0:00
When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsored
0:05
jobs.
0:06
It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the
0:10
right skills, certifications, and more.
0:12
Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your
0:17
boxes.
0:18
Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit at indeed.com/podcast.
0:23
That's indeed.com/podcast terms and conditions apply.
0:26
Need a hiring hero?
0:27
And this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.
0:48
This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
0:51
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:53
Let's get into it.
0:54
My guys today, we've got a very special guest on the podcast.
0:56
His name is Sam Hayeswinkle.
0:58
So Sam is a member or was a member of the 2012 US Olympic team.
1:03
He was a freestyle wrestler on that team.
1:04
He was also a four time all American at the University of Oklahoma.
1:08
And he also, this is really cool, made the United States world Greco wrestling team at
1:12
the age of 36, which is like decrepitly old for wrestling.
1:16
But that is a super impressive accomplishment.
1:18
He currently serves as the head coach for the regional training center here in Oklahoma.
1:22
And also, if that name sounds vaguely familiar, it's because he's a member of my personal
1:27
foxhole.
1:28
So you hear me guys talk about all the time building your own foxhole, like how to build
1:31
a godly and manly foxhole?
1:33
Well, he is Sam the coach.
1:35
So if you go back to episode 104 of this podcast, I talk about some of my thoughts about Sam
1:39
the coach.
1:40
So this is a great personal friend of mine.
1:41
We did an in person conversation.
1:42
Sorry.
1:43
There's no video for this one.
1:44
We were recording in kind of a different studio and all that so we could be in front
1:47
of each other.
1:48
And there was no real way of doing video, but we talked about a lot of things in this podcast.
1:51
But before I get into what we talked about, you might be tempted to skip this one.
1:55
Okay, because it's wrestling and maybe you didn't wrestle or you don't really know much
1:58
about wrestling.
1:59
There's a lot of really great things for you to look at and to think through that nothing
2:03
to do with wrestling whatsoever.
2:05
Okay.
2:06
So we talked about what it was like for him having a father and an uncle that were both
2:09
Olympic wrestlers, right?
2:10
We talked about the entire process and got kind of a behind the scenes look at what it
2:14
was like to be an Olympian for the 2012 Olympics, what it was like in London, which was really,
2:18
really cool.
2:19
We also previewed the 2021 Olympic freestyle wrestling and kind of got some gold medal
2:22
predictions.
2:23
We did a behind the scenes look at the crazy Jaden Cox weight cutting scandal that happened
2:28
during the US trials.
2:29
He was actually there while this was all happening.
2:32
He was near all those wrestlers.
2:33
So we got an inside look at that.
2:35
Also his thoughts on American athletes that are protesting the country that they're pretending
2:39
to work for or serve also his thoughts on, you know, weight cutting for children wrestlers
2:44
and, you know, whether or not young boy wrestlers should wrestle against young girls.
2:48
But towards the end, he goes through this crazy story and I've heard him tell it before,
2:53
but there's a crazy story where his wrestling training almost cost him his life.
2:58
Okay.
3:00
Like insanity and you're just going to have to stick around to check that out guys without
3:04
further ado, let's get into it.
3:07
Sam Hayes winkle.
3:08
Welcome to undone to life of man's podcast.
3:11
Thanks, man.
3:12
Hey, I'm excited to be here.
3:13
Hey, you should be excited because this is actually the first time I've been in the same
3:15
room with the person I was doing the interview with.
3:17
So we're going to be able to like, yes, we're going to be able to interrupt each other.
3:20
We're going to be able to like, literally, if you want to like poke me in the eye or shoot
3:23
to take down why we're doing all this, like it's all available to you.
3:25
So I'm going to be knee fighting for the space like you do on an airplane.
3:29
That's why I sat right here so that you couldn't get there.
3:32
I know you guys can't see us on video right now, but there is a gap big enough between
3:36
us to where I'm not too terribly worried because here's the thing.
3:39
We're going to be talking about a lot of wrestling today.
3:41
So guys, and I told you all here in the intro that even if you're not into wrestling, this
3:45
is going to be an interesting conversation because whenever you can get into the mind
3:49
of somebody that has made the sacrifice to be an Olympian, that's a pretty important
3:53
thing.
3:54
And that's a pretty amazing thing for everyone to be around.
3:56
But just kind of even start off with you, Sam, like it seems like from an outside observer,
4:00
you didn't really have a choice in whether or not you were going to be a wrestler because
4:03
your dad and your uncle were both Olympians, right?
4:06
So I mean, did you feel like you had a choice like could you have just picked up golf if
4:09
you wanted to?
4:10
Oh, yeah, I loved it.
4:14
My dad's rule was you got to be in a sport or you got to have a job.
4:18
And so young wrestling was the sport that was the easiest.
4:21
But like high school, my brothers did football and got jobs.
4:25
And I think I'm the only one that wrestling college and maybe