:19:34.000 To where you can just come right in from the outside.

01:19:37.000 Because you can come right across this.

01:19:40.000 Because I know you want to come, right?

01:19:41.000 He goes, I go, yeah, I want to come in the mornings.

01:19:43.000 He says, not a required practice.

01:19:45.000 And I'll get there, but I'll probably not come right towards the end.

01:19:49.000 Because it's just on your own, running, lifting, that type stuff.

01:19:53.000 And he says, I'm going to give you a key to this.

01:19:56.000 And this, again, good old days.

01:19:58.000 You can't do it now.

01:20:00.000 But...

01:20:01.000 And if you do, you get fired.

01:20:03.000 So he gave me a key to school.

01:20:05.000 I walked across the street.

01:20:06.000 I only had to walk a block.

01:20:07.000 And I'd open up the gym door, go in there, and anybody that wanted to come with me.

01:20:13.000 Well, nobody came with me at first because wrestling season was just starting, just off of football.

01:20:20.000 And some of them took a break.

01:20:22.000 And 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.

01:20:29.000 We had our team break.

01:20:32.000 A bear of a wrestling practice.

01:20:35.000 I'm going to take a drink of this beer, even though I'm probably going to work out yet today.

01:20:42.000 But anyway, so he gave me a key to the school.

01:20:45.000 I opened it up.

01:20:47.000 Nobody there was me.

01:20:48.000 So for the first maybe 10 days, two weeks of the wrestling season, I was the only guy there.

01:20:54.000 We had a good team, but they were already doing good with one practice, so they weren't coming to two.

01:21:00.000 So all of a sudden, and they didn't know much about me, the old-timers on the team. 1.00

01:21:04.000 And they didn't really give me any credit yet, because I hadn't done anything.

01:21:08.000 I was 0-0 in high school.

01:21:12.000 But the coach told me that, you know, that I was going to make the team.

01:21:16.000 He could just tell.

01:21:18.000 And that he was going to give me this key.

01:21:20.000 So all of a sudden, I had the first dual meet, and I win.

01:21:24.000 I'm one or no.

01:21:26.000 I win.

01:21:27.000 Excuse me.

01:21:33.000 I win the second one.

01:21:36.000 I win the third one.

01:21:37.000 I win the fourth one.

01:21:38.000 I win the fifth one.

01:21:39.000 I'm going into my gym.

01:21:42.000 I'm about to sixth or seventh.

01:21:45.000 And all of a sudden, I open the door and I kind of close.

01:21:47.000 I can't get the key out a little bit.

01:21:49.000 And somebody bumps into my back.

01:21:50.000 And I turn around.

01:21:51.000 There's a wrestler! 0.98

01:21:54.000 And I go, what are you doing?

01:21:56.000 He goes...

01:21:57.000 Well, you know, you've been coming.

01:21:59.000 Coach tells us you're here every morning.

01:22:01.000 I didn't think it was worth it, but you haven't lost a match.

01:22:05.000 I think I'm going to join you.

01:22:07.000 I said, good.

01:22:09.000 So 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.

01:22:16.000 Not 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.

01:22:25.000 But that's the way people are.

01:22:29.000 You know, it shouldn't take that way, but from a coaching point of view, it taught me a lesson.

01:22:34.000 You know, you always have to have a leader in there because you've got to go for help again.

01:22:38.000 Here my goal for help is.

01:22:39.000 So I have somebody in there besides myself.

01:22:42.000 And that's kind of the way we built the University of Iowa up.

01:22:44.000 We went for help right away because they weren't that good.

01:22:47.000 Iowa State was good, but I thought Iowa was going to be automatically good.

01:22:53.000 Because they were good.

01:22:55.000 But they didn't know they were good.

01:22:56.000 And they never had done good.

01:22:58.000 And so they weren't good in their mind.

01:23:00.000 And that's what got me out of wrestling.

01:23:03.000 My mind.

01:23:03.000 So the mind is such a big thing.

01:23:06.000 My mind was really hurting more than my body.

01:23:09.000 And I didn't really realize it.

01:23:11.000 And that's where my mom, I think, understood it.

01:23:13.000 And my wife and people like that, they could see that I was kind of going crazy.

01:23:19.000 From too much competition.

01:23:21.000 Just...

01:23:22.000 Too much grinding.

01:23:23.000 Apparently.

01:23:24.000 Apparently.

01:23:25.000 Because here's the thing.

01:23:26.000 I'd get sick.

01:23:28.000 Towards the end of the season, I would get sick.

01:23:32.000 For about two weeks straight.

01:23:34.000 I mean, kind of sick.

01:23:35.000 Oh my God, what's wrong with me?

01:23:37.000 I've got to be having cancer or something.

01:23:40.000 Just you're beating yourself up.

01:23:42.000 Just the mental strain.

01:23:45.000 So 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.

01:23:54.000 Or we don't.

01:23:55.000 But whenever we won the championship...

01:23:58.000 That 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.

01:24:10.000 So I've been sick for two weeks, and I can wake up healthy as soon as we want.

01:24:14.000 So it was just the pressure.

01:24:16.000 Well, it's probably, I mean...

01:24:17.000 If you ever...

01:24:20.000 You should watch me...

01:24:23.000 How I coached matches sometimes.

01:24:25.000 I went crazy.

01:24:26.000 I never did that as an athlete.

01:24:29.000 I didn't even hardly let the referee raise my hand.

01:24:32.000 I was real just humble.

01:24:35.000 I didn't jump for joy to anything.

01:24:37.000 But as a coach, I went crazy.

01:24:39.000 Why do you think that is?

01:24:41.000 Because I couldn't control it.

01:24:42.000 It was somebody else.

01:24:43.000 I knew about me.

01:24:46.000 I knew I was good.

01:24:49.000 But it's somebody else.

01:24:51.000 And you just don't...

01:24:52.000 And so when they come through for you, it's just better.

01:24:57.000 It's better than you know you're going to win, even though you really don't.

01:25:04.000 Do you feel more joy out of winning as a coach than you did over winning as an athlete?

01:25:10.000 Coach.

01:25:11.000 Definitely.

01:25:12.000 Because of exactly what I've been talking about.

01:25:16.000 But let me tell you why.

01:25:19.000 I didn't even like my athletes.

01:25:23.000 I loved them, but We got into conflicts because I pushed them hard.

01:25:30.000 And they were going along with it because they had a lot of success too.

01:25:33.000 But there was times, there was moments when they looked at me and they put their fist up.

01:25:40.000 There was times when they pushed me and I fell over a bike or something like that.

01:25:45.000 There was times when it wasn't always pretty.

01:25:48.000 Do you think it was because the way you pushed yourself, they couldn't tolerate it?

01:25:53.000 So when you wanted to do that to them and you wanted them to work as hard as you worked?

01:25:58.000 No.

01:25:59.000 Depending on the guy individually.

01:26:01.000 Each guy was different.

01:26:03.000 And depending on how he was doing, depending on how he's living and if he really wanted to be good.

01:26:09.000 But let me go one step further.

01:26:14.000 I could handle them guys.

01:26:16.000 I could handle them because It was my job.

01:26:21.000 I was in a room, a padded room.

01:26:25.000 And I could do that.

01:26:27.000 And they would go along with me mostly because of the success that people were having.

01:26:32.000 But I know what my mom and dad went through when I wrestled.

01:26:40.000 My mom often didn't stand inside the gym. 1.00

01:26:44.000 She often stood outside the gym and looked through the window.

01:26:50.000 I mean, it's a tough-ass sport that takes the heart out of you sometimes.

01:26:59.000 And it's really tough for a mom or even a dad.

01:27:03.000 And so, to me, when I would get into these altercations with my athletes, I could handle it.

01:27:11.000 Only one reason.

01:27:13.000 Because I knew they had a mom and dad.

01:27:15.000 And I knew what the mom and dad, how much they meant.

01:27:19.000 Because I knew, I've seen them, how they yelled in the stands.

01:27:23.000 I saw them how they, when their kid got their hand raised, what it meant to them.

01:27:27.000 The proudness.

01:27:28.000 I saw what it did to my mom and dad.

01:27:31.000 Kept my mom and dad alive and well until they both died.

01:27:37.000 But they were never going to make it, I thought, in marriage.

01:27:40.000 But once they married, they were married for over 50 years.

01:27:45.000 So, but I never thought that.

01:27:48.000 As a kid, I thought that for sure.

01:27:50.000 My biggest fear was they're going to get a divorce. 0.72

01:27:52.000 Now, that was a kid when I was in junior high and in grade school.

01:27:55.000 But so anyway, so these kids, every once in a while when I'd really get upset with a kid because...

01:28:01.000 He'd miss three days of practice or something.

01:28:04.000 Like Rico?

01:28:05.000 Yeah, like Rico one time did.

01:28:06.000 But he had a good reason.

01:28:07.000 He had a girlfriend.

01:28:09.000 You've told us about that before.

01:28:11.000 But 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,

01:28:27.000 I 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.

01:28:41.000 Oh my gosh.

01:28:42.000 And it went right back to my mom and dad, too.

01:28:44.000 Just how it kind of appeared to me.

01:28:48.000 But I coached more from a motivational point of view, from the parents' point of view, than I did the kid.

01:28:54.000 Because I knew the kid was going to be a parent someday.

01:28:56.000 He's going to be the same thing, so what the heck.

01:28:59.000 It's pretty amazing.

01:29:00.000 Pretty amazing.

01:29:03.000 When you look back on your drive, the drive that you had as a competitor, How much did it change after your sister was killed?

01:29:15.000 How much of a factor was that?

01:29:19.000 It's still a factor.

01:29:21.000 It hasn't let up.

01:29:23.000 I mean, it's hard to...

01:29:28.000 I mean, when you know who killed your sister within 30 minutes of finding out that she's murdered, and you don't know anything else.

01:29:41.000 Did you just know she was murdered in her house?

01:29:43.000 They found her dead.

01:29:46.000 And you, within 30 minutes, tell your dad who it was, and it comes to be true, there's some guilt there.

01:29:55.000 But it's the kind of guilt that's not going to hold me back.

01:29:58.000 And anger.

01:29:59.000 And anger.

01:30:01.000 But...

01:30:02.000 Mostly from my dad's...

01:30:04.000 My dad's point of view is anger.

01:30:06.000 Probably more than me.

01:30:08.000 But...

01:30:08.000 You felt guilt.

01:30:09.000 I felt more guilt, probably.

01:30:11.000 Yeah.

01:30:12.000 My dad...

01:30:12.000 It hurt my dad.

01:30:14.000 But...

01:30:15.000 And my mom.

01:30:18.000 But unbelievably...

01:30:20.000 It's just so strange that a 16-year-old can do that, and not only that he could do that, but that he knew he was going to kill somebody.

01:30:27.000 He was an adopted kid, and he had been in a lot of trouble, but mostly just not that kind of trouble, you know?

01:30:36.000 But he knew eventually he was going to do that.

01:30:38.000 Yeah, he said he knew he was going to kill somebody.

01:30:40.000 He just didn't know who.

01:30:42.000 Yeah.

01:30:43.000 That's so crazy.

01:30:45.000 So crazy to hear.

01:30:46.000 And then he repented at the end.

01:30:49.000 Sometime towards the end of his jail time.

01:30:52.000 What was it like knowing that that guy is just rotting away in a jail cell somewhere?

01:30:58.000 Your whole life as a competitor, your whole life as a coach, your whole life as a man.

01:31:05.000 I know it haunted my mom and dad, I guarantee it.

01:31:10.000 I'm hoping that they somehow saw some peace there.

01:31:14.000 But for me, you know, I don't...

01:31:18.000 I don't think the peace really came to me until he repented and he said that.

01:31:23.000 By saying that meant a lot to me.

01:31:26.000 My mom and dad were already gone and hopefully they know that and that they can feel it.

01:31:32.000 How much of a factor was that though for you as a competitor?

01:31:37.000 Have 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?

01:31:53.000 You know, I never have.

01:31:56.000 And I don't think that's something that I look at the good only on that kind of stuff. 0.93

01:32:03.000 It's kind of like, you know, talking about people that are just being ridiculous.

01:32:09.000 You know, the way I feel. 0.95

01:32:10.000 I feel like I'm being ridiculous. 0.99

01:32:12.000 And somehow I have to sit back and say, how can I get through this without saying that they're ridiculous? 0.99

01:32:20.000 And they are. 0.99

01:32:22.000 But at the same time...

01:32:27.000 I try to feel.

01:32:29.000 I try to have a little feeling.

01:32:31.000 Try to have.

01:32:32.000 Even though it's difficult.

01:32:34.000 It's difficult.

01:32:35.000 But with my sister, it makes a difference today in my life.

01:32:41.000 For 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.

01:32:53.000 You stood out.

01:32:55.000 You were one of the few people ever in the history of the Olympics to not have a single point scored upon you.

01:33:02.000 I 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.

01:33:18.000 And for you to go there and not just win, but not get a single point scored on you is just extraordinary.

01:33:26.000 That kind of intensity that you carried.

01:33:29.000 You know what really helped me?

01:33:31.000 Not knowing it.

01:33:33.000 I didn't...

01:33:34.000 Nobody told me that...

01:33:36.000 I had six matches at the Olympics, and they were nine minutes each, unless you pinned them, and I pinned half of them.

01:33:41.000 So I pinned three, and I decisioned three.

01:33:43.000 And I ended up winning this final score on the three that I didn't pin.

01:33:46.000 I beat them 29 to nothing, total scores.

01:33:49.000 But it was one of these things that had I known...

01:33:55.000 It would have got into my head.

01:33:56.000 Right.

01:33:57.000 And I probably would have lost a point or two or something like that.

01:33:59.000 It's just one of these things that you stay focused.

01:34:03.000 And a good coach, I had a great coach, Bill Farrell, Bill Wick, these are all great coaches.

01:34:09.000 And I was around good people.

01:34:11.000 I had some wrestlers.

01:34:13.000 We had three wrestlers that were on the Iowa State team and had another wrestler that trained with us.

01:34:17.000 So we had 40% of the freestyle wrestling team, the Peterson brothers.

01:34:27.000 Nobody said, hey Gable, do you realize going into your final match that you're unscored upon?

01:34:32.000 Nobody ever said that to me.

01:34:34.000 And some coaches actually point stuff out like that.

01:34:37.000 But you know what?

01:34:38.000 Maybe it's good in some situations.

01:34:41.000 Depending upon the athlete?

01:34:42.000 Yeah.

01:34:43.000 It's like you asked a question earlier.

01:34:46.000 Somebody come in late to practice.

01:34:49.000 You know, I had to look and see who did.

01:34:54.000 If I felt a certain way about this guy, maybe I was just happy he showed up.

01:35:00.000 To 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.

01:35:13.000 What you got accomplished.

01:35:15.000 And 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.

01:35:29.000 But, you know, sometimes...

01:35:31.000 Isn't that part of being a coach, though?

01:35:33.000 It's also part of being a dad, right?

01:35:34.000 I think it is.

01:35:35.000 Because I look at another kid.

01:35:36.000 This blows people's minds here about part of being a coach.

01:35:41.000 So I had these Bannock brothers who were really good.

01:35:44.000 Some of my first early recruits.

01:35:46.000 They were twins.

01:35:49.000 And all of a sudden...

01:35:53.000 One of them, just you could tell he couldn't take a two-hour practice.

01:36:01.000 And by that I mean, not physically, but he got bored.

01:36:05.000 He was bored at a practice.

01:36:08.000 And almost to the point where he was getting nothing.

01:36:11.000 It was going backwards once...

01:36:14.000 He only could do a certain style of practice.

01:36:17.000 He could most like, if you play pickup basketball, throw the basketball out there, play pickup, just go, go, go.

01:36:22.000 No time period, no referees, no nothing.

01:36:25.000 So 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.

01:36:36.000 He'd go, and he'd go.

01:36:37.000 But if you stopped and had instruction...

01:36:40.000 And if you stopped and had verbal talk, and if you stopped and had other things, he just couldn't get that.

01:36:49.000 So how does a coach figure out how to get the most out of this guy without hurting the team?

01:36:57.000 Because that's kind of like, in wrestling, it's a bear at practice.

01:37:02.000 And how do you let one guy do something different than the rest?

01:37:07.000 Well, if you're smart, you get 29 other guys to agree that this is what should be done.

01:37:20.000 So me, I'm the 30th guy.

01:37:23.000 I had coaches I talked to.

01:37:25.000 I had a coach named Jay Robinson who was from Oklahoma State.

01:37:29.000 He was on our team.

01:37:31.000 He had a lot of different philosophies.

01:37:32.000 We talked about him.

01:37:33.000 We decided to do this.

01:37:36.000 Let's talk to the team without Lou there and make sure that they understand where we're thinking.

01:37:46.000 They understand how we think, and then we'll see what the response is.

01:37:50.000 Can we maybe hold him back a little bit from a standpoint of not maybe letting him come to all the practice?

01:37:57.000 Because every practice is...

01:38:00.000 Most of them are broke down into certain things.

01:38:03.000 Hard wrestling, conditioning, talk, fire up, stuff you have to work on.

01:38:08.000 And he wasn't good on that listening.

01:38:10.000 He wasn't good on the drilling.

01:38:13.000 He was good on live wrestling.

01:38:15.000 Let's wrestle! 0.80

01:38:17.000 So that was about the last hour.

01:38:20.000 So I talked to the team.

01:38:22.000 I talked to the coaches and I talked to the team.

01:38:24.000 And the team listened to what we said.

01:38:29.000 We're not trying to cut corners here, guys.

01:38:30.000 We want to be better as a team.

01:38:32.000 Do you think this wrestler, Lou, would benefit more by not coming to the first part of practice?

01:38:42.000 Because you know him better than I do because you're his friends more than I am even.

01:38:47.000 I said, do you think he could just come for that second hour and that he would be good or if not better?

01:38:56.000 They voted 29-0 that he should only come for the second hour of practice because that first hour was a waste of time for him.

01:39:05.000 And noticed when he had to come for the first hour, his second hour wasn't as good.

01:39:09.000 We had noticed that.

01:39:10.000 And so they voted, easy decision.

01:39:15.000 Two-time national champ, third-place finisher, Olympic champ, 1984. The team made a good decision.

01:39:27.000 Wow.

01:39:28.000 That's how you make decisions sometimes.

01:39:30.000 You get the team on your side.

01:39:31.000 What was it like for you making that transition from being a competitor to being a coach?

01:39:38.000 Was it difficult or was it natural?

01:39:40.000 Well, I already had a lot of good...

01:39:42.000 As a leader?

01:39:43.000 Yeah, I already had that from the YMCA, from all my coaches, from all my...

01:39:46.000 Even on academics, I wasn't a good student.

01:39:48.000 I took a wrestling coach to an algebra class that was the algebra teacher to get me to become a good student.

01:39:53.000 But, you know, it was one of these things...

01:39:57.000 What was the question again?

01:39:59.000 So what was it like transitioning from being a competitor to being a coach and whether or not it was easy or difficult?

01:40:05.000 I'll tell you what, I wasn't going to be as good as I turned out to be because unless it went the way it did.

01:40:16.000 I spent four years as an assistant.

01:40:19.000 Two years at Iowa State as a grad assistant and didn't really do anything but train there for the Worlds and Olympics.

01:40:25.000 But then once I got to the University of Iowa, The head coach was Gary Kurdlemeyer.

01:40:31.000 And it was his first year as a head coach.

01:40:33.000 He'd been the assistant.

01:40:35.000 But he hired me as the assistant.

01:40:37.000 But he had been a head coach before in high school.

01:40:40.000 And he had been running Iowa's program, even though he wasn't the head coach.

01:40:44.000 It was the old-timer, Dave McCuskey, who was there, and he was kind of just settling out his years.

01:40:51.000 And so Gary had actually acted as the head coach.

01:40:54.000 So he had a lot of clout, he had a lot of knowledge, and he'd been a head coach.

01:41:00.000 And so he brought me in, and he taught me unbelievable stuff.

01:41:03.000 But here's what's unbelievable about what he taught me right away, in that we started practices.

01:41:12.000 And he let me run a couple practices.

01:41:14.000 So he'd run a couple, then I'd run a couple, then he'd run a couple, then I'd run a couple.

01:41:17.000 Two weeks after we'd been in the season and started, he calls me because we had the same office.

01:41:23.000 And he comes over and he sat down and he goes, you know, Gable, I've been watching you at practice.

01:41:32.000 You're better in practice than I am with the kids.

01:41:37.000 You're going to run all the practices.

01:41:39.000 You're going to do all the training of the athletes.

01:41:43.000 You're going to do the conversation.

01:41:45.000 You're going to do what you want to do to prepare them because you're better than I am.

01:41:51.000 First year ever as a head coach in college.

01:41:54.000 And he gave me within two weeks, and I just got there back from the Olympics, and he gave me full-time coaching in the wrestling room.

01:42:04.000 But guess what?

01:42:05.000 And then he goes, but you know what?

01:42:07.000 I've already noticed outside the practice room, not quite as good as you are in the practice room.

01:42:13.000 You've got to learn to talk a little more.

01:42:15.000 I'm going to send you to the clubs in town, the little places that people meet for lunch.

01:42:22.000 I'm going to send you to all the fraternities and all the sororities and all the dorms.

01:42:26.000 We're going to have speeches.

01:42:27.000 You're going to give speeches to all those kids on campus.

01:42:31.000 And then he says, I'm going to teach you how to recruit.

01:42:38.000 You're going to go with me when we go recruit.

01:42:40.000 I'm going to teach you all these different things.

01:42:42.000 I'm going to teach you how to fundraise.

01:42:45.000 I'm going to teach you how to talk outside the wrestling room.

01:42:49.000 All these things that are important.

01:42:51.000 And he says, you know, I'm probably not going to coach too long.

01:42:55.000 I kind of want to move up in administration.

01:42:56.000 So if things go well here for the next three or four years, I'll probably move up and you can move in if things go well.

01:43:06.000 Well, exactly four years.

01:43:08.000 And we went from a team that was top 20, maybe 15 to 20. We went to probably maybe 7th or 8th the first year.

01:43:16.000 Then we went to 4th or 5th.

01:43:18.000 Then we won the Big 10s.

01:43:20.000 You know, for the first time in a long time.

01:43:22.000 Third year, we won the Nationals, too.

01:43:26.000 Then the fourth year, we won the Nationals.

01:43:28.000 Then he got out.

01:43:29.000 He turned it over to me.

01:43:31.000 So, you know, he stayed true to his form.

01:43:33.000 But he was unbelievable.

01:43:37.000 Here's the story.

01:43:39.000 I'm at Iowa State.

01:43:40.000 I'm training for the Olympics.

01:43:43.000 And it's December.

01:43:46.000 Olympics are going to be in the summer.

01:43:49.000 And 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.

01:43:57.000 And he knows he's moving up to be a head coach, and he put his eyesight on me.

01:44:06.000 So, 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,

01:44:26.000 mats and products and shoes and all this kind of stuff.

01:44:35.000 He 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.

01:44:45.000 So 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.

01:44:58.000 But University of Iowa, Gary Kirtlemyer, sent him over as a spy.

01:45:05.000 To follow me.

01:45:08.000 Not just to see how good I was, but mostly to see how they could land me over at the University of Iowa as his assistant.

01:45:18.000 He was over there the whole time.

01:45:23.000 There's all these things that were going on.

01:45:28.000 They were telling me, he'd come over and he'd talk to me.

01:45:32.000 And I said, I really didn't want to make a decision now because I want to win the Olympics and all this kind of stuff.

01:45:37.000 I don't want to be bothered by coaching right now.

01:45:40.000 So they said, fine, take your time.

01:45:42.000 So all of a sudden, he's getting reports, though, because this guy comes in and watches practice and so on and so forth.

01:45:49.000 And I don't know this, though.

01:45:50.000 And nobody knows it at Ames.

01:45:53.000 So it's kind of interesting.

01:45:55.000 So they get me to...

01:45:58.000 He's got a report back home.

01:46:00.000 So all of a sudden, he calls me.

01:46:02.000 He says, you know, what do you think?

01:46:04.000 I said, well, you said I didn't have to know until after the Olympics.

01:46:07.000 And he goes, well, just give me an inkling.

01:46:11.000 I said, I really don't know.

01:46:14.000 And so he says, okay.

01:46:20.000 I want to call you back, though, but, you know, go ahead, just whatever you're doing.

01:46:24.000 He waited like three days to call me back and told me to take it or leave it.

01:46:30.000 And I had no idea.

01:46:32.000 I hadn't even thought about it.

01:46:35.000 Well, little did I know, and he was getting reports every day about me, and so I was getting good reports.

01:46:40.000 But little did I know that this guy was also, and the guy was the head coach, was working with my mom and dad.

01:46:47.000 Oh, no.

01:46:48.000 Not...

01:46:49.000 From their point of view, but visits, visits, visits.

01:46:53.000 And guess what?

01:46:53.000 All my friends were getting visits from these guys.

01:46:57.000 Phone calls, visits.

01:47:00.000 They were doing their homework.

01:47:03.000 Because when they called me and said, take it or leave it, I said, I can't tell you.

01:47:09.000 They said, well, you're going to take it or leave it.

01:47:11.000 You have to know about tomorrow.

01:47:14.000 So guess what I do?

01:47:16.000 I call my mom and dad.

01:47:19.000 I called my dad.

01:47:20.000 I said, Dad, he put this pressure on me.

01:47:22.000 I have to take it by tomorrow.

01:47:26.000 What should I do, Dad?

01:47:27.000 He kind of hesitates.

01:47:29.000 He goes, Take it.

01:47:31.000 I said, Take it?

01:47:32.000 Put Mom on the phone. 0.78

01:47:35.000 I said, Mom, I'm in this position.

01:47:37.000 She goes, Yeah, I know what it is.

01:47:39.000 I go, You know?

01:47:39.000 She goes, Take it.

01:47:43.000 I said, No, I'll call you later.

01:47:48.000 So I call my friends, and I call my friends, and they all said, take it.

01:47:54.000 You've got to hold everybody.

01:47:55.000 But I had no idea what was going on.

01:47:59.000 So the next day, I called and took.

01:48:00.000 The next day, I had no choice.

01:48:04.000 I hadn't even thought about it.

01:48:06.000 And so... 0.99

01:48:08.000 I thought I was being an idiot, not taking it, because everybody told me to take it.

01:48:11.000 So 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? 0.77

01:48:22.000 I said, no.

01:48:23.000 He said, well, if you haven't signed anything, just turn it down.

01:48:27.000 Well, I had already committed verbally, so I took it.

01:48:31.000 But what I didn't realize is, and I said, I'll be back.

01:48:36.000 I'll be back next year.

01:48:37.000 There's no way I'm going to stay over there.

01:48:40.000 But 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.

01:48:52.000 They had an effect on me.

01:48:53.000 They helped me out.

01:48:54.000 They helped me drink beer, maybe.

01:48:57.000 But, 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.

01:49:14.000 And when I went for help, I told them, because I was getting ready for the Olympics, I told them, okay, I'll take it.

01:49:19.000 But yet I didn't really think.

01:49:20.000 So anyway, so I go to the first day of practice at Iowa, and I actually liked it.

01:49:27.000 I mean, I liked the kids.

01:49:29.000 I liked them.

01:49:30.000 And that's what you don't really realize.

01:49:33.000 You don't really realize how you're going to fit in until you get there.

01:49:36.000 And I said, after like three or four practices, I said, you guys are great.

01:49:42.000 You guys are good.

01:49:42.000 You're as good as...

01:49:43.000 I've been around state championship high school teams.

01:49:46.000 I've been around college teams.

01:49:47.000 I've been around...

01:49:47.000 In the summer, I go to these Olympic training camps.

01:49:50.000 And I said, you guys are really good.

01:49:53.000 But they didn't know it.

01:49:54.000 They didn't know it.

01:49:56.000 They just were good, but didn't know it.

01:49:59.000 Whereas all these other guys were good and knew it.

01:50:02.000 So the head coach, Kirtlmeier, he goes to me.

01:50:08.000 He goes, what do you think, what kind of plans should we be on?

01:50:11.000 This is after I committed and I came over and we were coaching for about a month and we were in the same office.

01:50:16.000 And he goes, what kind of plans should we be on?

01:50:18.000 I said, I think we...

01:50:23.000 I think he actually said this to me.

01:50:24.000 He goes, I think we should make a four-year plan.

01:50:27.000 By the end of the fourth year, that we should be winning Big Ten and national titles.

01:50:33.000 I looked at him. 0.99

01:50:34.000 I said, are you nuts? 0.98

01:50:36.000 We're going to win this year. 0.91

01:50:39.000 I said, I've been around good wrestling.

01:50:41.000 These guys are good.

01:50:45.000 He goes, well, there's more to it than just being a good wrestler.

01:50:51.000 He's saying that to you?

01:50:52.000 Yeah.

01:50:55.000 Oh, this is the head guy.

01:50:56.000 I know, but still, you're Dan Gable.

01:50:58.000 Yeah, but not then.

01:51:00.000 Not the coach.

01:51:01.000 People didn't know I was going to be a good coach.

01:51:02.000 Yeah, but still, you understand wrestling.

01:51:03.000 People tell me today that when I came over as an athlete, they said, we never thought you could be a good coach.

01:51:09.000 People tell me that today, and they said, we sure found out wrong, didn't we?

01:51:13.000 So, you gotta remember, that's the beginning of my coaching.

01:51:16.000 I understand that, but don't you think part of what being a coach is, is inspiring the athletes?

01:51:22.000 And 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.

01:51:31.000 There's a thing about athletes when they're in the presence of greatness.

01:51:34.000 It inspires them to raise their own level.

01:51:39.000 When 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.

01:51:57.000 That alone is very valuable.

01:51:59.000 It's incredibly valuable because for athletes...

01:52:05.000 We're good to go.

01:52:27.000 When someone is like, you know, if you're getting coached, if you're a boxer and getting coached by Marvin Hagler, that means something.

01:52:35.000 You know, there's more to it than just the technical aspects of them showing you how to succeed.

01:52:44.000 There's something about having a guy like you as a coach that's insanely valuable to an athlete.

01:52:50.000 I mean, you can't put a value on it because it's inspirational.

01:52:56.000 It's fuel.

01:52:58.000 You know, I agree totally.

01:53:00.000 But 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...

01:53:08.000 Well, I didn't really have any credentials at that time.

01:53:11.000 As a coach?

01:53:12.000 No, as an athlete even.

01:53:14.000 That sophomore year, I hadn't won anything.

01:53:16.000 So I can see why they didn't jump on board.

01:53:18.000 I did have credentials as an athlete coming into coaching.

01:53:24.000 But...

01:53:24.000 What'd you write down?

01:53:26.000 I'm going to tell you the story here.

01:53:29.000 So the story is, so we're now at practice.

01:53:33.000 I'm running practice.

01:53:35.000 Gerdelmeyer's in there with me.

01:53:36.000 He's running practice with me, but he's the head, but he's being my assistant in the room.

01:53:42.000 And we're only there for a couple, we've only been there for a week or two.

01:53:45.000 And a security guy comes into practice.

01:53:49.000 And 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.

01:53:56.000 And he said that there's been a gas leak in a pipe in the building.

01:54:01.000 And 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.

01:54:16.000 And 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.

01:54:22.000 Gas leak.

01:54:23.000 He said, I said, is it really dangerous?

01:54:26.000 He goes, no danger.

01:54:29.000 We've already fixed the problem.

01:54:31.000 It was just a leak.

01:54:32.000 We had a valve.

01:54:33.000 We shut it off.

01:54:34.000 It's okay, but they're making us do this.

01:54:38.000 So you got your choice, stay or go.

01:54:42.000 And I looked at Kurt and I said, We're not going.

01:54:46.000 We're not going.

01:54:47.000 We're staying.

01:54:48.000 But you still got to tell your athletes.

01:54:51.000 They can go if they want.

01:54:52.000 I said, no, they won't leave.

01:54:54.000 Kurtelmeier looked at me like funny because he'd been around.

01:54:57.000 He'd known the guys.

01:54:59.000 But we had recruited eight new athletes.

01:55:01.000 But they were recruited with me as the assistant and me in the conversation.

01:55:06.000 So we went and pulled the team apart and said, guys, here's the situation.

01:55:12.000 Now, we've been only two or three weeks into practice.

01:55:16.000 Gas leak, we don't have the right to keep you here if you want to leave.

01:55:22.000 No danger.

01:55:24.000 Security guy, no danger, right?

01:55:27.000 No danger, coaches.

01:55:30.000 But we can tell you that if they want to leave, they can leave.

01:55:34.000 I said, okay.

01:55:36.000 Okay, guys, nobody's going to leave, right?

01:55:40.000 The only eight athletes left were the freshmen that we had recruited.

01:55:44.000 The other 24 got up, walked, and I yelled, guys, where are you going?

01:55:51.000 Coach, we get a chance to get out of practice.

01:55:54.000 Oh, no.

01:55:56.000 See, that's what I was dealing with that I didn't understand as a coach.

01:55:59.000 Never in my life had I been around non-championship teams, whether it be high school or college or the Olympic type states.

01:56:10.000 So this was new to me.

01:56:12.000 And Kurt Meyer looked at me like it was a teaching moment for me.

01:56:16.000 It was a teaching moment.

01:56:18.000 And it was kind of like those guys that didn't show up until I proved that I won.

01:56:22.000 So 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.

01:56:33.000 Some of them.

01:56:33.000 Not all of them.

01:56:36.000 And, you know, it's a process.

01:56:38.000 And 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.

01:56:46.000 And I looked at him and I said, we'll win it this year.

01:56:48.000 And he said...

01:56:51.000 I think you better, you know, that's a great goal, but it's going to take a while.

01:56:56.000 So the first year we had one champ, and we hadn't had a champ for a while.

01:57:01.000 But we didn't win.

01:57:02.000 We got fifth, I think.

01:57:03.000 Do you think the issue was the fact that these athletes that had already been there had been accustomed to a lower level?

01:57:10.000 Absolutely.

01:57:11.000 Absolutely.

01:57:12.000 Yeah.

01:57:12.000 And they really hadn't had the success.

01:57:15.000 And wrestling practice is hard.

01:57:18.000 I'm going to tell you something about jujitsu.

01:57:21.000 There'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.

01:57:34.000 And they were in town this past weekend for a jujitsu match.

01:57:38.000 There's a guy named Gordon Ryan.

01:57:39.000 He's the pound for pound greatest of all time.

01:57:44.000 He has a hard time finding matches.

01:57:47.000 Not only does he submit people, but he tells...

01:57:52.000 Let me show you something.

01:57:55.000 He was competing against this guy named Wagner Rocha.

01:57:59.000 Wagner Hocha.

01:58:00.000 And Wagner is a top-level jiu-jitsu guy.

01:58:03.000 He's a little smaller than Gordon, but he's still a top-level guy.

01:58:07.000 He's an elite Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt.

01:58:10.000 And Gordon is competing against him and puts in an envelope.

01:58:19.000 How he's going to beat him.

01:58:20.000 And he gives it to the commentators before the match.

01:58:24.000 And he says, open this after the match.

01:58:26.000 And then he puts a triangle.

01:58:29.000 And he says, who's next?

01:58:31.000 And he taps him with a triangle in the match.

01:58:34.000 I was there.

01:58:35.000 It was amazing.

01:58:36.000 He just completely dominated him, brutalized him, waited for his time, and then tapped him with a triangle.

01:58:43.000 Afterwards, I take John Donaher and Craig Jones and Lex Friedman.

01:58:48.000 You know Lex.

01:58:49.000 We all go out to dinner.

01:58:50.000 And we talk.

01:58:52.000 And I said to John Donaher, we're talking about how they train and what they do.

01:58:57.000 And he was telling me about athletes.

01:59:02.000 I think?

01:59:20.000 You guys train like this three days in a row?

01:59:21.000 And he goes, we train like this seven days in a row.

01:59:24.000 I go, you train seven days in a row?

01:59:26.000 And he goes, seven days in a row.

01:59:28.000 I go, you don't believe in rest days?

01:59:30.000 And he goes, no.

01:59:31.000 He goes, if you're really tired, train light.

01:59:35.000 You'll have an active recovery.

01:59:37.000 This team is dominating jujitsu.

01:59:41.000 When I say dominating, I mean, it's an understatement.

01:59:44.000 Guys are living in Puerto Rico right now to train with these guys.

01:59:48.000 Because they left New York City, Dan.

01:59:51.000 Because New York City has these draconian lockdown laws that are similar to Los Angeles where they shut down all the jujitsu gyms.

01:59:58.000 They shut down everything.

02:00:00.000 They shut down restaurants, comedy clubs.

02:00:02.000 So people are trying to scramble and figure out how to survive.

02:00:06.000 So these guys out of the Donaher Death Squad at a Henzo Gracie school, they moved to Puerto Rico. 0.97

02:00:12.000 They moved to a fucking island in the middle of the ocean so that they could train jiu-jitsu and compete. 0.97

02:00:17.000 And people are flying and moving to Puerto Rico to train with them. 0.99

02:00:23.000 But when they get there and they find out it's seven days a week.

02:00:27.000 There's no rest days.

02:00:30.000 The rest day is you train lighter.

02:00:32.000 Like if you just go there and just don't try as hard if you need a day off.

02:00:37.000 But we'll see you tomorrow.

02:00:39.000 And these guys are dominating.

02:00:41.000 And there's a thing about that that you see in wrestling that just...

02:00:48.000 A lot of people don't want to accept the workload.

02:00:53.000 They don't want to accept the workload that's required to be elite.

02:00:57.000 You know that better than anybody.

02:00:59.000 Well said, actually.

02:01:01.000 Because, you know, I'm an everyday guy.

02:01:04.000 Everyday.

02:01:04.000 I don't miss a day.

02:01:05.000 Seven days a week.

02:01:06.000 Seven days a week.

02:01:08.000 The only time I've ever missed is if I was in the hospital on my back and couldn't move.

02:01:12.000 And then I was probably trying to crawl out and do push-ups or something.

02:01:17.000 If I had my hips getting replaced or something, or I'd have a rope where I'd pull myself up or something.

02:01:24.000 And to this day, you still do that?

02:01:26.000 I have seven days a week.

02:01:27.000 But here's the thing.

02:01:28.000 I'm the master in recovery.

02:01:33.000 So, what you mentioned is...

02:01:38.000 What I'm good at.

02:01:40.000 Yeah, obviously I work extremely hard, or I have and do and will, and I won't let up on that.

02:01:48.000 But I also know how to adjust a little bit.

02:01:53.000 Now, 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.

02:02:06.000 But if there's something that changes that's better, I'll go with that.

02:02:10.000 And so to me, it's like I'm...

02:02:15.000 I know if I'm really sore, I know I can warm up long enough where I will not be sore.

02:02:22.000 It might take an extra hour.

02:02:23.000 So if I'm unbelievably sore, I'm going to warm up for an extra hour.

02:02:27.000 Two hours of warm up.

02:02:28.000 Well, whatever it is.

02:02:29.000 Whatever it takes to where I feel good.

02:02:31.000 I'm going to get rid of my soreness.

02:02:33.000 I also know that when practice is over...

02:02:37.000 Mentally thinking about the practice and physically recovering has a lot to do with what you do.

02:02:43.000 And I spend at least with my athletes and myself, at least...

02:02:52.000 An hour, at least, after practice is over, recovering before leaving the building.

02:02:58.000 What do you do for recovering?

02:02:59.000 Mostly heat, mostly ice, mostly massage.

02:03:04.000 You're a big sauna guy, right?

02:03:05.000 Big sauna guy, yeah.

02:03:06.000 Me as well.

02:03:06.000 I love it.

02:03:07.000 I do it every day.

02:03:08.000 I 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.

02:03:19.000 What temperature do you like to do with that?

02:03:22.000 Whatever it is, as long as it's hot.

02:03:23.000 But I really like...

02:03:25.000 I like some water over the rocks.

02:03:27.000 And I like probably a minimum 170, but I could go 220. I could do...

02:03:32.000 I mean, I can do whatever.

02:03:33.000 You know, I've been in saunas.

02:03:35.000 I accidentally walked in one at 330 one time.

02:03:37.000 330?

02:03:38.000 Well, accidentally.

02:03:39.000 Because it was one of these...

02:03:43.000 Woodburners, and I didn't look at the thing, and I jumped in there.

02:03:48.000 It almost caught me on fire, but I turned around and got out, and I let it go down to 260 before I got into it.

02:03:54.000 260?

02:03:55.000 That's roast beef.

02:03:56.000 No, I know.

02:03:58.000 Where you like it, it depends on how much time I have, but I'm comfortable with 170, I'm comfortable with 180, 190. I'm comfortable.

02:04:08.000 If I put more water on it, I can go in 165 or something.

02:04:12.000 But I do not want to walk in a sauna and have to work to sweat.

02:04:19.000 So I want to recover to sweat.

02:04:21.000 Did you learn this from foreign athletes in other countries?

02:04:25.000 I 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.

02:04:34.000 He was on the Olympic team, too.

02:04:35.000 He was a local kid.

02:04:37.000 But, 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.

02:04:52.000 Because once you're done with practice and you go to heat right away if you want to, you don't have to do anything.

02:05:01.000 You're just sweating.

02:05:02.000 You don't have to do anything.

02:05:03.000 And it actually takes out the lactic acid in your muscles from a hard workout and makes you recover quicker.

02:05:10.000 But you don't just combine that with heat alone.

02:05:14.000 Now you've got to go to cold.

02:05:15.000 So you go to cold shower.

02:05:18.000 And then probably go back into another heat again.

02:05:21.000 And you go back into cold.

02:05:22.000 And I'm telling you...

02:05:24.000 After 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.

02:05:38.000 I'm going to go out for a hard run.

02:05:39.000 Anybody want to go with me?

02:05:41.000 Okay, well, we're exhausted.

02:05:44.000 And 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.

02:05:50.000 But 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.

02:05:58.000 They might have been getting a massage, but they probably skipped some of that stuff. 0.99

02:06:02.000 The suffering.

02:06:04.000 Actually, the suffering was probably whoever's getting beat up on the mat.

02:06:09.000 But then it seems to me like if you have that temperature right and that humidity right, it's just unbelievable relaxing.

02:06:18.000 And there's proof.

02:06:19.000 There's proof in the pudding right now that you can look it up.

02:06:23.000 And they got all these studies.

02:06:25.000 Before, it was all anecdotal.

02:06:26.000 There's no anecdotal anymore.

02:06:28.000 It's proof.

02:06:29.000 They do studies.

02:06:30.000 Yeah, it's legit.

02:06:31.000 Yeah.

02:06:31.000 So do you do ice baths as well?

02:06:34.000 Yes.

02:06:35.000 Yes.

02:06:36.000 Let me do those.

02:06:37.000 I love doing them in the lakes.

02:06:40.000 Every place I go in my life, except right now, at the Florida condo, they don't have a sauna.

02:06:48.000 They got one there.

02:06:48.000 It's just not put together yet, but it's going to be put together.

02:06:51.000 But every place I go, I have an Airdyne. 1.00

02:06:55.000 That's a bike that's good.

02:06:58.000 Because my joints, it's too hard to run.

02:07:01.000 I do more damage.

02:07:02.000 You've got to be smart as you're getting older.

02:07:06.000 I've got a workout room, and I usually always have saunas.

02:07:12.000 I've got a fishing cabin up in northeast Iowa.

02:07:15.000 I've got a wood-burning sauna right on the river.

02:07:19.000 And I got an airdyne there.

02:07:21.000 And I got weights.

02:07:22.000 And I got a chin and bar.

02:07:24.000 So I go to my other...

02:07:26.000 I go to Minnesota cabin.

02:07:28.000 I got a little garage by the lake that's got an airdyne.

02:07:33.000 It's got a set of weights.

02:07:35.000 I got a big lake there to jump in.

02:07:37.000 I got a hot sauna right on the lake.

02:07:39.000 A wood burner.

02:07:41.000 I don't go anywhere without it.

02:07:43.000 I do a lot of homework before I travel.

02:07:46.000 You know?

02:07:48.000 I do have a swimming pool here.

02:07:49.000 I swam this morning.

02:07:50.000 I'm going to work out when I leave here.

02:07:53.000 I'd love to jump in a hot sauna or steam, but they don't have one because it's shut down right now on just these two days.

02:07:59.000 But I already checked it out.

02:08:00.000 But I can handle it.

02:08:01.000 I'll just do a little more working.

02:08:03.000 But every day?

02:08:04.000 Every day.

02:08:05.000 Seven days a week?

02:08:06.000 Seven days a week.

02:08:07.000 What do you think about people that don't think you should do that?

02:08:10.000 Well, I do it to where I don't overdo it anymore.

02:08:14.000 I may have overdone it at times when I didn't know better, or that was my philosophy.

02:08:20.000 Sometimes you've got to overdo things, but you really don't want to do something that's going to hurt you.

02:08:25.000 So, if I had to do it all over again, I'd have that same attitude.

02:08:30.000 But I'd be more educated, and I would do things differently.

02:08:33.000 In fact, I coached differently at the end of my career as I did at the beginning of my career.

02:08:38.000 Some 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,

02:08:55.000 and then I did it again the next day.

02:08:58.000 I wouldn't do it the next day anymore.

02:09:00.000 If 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.

02:09:09.000 I wouldn't cut the learning time.

02:09:11.000 I wouldn't cut down the actual effort when I do it.

02:09:15.000 But I would give you the more science to make sure you can last, longevity.

02:09:21.000 But you only go with what you know.

02:09:24.000 And you know what you know right now if you stay educated.

02:09:28.000 Things change a lot.

02:09:31.000 I'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.

02:09:39.000 And I said, but what's the recovery time?

02:09:42.000 Well, if we take the cartilage out, it won't be very long.

02:09:46.000 You can take about six weeks.

02:09:47.000 But if we tie it back down, this was in 1973. They took the cartilage out of your knees?

02:09:54.000 Well, yeah.

02:09:56.000 You say that like it's normal.

02:09:58.000 Back in 1973, there was no function.

02:10:01.000 At the University of Iowa Hospitals, there was no function yet.

02:10:05.000 That's what they thought.

02:10:06.000 Well, they just didn't know.

02:10:08.000 That's crazy.

02:10:09.000 So in 1974, I go back with the other knee, and I go, well, are you just going to take this one out too?

02:10:14.000 Because it hadn't affected me yet.

02:10:15.000 And this was why you're still competing.

02:10:17.000 No, I'm done.

02:10:19.000 I'm done.

02:10:19.000 I stopped after 72, basically.

02:10:23.000 So your knees have been destroyed just from training?

02:10:27.000 Well, I don't know.

02:10:30.000 They weren't too bad.

02:10:31.000 Well, they're taking your cartilage out. 0.84

02:10:33.000 Well, they took them out one side.

02:10:35.000 But not meniscus, just the cartilage?

02:10:38.000 Well, that's what I meant, meniscus.

02:10:39.000 Excuse me.

02:10:40.000 That's what I meant.

02:10:41.000 Okay.

02:10:42.000 Okay, the meniscus.

02:10:43.000 Okay.

02:10:43.000 They took the meniscus out.

02:10:44.000 But they can also tie it down.

02:10:47.000 When there's a tear, if you tie it down, it repairs itself.

02:10:51.000 But it takes, instead of six weeks or four weeks, it takes three months to four months to heal.

02:10:58.000 And I asked them, and they told me that it was no difference.

02:11:02.000 They didn't know.

02:11:03.000 So I said, well, give me the simplest.

02:11:05.000 Well, we'll just take it out.

02:11:07.000 So the next year- On the right side, on my outside of my knee.

02:11:11.000 So 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.

02:11:18.000 They go, well...

02:11:20.000 We can tie that down.

02:11:22.000 In the long run, it'd be a lot better.

02:11:23.000 I go, wait a minute.

02:11:24.000 I was here a year ago.

02:11:24.000 Well, we just discovered.

02:11:26.000 That was a new discovery this year.

02:11:27.000 Oh, boy.

02:11:28.000 I said, whoa.

02:11:29.000 Okay, I'll do that.

02:11:31.000 So, you know, it's just a matter of when you do it.

02:11:34.000 Do the tie down work?

02:11:36.000 Yeah.

02:11:36.000 My left knee is pretty good.

02:11:38.000 My right knee is hurting me right now.

02:11:39.000 I got a bigger cyst behind it right now.

02:11:43.000 But it's not that bad.

02:11:45.000 But it causes me to...

02:11:46.000 Have you ever thought about getting it resurfaced?

02:11:49.000 You know...

02:11:52.000 I don't know yet.

02:11:53.000 It's not that bad.

02:11:55.000 Remember when I jumped out of bed and I couldn't walk anymore?

02:11:59.000 Well, I'm not there yet with my niece.

02:12:01.000 And even a doctor told me that about a year ago.

02:12:03.000 Same doctor did my hips. 0.99

02:12:05.000 I went in because I was a little concerned and he goes, you know, I remember when you came in, you're not there yet.

02:12:10.000 He said, you can wait a little longer.

02:12:12.000 I think there might be science every year is a little better.

02:12:17.000 A little change.

02:12:17.000 So the longer you can wait, the better.

02:12:19.000 Especially medical science.

02:12:20.000 So as long as you don't Aren't in extreme pain.

02:12:24.000 Right.

02:12:25.000 You know, I can handle it.

02:12:26.000 So, have you ever gotten any stem cell shots or anything like that?

02:12:31.000 I think so.

02:12:33.000 You think so?

02:12:33.000 I think I got those on my shoulders before.

02:12:37.000 Your shoulders bad too?

02:12:39.000 Didn't I tell you I had 22 surgeries?

02:12:41.000 Yeah.

02:12:42.000 No, you left that out.

02:12:44.000 You told me you had six hips. 0.99

02:12:45.000 No, I had six hips and I had four. 1.00

02:12:48.000 So I had four new hips. 1.00

02:12:50.000 Yeah.

02:12:50.000 The doctor said last year, my hips have been in for eight, ten years now, the second set.

02:12:54.000 Yeah.

02:12:55.000 And he said they look really good.

02:12:56.000 Oh, that's nice.

02:12:58.000 But I kept wrestling and pounding on the first set.

02:13:02.000 And I adjusted smarter.

02:13:05.000 So even after the hips, you're running and doing everything else?

02:13:10.000 You were at the time?

02:13:11.000 I did.

02:13:11.000 I did for the next eight years.

02:13:13.000 And then you had to get them replaced?

02:13:14.000 Yeah, again, yeah.

02:13:15.000 Well, they're better with those too, right?

02:13:17.000 Yeah, different product.

02:13:18.000 Definitely different products, all that.

02:13:20.000 22 shoulder surgeries?

02:13:22.000 No, no.

02:13:22.000 I mean, if you add them up, you know, I got probably five, six cuts on my knees.

02:13:29.000 I have four hips.

02:13:31.000 I have two or three lip surgeries.

02:13:36.000 You know what it was?

02:13:38.000 I didn't wear a mouthpiece.

02:13:39.000 All I had to wear was a mouthpiece.

02:13:40.000 I would never have had a hip on my mouth. 0.56

02:13:42.000 But that was, you know, and finally after about five years of coaching, they said, I think you should wear a mouthpiece.

02:13:48.000 You know, and so then nobody gets hurt anymore.

02:13:51.000 Yeah.

02:13:52.000 Especially when it really came out was when the blood was being bad or something.

02:13:56.000 I can't remember what that was.

02:13:58.000 Because you bite your tongue a lot.

02:14:01.000 So the mouthpieces really prevent a lot of that stuff.

02:14:04.000 So in wrestling, headgear and mouthpiece are really critical.

02:14:07.000 They really are.

02:14:08.000 I have a lot of friends in jiu-jitsu that they love having cauliflower ear.

02:14:14.000 You may love it, but you know what?

02:14:16.000 I don't have it.

02:14:18.000 I've always worn headgear.

02:14:19.000 Yeah.

02:14:20.000 So I always wore headgear.

02:14:21.000 That's just with the way you hear.

02:14:22.000 It does.

02:14:23.000 It does.

02:14:24.000 Yeah.

02:14:25.000 Yeah.

02:14:25.000 And a little bit, they stick out once in a while, too.

02:14:28.000 You know, they like it because it looks cool.

02:14:32.000 A lot of guys do.

02:14:33.000 Well, they think it's your trademark.

02:14:35.000 Yes.

02:14:35.000 But you know what?

02:14:36.000 Some girls don't like them. 1.00

02:14:37.000 Those girls are useless. 1.00

02:14:39.000 Okay, okay. 1.00

02:14:42.000 My wife doesn't mind it. 1.00

02:14:44.000 I'm sure she doesn't.

02:14:45.000 But, I mean, there's a function to the shape of your ear.

02:14:49.000 It's like it helps you hear better.

02:14:51.000 I don't want to have problems hearing.

02:14:53.000 No, you don't.

02:14:54.000 I have a little bit of cauliflower, like in little spots and stuff, but I just think there's a reason why your ear is designed that way.

02:15:01.000 Yeah.

02:15:02.000 No, you're right.

02:15:02.000 You're right.

02:15:03.000 No, I think a headgear for wrestling is pretty damn good.

02:15:08.000 Mouthpiece is important, too.

02:15:09.000 Yeah, and you can't wear a headgear in Olympic wrestling.

02:15:13.000 Well...

02:15:13.000 Unless you get a doctor's order.

02:15:17.000 That's just competing.

02:15:18.000 That makes sense to me.

02:15:20.000 I understand that.

02:15:21.000 I want to talk to you about the difference between the way the Russians approached wrestling versus the way the Americans approached wrestling.

02:15:30.000 Because I know that you are a big fan of the Russians and their technique.

02:15:37.000 When did you realize that they had a different approach?

02:15:40.000 How do you feel about that?

02:15:43.000 I was just a goer.

02:15:44.000 I mean, at the beginning, you know, I just a tough guy, you know, just throw the ball out there and turn me loose.

02:15:50.000 In fact, in college, that's kind of how we trained.

02:15:53.000 We had enough good athletes so we could just wrestle each other.

02:15:55.000 We didn't have to have structure and all that kind of stuff.

02:15:57.000 And 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.

02:16:08.000 When did you first see that?

02:16:10.000 I don't think I saw it until after I was done with college.

02:16:14.000 Can you believe that?

02:16:15.000 Really?

02:16:15.000 Yeah.

02:16:16.000 I mean, I was around him a little bit.

02:16:17.000 I went to the 1970 World Championships in Canada.

02:16:25.000 They were in Canada and...

02:16:28.000 I was like a spy again.

02:16:31.000 I was the spy this time.

02:16:33.000 Because I was an alternate to Bobby Douglas.

02:16:36.000 And so what I did was all these foreign countries that worked out, I went to the practices and watched them.

02:16:42.000 They thought I was a person that was like a keeper there.

02:16:44.000 They didn't know that there's a little guy spying on you.

02:16:47.000 I kind of learned that from a guy spying on me, from hiring me at Iowa later on, I guess, too.

02:16:55.000 So I would follow this guy.

02:16:56.000 I'd follow the teams around and watch them.

02:16:59.000 And they were really, really technically oriented, strategically oriented.

02:17:07.000 They didn't do as much conditioning as we did and that type of stuff.

02:17:13.000 So they were very, very much science.

02:17:16.000 Very much a lot of science.

02:17:18.000 And I don't think I really...

02:17:21.000 Again, I lost to Owings.

02:17:25.000 That really helped me become more of a guy that...

02:17:29.000 Pay attention to details.

02:17:30.000 Pay attention to details.

02:17:32.000 Coaching details.

02:17:33.000 Don't get caught up on this.

02:17:34.000 And I also kind of said, maybe I've got to get better too.

02:17:38.000 Maybe I've got to get better.

02:17:39.000 So when I went to these world championships that summer...

02:17:46.000 In Canada, I really followed a lot of the top wrestlers.

02:17:51.000 Sometimes I followed them right after matches, right into their locker rooms or right back where their team was staying.

02:17:56.000 They just thought I was the guy that was there.

02:17:59.000 They didn't really know that I was doing spying.

02:18:01.000 I was just surprised how things were different a lot than how I was myself trained.

02:18:10.000 I 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.

02:18:18.000 But I knew that I didn't know how to strategically finish a match.

02:18:23.000 How so?

02:18:23.000 What do you mean by that?

02:18:24.000 Well, I was ahead, and I could have just kind of maybe stalled it out, but I didn't know how to stall.

02:18:31.000 So there's actually an art installing.

02:18:34.000 Even though you don't like the word.

02:18:39.000 When I was in the finals of the Worlds and the Olympics, I could have probably scored more.

02:18:45.000 But you're taking a risk.

02:18:47.000 Because the only way you're going to lose...

02:18:49.000 They had rules.

02:18:51.000 You could actually lose...

02:18:55.000 You could get beat, but you could actually lose and win and stuff like that.

02:19:01.000 It's not so much that way now, but back when I wrestled, there were.

02:19:06.000 I needed to not put myself in any danger at the end of a match to make sure I would win.

02:19:13.000 So it's kind of like, okay, how do you tie a guy up where he can't move?

02:19:19.000 You don't necessarily have to shoot underneath him.

02:19:22.000 You don't have to do holds on him.

02:19:23.000 You don't have to risk for scoring, but you've got to tie him up.

02:19:28.000 It's kind of like you learn defense.

02:19:30.000 I 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.

02:19:41.000 Because I was just offensive-minded.

02:19:44.000 And I learned by watching these Russians that they have really good defenses.

02:19:49.000 And so that really shuts their area down for scoring on them.

02:19:54.000 And especially during the end of the match.

02:19:55.000 Because if you're going to end and you're going to win a match pretty easily, but if you take risk, you could lose.

02:20:00.000 Why do that?

02:20:02.000 Right.

02:20:02.000 So I actually...

02:20:05.000 The last minute or two of the match in my world final match, it was in Bulgaria.

02:20:10.000 It was outside in a soccer stadium.

02:20:12.000 There was 12,000 Bulgarians rooting for the Bulgarian, and I just tied him up for about a minute to win the match easily.

02:20:20.000 I was ahead 8-3, and so I didn't take any risk, and I won solid.

02:20:25.000 So 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.

02:20:35.000 And 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.

02:20:47.000 So there's strategy that I didn't really know at the beginning.

02:20:51.000 And the technique part, too.

02:20:53.000 So, you know, in wrestling, you can shoot.

02:20:56.000 You know, you didn't know how to do moves from one side.

02:20:59.000 But this is what's crazy about wrestling.

02:21:01.000 You could have ten moves.

02:21:03.000 But if you did the same moves from the other side of the body, you got 20 moves.

02:21:09.000 So you definitely need to know how to score from both sides of the body.

02:21:16.000 And you could be better at one side.

02:21:18.000 But if you only are one-sided, what happens if a guy comes out and he's all a one-sided wrestler, just the side that you're not good at?

02:21:26.000 You're in trouble.

02:21:27.000 So wrestlers, you know, we have to be aware of that. 0.98

02:21:31.000 And you have to, like I shoot a high crotch really good to one side. 0.89

02:21:35.000 I have a high crotch the other side, not quite as good. 0.99

02:21:37.000 But I have a single leg the other side that's really good. 0.98

02:21:40.000 You know, that type of thing.

02:21:41.000 Or I have a fireman carry to this side.

02:21:42.000 And I have a two-on-one foot sweep to this side.

02:21:45.000 So I got a balance of how I wrestle.

02:21:48.000 Because you just don't know what you're coming up against.

02:21:50.000 And you never know where you're going to be in a flurry to be able to score.

02:21:55.000 What did you see about the way the Russians trained?

02:21:57.000 What was different?

02:22:20.000 They were already good.

02:22:21.000 I did see that everyone was pretty much, they looked alike.

02:22:27.000 There was a few that kind of broke that wave and showed that they can also go the other way too.

02:22:33.000 But what I noticed was they had a lot of the same moves, everybody, and they all had the same stance.

02:22:43.000 You could kind of prepare for them.

02:22:45.000 If you prepare for a Russian, here's what you do. 1.00

02:22:48.000 Boom, boom, boom, boom.

02:22:49.000 If you prepare for an American, you don't know what you'll get. 0.99

02:22:52.000 Right.

02:22:52.000 Which makes it a little harder to prepare, but you might not be as good.

02:22:56.000 You just might not be as good because they are damn good.

02:22:59.000 Because they have their best athletes in the right sports.

02:23:04.000 And sometimes we don't have that.

02:23:06.000 Sometimes I just chose.

02:23:08.000 To be honest, wrestling was my best sport.

02:23:11.000 Right.

02:23:11.000 Even though I did other sports until 10th grade.

02:23:14.000 I did swimming until 7th grade.

02:23:17.000 I did baseball, football, all through 7th, 8th, and 9th grade, along with wrestling.

02:23:24.000 I played basketball even at the Y in some events.

02:23:30.000 It's just...

02:23:34.000 They handpicked people and put them in their best...

02:23:38.000 what they can do best at.

02:23:40.000 So that's why...

02:23:41.000 They're talented!

02:23:42.000 They're talented!

02:23:43.000 They had some talent!

02:23:43.000 So they were good to begin with.

02:23:45.000 Exactly.

02:23:45.000 They were people that were designed for wrestling or built for wrestling.

02:23:48.000 But what was the difference in the technical aspect of their training as opposed to the way the Americans trained?

02:23:53.000 They were technical as hell.

02:23:56.000 And by that I mean they hit...

02:23:58.000 We're good to go.

02:24:18.000 Nobody might not hit a move because we're going tough.

02:24:23.000 It's called drilling, but it's called live drilling.

02:24:27.000 They did a lot more live drilling, and they knew how to do that better than we did.

02:24:32.000 We have picked it up pretty damn well now, though.

02:24:34.000 Because we learned from them.

02:24:35.000 I think so.

02:24:36.000 Yeah.

02:24:37.000 I think so.

02:24:37.000 Yeah.

02:24:38.000 And how did they figure it out?

02:24:40.000 You know, structure.

02:24:43.000 They have more structure in their system.

02:24:45.000 That's just the way it is.

02:24:46.000 You walk in their house and if you talk, the government's listening.

02:24:50.000 Back in the day, I'm talking about the communism.

02:24:52.000 It goes back to the communism.

02:24:53.000 I think still today.

02:24:54.000 Yeah.

02:24:54.000 They might be listening here.

02:24:56.000 Well, they're definitely listening to us.

02:24:57.000 Well, we're trying to...

02:24:57.000 Isn't that what we're trying to do in America now?

02:24:59.000 People are trying to listen to us.

02:25:00.000 In America?

02:25:00.000 Yes.

02:25:01.000 I mean, well, they want to listen to us.

02:25:02.000 Yeah, but...

02:25:03.000 Right.

02:25:04.000 But not...

02:25:04.000 Surveillance.

02:25:05.000 Right.

02:25:05.000 Yeah, so we don't want that.

02:25:06.000 We don't want that, do we?

02:25:07.000 No, we don't.

02:25:08.000 No.

02:25:09.000 I'm very nervous about that.

02:25:10.000 I'm pretty outspoken about that.

02:25:11.000 Yeah, I am as well.

02:25:12.000 I don't like to say much because I don't want to get people...

02:25:16.000 I like everybody.

02:25:17.000 But I certainly don't want to have that kind of scare tactics for me.

02:25:22.000 No, I don't either.

02:25:24.000 And that's how it goes.

02:25:25.000 As soon as you start listening to people, then it becomes an incentive not to talk.

02:25:29.000 Or you get punished for saying the wrong things. 1.00

02:25:32.000 And then next thing you know, we're living in fucking China. 1.00

02:25:37.000 It's a slippery slope. 1.00

02:25:39.000 It's real.

02:25:41.000 And the government is supposed to work for the people.

02:25:44.000 We're not supposed to work for them.

02:25:46.000 They're not supposed to be our dominators.

02:25:49.000 You know, I just did a thing on this this week with the government.

02:25:54.000 Because in 1972, we had the Munich attack.

02:25:58.000 The Arabs and the Israelis. 0.65

02:26:00.000 And so they killed a bunch of people. 0.94

02:26:02.000 And they had no security at the Olympics.

02:26:04.000 But then they opened the door for security.

02:26:06.000 And we continued the Olympics, though.

02:26:08.000 I was already done.

02:26:09.000 But we continued the Olympics and it finished them off.

02:26:13.000 But then in 1980, we boycotted to go into Russia.

02:26:17.000 The 1980 Olympics were in Moscow, and the 1980 US team did not go to the Olympics.

02:26:24.000 None of us.

02:26:26.000 Because we wanted them to get the hell out of Afghanistan. 1.00

02:26:32.000 So the government used us sporting people as pawns a little bit.

02:26:37.000 So then in 1984, we hosted the Olympics.

02:26:41.000 I was the coach.

02:26:42.000 I was the coach in 82, but I didn't get to go.

02:26:44.000 And I had a hell of a team that we were going to go over there and rush and win.

02:26:47.000 But in 1984, they didn't come, and 12 other countries didn't come, mostly all communists.

02:26:54.000 And so, you know what?

02:26:57.000 What good did that do?

02:26:59.000 This week, I just did an editorial.

02:27:02.000 I did a column and told them it really didn't do any good because we're thinking about boycotting China.

02:27:12.000 Now, everybody's got their opinion, but I think it showed from 1884 what good did it do?

02:27:19.000 I think we can do good.

02:27:23.000 And the only sentence that I said was That really said that I wasn't just sports crazy, was I said, if safety is of concern,

02:27:40.000 then we don't go.

02:27:44.000 But I mean, I said real safety.

02:27:46.000 That's the word I used.

02:27:48.000 Real safety.

02:27:49.000 Not just presumed.

02:27:50.000 Because we've already shown it before.

02:27:52.000 It was more of a pawn that you could use it as a tool.

02:27:56.000 You know, try to get your way in the government.

02:27:58.000 And so I said that.

02:28:00.000 Well...

02:28:05.000 It came out about a week ago, and it made some pretty good news, but they took that sentence out about safety.

02:28:14.000 Can you believe it?

02:28:17.000 Why'd they do that?

02:28:18.000 That was the most important sentence I had.

02:28:21.000 I kind of hid it in there, and I figured it wouldn't be a big deal, but they took that sentence out.

02:28:26.000 Do you have a social media account?

02:28:28.000 My daughters do it for me.

02:28:30.000 I don't pay attention to it.

02:28:31.000 Well, that's the beautiful thing about social media is that you could put something like that on Instagram and they couldn't take it down.

02:28:38.000 They wouldn't have any say in it.

02:28:40.000 Yeah, I'll probably have to do that because I haven't had the reaction yet.

02:28:43.000 I haven't had the reaction yet.

02:28:44.000 Yeah, you'll have to do that.

02:28:45.000 You can't trust those people.

02:28:47.000 You have to be able to express yourself 100% unfiltered.

02:28:51.000 They can disagree with you or agree with you, that's fine.

02:28:54.000 But they can't change your words.

02:28:55.000 If they change your words, we've got a real problem.

02:28:57.000 Yeah.

02:29:00.000 Did you ever see the documentary Icarus?

02:29:03.000 No, I haven't.

02:29:04.000 It's a really interesting documentary by this guy named Brian Fogle and it's all about...

02:29:08.000 What 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.

02:29:17.000 He was making a documentary about a bike race.

02:29:21.000 He was doing a bicycle race.

02:29:23.000 And 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.

02:29:35.000 And he hired Gregory Rychenkov, who was the head of Russian anti-doping at the time.

02:29:43.000 And he was explaining to him what he was going to have to take and how to take it, this and that.

02:29:48.000 Along the way, while they were doing this.

02:29:51.000 So he filmed the first race, and then in the year leading up to the second race, the Sochi Olympic scandal happened.

02:29:59.000 And Gregory Uchenkov was, he was a part of that.

02:30:04.000 Where he explained he had to leave the country.

02:30:08.000 He escaped and came to America because he was being implicated in this whole scandal where they were taking the urine from the athletes.

02:30:16.000 They were opening up the supposedly...

02:30:19.000 There was some container that couldn't be opened, but the Russians had figured out how to open it. 0.93

02:30:25.000 They would take out the dirty urine and replace it with clean urine.

02:30:28.000 So they doped up their entire team.

02:30:32.000 And Gregory was explaining how they doped up the entire team.

02:30:36.000 Everyone except the figure skaters.

02:30:38.000 They found that the figure skaters, when they doped up the fine motor skills, there was no benefit and the females became too manly. 1.00

02:30:45.000 But it's a fascinating documentary where it shows you the lengths that some countries will go to cheat.

02:30:53.000 It's crazy.

02:30:54.000 No, it's unbelievable.

02:30:56.000 And I think it goes back to that government control a lot too, I think.

02:31:01.000 For sure.

02:31:02.000 Because they're a tool.

02:31:04.000 The athletes are a tool.

02:31:05.000 They felt that sport shows your power.

02:31:08.000 Yes.

02:31:09.000 And that's the power of the country.

02:31:11.000 Yes.

02:31:12.000 Just how dominant you are.

02:31:15.000 It's crazy.

02:31:16.000 So, in fact, I... There was a movie that I was just in by chance about a little over a year ago.

02:31:25.000 It's called The Last Champion and it's by Glenn Withrow.

02:31:29.000 Is it a film or a documentary?

02:31:31.000 No, it's a film.

02:31:32.000 It's an actual film and it just got kind of...

02:31:35.000 It's been on Google.

02:31:38.000 It's been around, but it's got a little bit of a...

02:31:45.000 It's about a guy that was a champion wrestler.

02:31:51.000 And they brought me in at the end just because somebody looked at the wrestling and said it wasn't very good.

02:31:57.000 And so they just said, can you come in and look and see what we can do to help the wrestling part of it?

02:32:01.000 So I flew out to...

02:32:03.000 I don't remember where I flew out to, but I think it was Vegas.

02:32:08.000 No, Dallas, actually.

02:32:09.000 Actually, I flew into Dallas, and they shot it there at a high school or an auditorium.

02:32:17.000 And I watched the wrestling, and yeah, it needed cleaned up.

02:32:21.000 So we cleaned up the wrestling.

02:32:23.000 But then the guy, when I was there, he said, why don't we make this guy, because he's...

02:32:27.000 He got kicked out of the Olympics after he won them because of steroids in America.

02:32:31.000 Why don't we make him one of your kids?

02:32:34.000 And you're doing the announcing, and you guys will meet again.

02:32:37.000 So it's a redemption story, and it's really good, actually.

02:32:41.000 And a lot of people have really liked it.

02:32:44.000 And he's in negotiation now to have overseas rights and all this kind of stuff.

02:32:50.000 Glenn Withrow is, I think, has I got the last champion up there?

02:32:54.000 Yes.

02:32:54.000 Yeah, that's the name of the movie.

02:32:56.000 But 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,

02:33:11.000 I 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.

02:33:21.000 And 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.

02:33:31.000 So 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.

02:33:43.000 But it's really a good movie, and it's about exactly that.

02:33:49.000 Because in our sport...

02:33:53.000 Or any sport.

02:33:57.000 And there's this book out, and I couldn't believe it.

02:34:00.000 I 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.

02:34:11.000 They say that, like, give me whatever.

02:34:15.000 And 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.

02:34:29.000 But yet, a year, within a year after you won those gold medals, you died. 0.99

02:34:37.000 And they had a statistical thing on it, and it was like, most people still take the damn pill! 1.00

02:34:42.000 Wow. 0.99

02:34:43.000 But I think it's where you actually took the poll at.

02:34:47.000 It was, again, it was this poll in this area of the world that probably needs help.

02:34:53.000 Deeply impoverished.

02:34:54.000 Yeah.

02:34:55.000 That is a thing about the Olympics in other countries, is that it's a way out of poverty for some people.

02:35:02.000 Whereas in our world, in our country, it's almost in some ways a way into poverty.

02:35:08.000 These athletes, they're dedicating their whole life in many ways.

02:35:13.000 You'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.

02:35:20.000 But how many athletes don't?

02:35:23.000 I mean, they dedicate this enormous amount of time to a sport.

02:35:28.000 It doesn't pay off for them financially at all, but yet the Olympics reaps incredible rewards for it.

02:35:34.000 They make billions of dollars every time the Olympics rolls around.

02:35:37.000 The networks, these different countries, the windfall is incredible, but not for the athletes.

02:35:42.000 It'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.

02:35:50.000 For the athletes.

02:35:51.000 It's not amateur for the networks.

02:35:53.000 It's professional.

02:35:55.000 There's a lot of money involved.

02:35:56.000 A lot of money.

02:35:57.000 And that money does not get distributed to the athletes.

02:36:00.000 For the most part.

02:36:01.000 Well, it didn't go to me at all.

02:36:03.000 Like I said, my dad had to pay 500 bucks for me to wrestle in the Olympics.

02:36:06.000 But you know, I'm the kind of guy, again, a little bit different between me and you.

02:36:10.000 You're pretty hardcore on this stuff.

02:36:13.000 But for me, it's like...

02:36:17.000 I look over time how I can do well.

02:36:21.000 And so, you know, it's like I've been hired with ASICS for how many years?

02:36:30.000 I said 1978, so 22 and 21, 43 years.

02:36:35.000 And I've been having shoes with them for 35 years and still selling shoes.

02:36:39.000 I just signed another four-year contract with them.

02:36:41.000 And I'm hoping to go another four years after that.

02:36:43.000 And so...

02:36:45.000 But at the beginning, I didn't get anything.

02:36:50.000 And I signed my coaching job.

02:36:55.000 It was $13,000 a year.

02:36:58.000 What's funny about that is That wasn't going to make it for me because I got married.

02:37:03.000 I don't handle any money.

02:37:05.000 I don't like to get caught in that mental.

02:37:07.000 That drives me crazy.

02:37:08.000 I've got enough issues.

02:37:09.000 So my wife's saying, well, I don't know if we can pay these bills on this new house that we're living in. 0.51

02:37:14.000 And so I remember my dad, when I went to the YMCA, I remember I got a job down there.

02:37:19.000 And my dad said, I'm going to start you some kind of a plan when you get your first job.

02:37:24.000 And I was 10 years old.

02:37:26.000 And 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?

02:37:35.000 He goes, yeah, I did.

02:37:37.000 I go, is there any money in that plan, Dad?

02:37:40.000 I'm 29. Actually, I'm 28. 27 or 28. First year head coach.

02:37:48.000 Bought a new house.

02:37:50.000 I'm married.

02:37:52.000 Probably got maybe one kid.

02:37:55.000 And I said, He said, I'll call you back.

02:37:58.000 So he calls me back in about 15 minutes.

02:38:01.000 He said, yeah, I just pulled out the latest, what they send me.

02:38:04.000 He said, I should have this sent to you anyway.

02:38:07.000 No, I'm because, you know, I just never turn.

02:38:10.000 It's in your name and I just get it to me.

02:38:12.000 Because when you made it up, you were 10 years old.

02:38:15.000 All they did was start taking money out of your payment checks on the YMCA. Then you went to work for me.

02:38:21.000 And then you went to work for Martinson Construction.

02:38:23.000 Then you went to work for Wheeler Lumber Company.

02:38:27.000 And all those years, then you went to work for the University of Iowa.

02:38:30.000 Or Iowa State as a graduate assistant, then you went to work for the University of Iowa.

02:38:34.000 And so I said, well, is there any money in it?

02:38:37.000 And so it's been, it was about 19 years of accumulating what they could take out of that to put in a retirement plan.

02:38:46.000 And this is 1977. That's a long time ago.

02:38:55.000 And so the figure he gave me was a lot of money to me.

02:38:57.000 It was $250,000.

02:39:01.000 That's a lot of money.

02:39:03.000 Yeah.

02:39:04.000 And I just looked at my...

02:39:05.000 I said, thanks, Dad.

02:39:06.000 That's all I need to know.

02:39:07.000 I'm good.

02:39:09.000 Don't even worry about it.

02:39:10.000 I just needed that...

02:39:11.000 I could get by with what was going to happen, but I knew I had this money.

02:39:15.000 But again, my dad, he helped me.

02:39:20.000 And that's what is so important and so valuable for me is that...

02:39:25.000 I had so many good things that happened to me.

02:39:30.000 Even though you can't say a murder is a good thing, but you turn them into somehow.

02:39:37.000 Not good things, but for betterment.

02:39:39.000 You turn that guilt and that anger.

02:39:42.000 Into something amazing.

02:39:44.000 So, 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.

02:39:54.000 You know, it's, I got a nutrition gold that's...

02:39:57.000 But you're Dan Gable.

02:39:59.000 This is the, there's so many other athletes.

02:40:03.000 I understand.

02:40:04.000 I didn't get the money from the, you know.

02:40:06.000 I get it.

02:40:06.000 But I had to go out.

02:40:07.000 I get it.

02:40:07.000 You got the endorsements.

02:40:08.000 But after 35 years of winning, you can do some of these things.

02:40:12.000 Yes, you can.

02:40:12.000 You got the shoes.

02:40:13.000 Yeah, you can.

02:40:15.000 Yeah, exactly.

02:40:16.000 What drives me crazy is that the networks are making so much money.

02:40:20.000 No, I agree totally.

02:40:21.000 It 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.

02:40:32.000 Right.

02:40:32.000 And I get there's a purity.

02:40:34.000 It's heading more that way.

02:40:36.000 Because of people like you, though.

02:40:38.000 I hope so.

02:40:39.000 No, I'm honest.

02:40:40.000 Because you're talking one way, and a lot of people are listening.

02:40:46.000 And a lot of people hear.

02:40:48.000 And some people aren't educated on this stuff.

02:40:52.000 It's just not fair.

02:40:53.000 That's the problem.

02:40:54.000 It's not just that the athletes don't deserve the endorsements.

02:41:00.000 They do deserve the endorsements and more.

02:41:02.000 They deserve the endorsements if they win.

02:41:05.000 They deserve the endorsements if they become someone like Dan Gable. 0.97

02:41:08.000 But the problem is the networks are making all the fucking money while these people are giving their life to compete. 0.93

02:41:16.000 And the networks are treating it like a professional sport where they don't have to pay the athletes. 0.98

02:41:20.000 That's what it is.

02:41:21.000 It's not just a regular professional sport either.

02:41:23.000 It's the biggest professional sport because it's international.

02:41:27.000 It'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.

02:41:40.000 You're not broadcasting, you're not producing anything.

02:41:44.000 The athletes are producing the entertainment.

02:41:47.000 The entire...

02:41:49.000 The reason why people are tuning in is to see exceptional athletes perform.

02:41:53.000 They know they've dedicated their life to this.

02:41:55.000 They know that there's years and years and years of toil and sweat and grind.

02:42:00.000 And here they are, and you're going to put a camera on it.

02:42:02.000 And because you put a camera on it, you're making all the money? 1.00

02:42:05.000 Fuck you. 1.00

02:42:06.000 That's crazy. 1.00

02:42:08.000 That's crazy to me. 0.96

02:42:09.000 That's crazy to me, and it's disgusting.

02:42:11.000 It doesn't make any sense.

02:42:13.000 So you obviously have answers for that, right?

02:42:17.000 Well, they should distribute some of the money to the athletes.

02:42:19.000 That's what I'm saying.

02:42:20.000 To the athletes.

02:42:21.000 But they...

02:42:22.000 A lot of it.

02:42:23.000 Okay, well...

02:42:24.000 The same way they do with the NBA. The same way they do with the NFL. There should be money distributed to those athletes.

02:42:31.000 And I guarantee you we'll have better athletes.

02:42:33.000 Because you know in other countries they compensate their athletes.

02:42:35.000 You know, they compensate their athletes in Russia.

02:42:38.000 They compensate their athletes in China.

02:42:40.000 Not as well as they should, but they do.

02:42:42.000 In 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.

02:42:55.000 In our country, they rely on great corporations like ASICS or whatever the corporation is that can compensate these athletes after they're done competing.

02:43:08.000 And I think we both are actually on the same page.

02:43:12.000 I 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.

02:43:26.000 And instead of really getting compensated up front by what you're talking about, I'm able to, because I've stayed...

02:43:37.000 In front of the public.

02:43:38.000 And it's hard to do that sometimes.

02:43:41.000 I mean, it's hard to go from an Olympic athlete to automatically being a great coach or being a...

02:43:46.000 You go to work in some other business.

02:43:47.000 I mean, you just don't see where it shines.

02:43:49.000 But I've been able to do that.

02:43:51.000 And so it's a little easier.

02:43:53.000 In fact, right now...

02:43:56.000 A feature film.

02:43:57.000 I just got a contract.

02:43:59.000 All these things are great, Dan.

02:44:00.000 The problem is money is being generated.

02:44:03.000 And it's not being distributed to the athletes.

02:44:05.000 And the only reason it's being generated at all is because of the athletes and their performances.

02:44:11.000 But they don't get any of it.

02:44:12.000 That, to me, is criminal.

02:44:14.000 They're working on it, I think, a little bit in the NCAA too, right?

02:44:17.000 They should in the NCAA. That's a lot.

02:44:19.000 The amount of money those teams, those colleges earn, those universities earn because of the fact their sports teams are successful, their programs are successful.

02:44:30.000 It's just crazy to me.

02:44:33.000 It's just one of those legacy institutions that's been around for so long that we just accepted the fact the athletes get ripped off.

02:44:40.000 That's what it is.

02:44:41.000 There's no Olympics without the athletes.

02:44:43.000 If they all said, you know what?

02:44:45.000 I want money.

02:44:46.000 How much do you guys make?

02:44:47.000 You're making billions of dollars?

02:44:49.000 And we get, how much?

02:44:50.000 We get zero? 0.99

02:44:52.000 Get the fuck out of here. 0.99

02:44:53.000 You know, I love your saying that. 0.99

02:44:57.000 Even though I don't say it.

02:44:58.000 I know.

02:44:59.000 That's why I'm saying it so loud.

02:45:00.000 Right.

02:45:01.000 So what I want to say to the athletes is, let's make our own breaks.

02:45:07.000 Don't depend on luck.

02:45:09.000 Let's work extra hard.

02:45:11.000 Let's do this.

02:45:13.000 Because you've got to do both.

02:45:15.000 Yes.

02:45:16.000 It's got to do both, and otherwise you won't be.

02:45:17.000 And they've already done both a lot.

02:45:19.000 But it doesn't stop.

02:45:21.000 Even though you get an Olympic gold medal, I mean, you're pretty young usually.

02:45:28.000 I 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.

02:45:36.000 And then that's not the valuable one.

02:45:38.000 It's like the oldest athlete that ever won the Olympics.

02:45:42.000 I don't know.

02:45:43.000 I think we've had some in the 40s that wrestled, but barely.

02:45:46.000 Wow!

02:45:46.000 And won?

02:45:47.000 I think 41 or 2 or something.

02:45:49.000 That's incredible.

02:45:49.000 Yeah, it's just...

02:45:51.000 The average age when I was there was 27, you know, back in 72, so I don't know exactly.

02:45:55.000 That makes sense.

02:45:56.000 Yeah.

02:45:58.000 So...

02:45:58.000 But, no.

02:46:00.000 No, that's good that...

02:46:04.000 So that's why it's like me here.

02:46:06.000 I'm selling ASIC shoes.

02:46:09.000 I got a Gable beer.

02:46:11.000 I'm glad that you're doing all these things and you deserve that and more.

02:46:15.000 I know, but what I'm saying is...

02:46:20.000 I have to do it.

02:46:21.000 Yeah.

02:46:22.000 I got to keep doing it.

02:46:24.000 Right.

02:46:24.000 It just so happens I don't mind working.

02:46:25.000 I like it.

02:46:26.000 And it helps our sport.

02:46:28.000 You know, maybe not the beer drinking, but the celebrate, maybe.

02:46:32.000 But, you know, it's just like the videos, the cassettes.

02:46:35.000 You know, they sell at Human Kinetic Publishers.

02:46:40.000 You know, they sell at Championship Video.

02:46:42.000 You know, all these places.

02:46:43.000 And this guy...

02:46:44.000 Making a movie right now.

02:46:47.000 They sent me a contract and I looked at the contract and I'm going to tell you, it's a little scary.

02:46:54.000 It's not much there for me.

02:46:58.000 Maybe?

02:46:59.000 I don't know yet.

02:47:00.000 I don't really know how to read a 30-page contract yet.

02:47:04.000 So, you know, maybe you're enhancing me a little bit here.

02:47:08.000 Maybe get my price up a little bit better.

02:47:10.000 I hope so.

02:47:11.000 I can only hope so.

02:47:13.000 We just did three hours, Dan Gable.

02:47:15.000 We've done three hours already?

02:47:17.000 Yeah.

02:47:17.000 Well, we're just starting.

02:47:18.000 No, I'm just kidding.

02:47:19.000 I'm just kidding.

02:47:21.000 These guys over here, they don't want to work overtime.

02:47:24.000 You know, it's like I said, I'm the first to arrive, last to leave.

02:47:28.000 That's how you've become who you are.

02:47:30.000 And the hardest working guy there.

02:47:32.000 But that doesn't mean everybody is.

02:47:35.000 That doesn't mean everybody is.

02:47:36.000 And I already told you that I'm probably the only coach in the country to let a guy come half a practice.

02:47:43.000 But the team made it.

02:47:45.000 I think you understood the unique psychology of that one individual.

02:47:50.000 You need to know your subjects.

02:47:52.000 You need to know your subject.

02:47:53.000 That's wrestling.

02:47:55.000 And then you need to know your subjects, and that's your wrestlers.

02:47:58.000 Obviously, you do a good job and a great job with your experience here.

02:48:04.000 I don't know if you call it a podcast or not.

02:48:06.000 Yeah, that's what we call it.

02:48:07.000 But you do a lot of work, and you've worked your way here.

02:48:15.000 I'm amazed that all these people are listening, or will listen to this.

02:48:21.000 I'm amazed, too.

02:48:22.000 It's confusing.

02:48:23.000 Well, I don't know if it's confusing.

02:48:24.000 It is to me.

02:48:25.000 Yeah.

02:48:26.000 Because I just live my life like no one's listening.

02:48:29.000 I mean, I know they are, so I do my best, but I just sort of show up and just keep living like a normal person.

02:48:37.000 But you're good at it, you know?

02:48:38.000 I mean, you don't...

02:48:39.000 You didn't have notes?

02:48:40.000 I had notes.

02:48:41.000 I had notes.

02:48:42.000 I don't see a note over there.

02:48:43.000 No, I don't have any notes, but I've been thinking about you for a long time, my friend.

02:48:47.000 I really have.

02:48:47.000 I've been looking forward to this day, and it meant a lot to me that you came here.

02:48:51.000 And 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.

02:49:00.000 Well, you know, it's one of the hardest, definitely.

02:49:02.000 I mean, if you can go through one of my practices, you're going to be a pretty good person.

02:49:07.000 I mean, it's pretty tough.

02:49:09.000 It's pretty tough.

02:49:09.000 But I mean, it goes back to, I mean, it's like my high school coach, you know, it's like he had a drink for us.

02:49:18.000 It was called Burley Juice, because his name was Bob Siddons, but we called him Burley Bob, not to his face, but Coach Siddons.

02:49:24.000 But he had Gatorade.

02:49:27.000 Gatorade just came out back in those years, and it was a powder form then.

02:49:33.000 But it wasn't that good yet, and so we didn't really like drinking it.

02:49:36.000 But he...

02:49:37.000 Mountain Dew just came out in 1964. The kind of Mountain Dew that's kind of there today.

02:49:43.000 And he mixed it.

02:49:45.000 He'd make his Gatorade and then he'd put a can of Mountain Dew in there and wow, did it taste good.

02:49:52.000 Of course, he didn't know we were slipping a couple other cans of Mountain Dew in it when he wasn't looking.

02:49:55.000 So it was a little bit more Mountain Dew.

02:49:57.000 But, you know, it's just one of these things that you learn over the years.

02:50:02.000 And, you know, I've been strict as hell at times.

02:50:04.000 By that I mean...

02:50:07.000 I wouldn't drink a pop.

02:50:08.000 I wouldn't drink a soda.

02:50:09.000 I would only eat perfect.

02:50:13.000 At the beginning of my career.

02:50:14.000 But as I got older and as I got better at what I did, I started...

02:50:19.000 I can drink at Mountain Dew.

02:50:21.000 I can...

02:50:23.000 Even the time I got to the...

02:50:25.000 Before the Olympic Games, I might drink a beer after a hard workout.

02:50:29.000 I might drink a beer.

02:50:31.000 That type of stuff.

02:50:32.000 And I might drink a nutrition drink before.

02:50:34.000 I did.

02:50:34.000 I used to drink Nutramund, it was called.

02:50:36.000 But now it's Gable Gold.

02:50:38.000 But...

02:50:40.000 But it's like you adjust, but your mind is going to tell you what you can do and how good you are.

02:50:49.000 And the mind also tells you when to hell to get out.

02:50:53.000 Or your mom tells you when to hell to get out.

02:50:56.000 But she's looking at my mind.

02:50:58.000 And I would not be here if I hadn't stepped down in 1997. I was on the road for...

02:51:07.000 I'd be dead.

02:51:07.000 I figured I'd make four more years.

02:51:10.000 24 years now.

02:51:11.000 Just too much of the road.

02:51:12.000 Just too much nervousness.

02:51:19.000 Just nervous all the time.

02:51:20.000 You're just too hyper.

02:51:24.000 You've got to settle down at a certain point if you want to live well.

02:51:29.000 Because you cared so much, because it was so important to you.

02:51:33.000 About living?

02:51:34.000 Competing.

02:51:34.000 The competing was so important to you.

02:51:36.000 That's where the nervousness was coming from.

02:51:38.000 Yeah, I think it was a success.

02:51:41.000 You know, just getting used to it.

02:51:42.000 And if you didn't have success, people were like...

02:51:46.000 I can remember when I lost the 10th championship in a row.

02:51:51.000 The article in the paper.

02:51:53.000 They were taking people's comments.

02:51:56.000 And it said...

02:52:00.000 Actually, this was after I lost to Owings back in 1970, Nationals, after 181 wins.

02:52:11.000 The Des Moines Register had little comments, and one guy said in there, you just ain't got it anymore.

02:52:22.000 You'll never do anything in wrestling.

02:52:26.000 That's what he was hoping.

02:52:28.000 A person like that, they're projecting.

02:52:31.000 They're hoping you fall apart.

02:52:32.000 Guess what?

02:52:33.000 And it had the guy's name on there.

02:52:34.000 And guess what?

02:52:36.000 The guy got a get well card.

02:52:41.000 I'm sorry to hear you're sick from my mom in the mail that week.

02:52:50.000 That's how I've lived my life.

02:52:53.000 Dan Gable, thank you very much for being here.

02:52:55.000 I appreciate you, brother.

02:52:56.000 Thank you.

02:52:57.000 Thank you.

02:52:57.000 It was a pleasure and an honor.

02:52:59.000 Thank you.

02:53:00.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - March 31, 2021

Joe Rogan Experience #1627 - Dan Gable

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Summary

Transcript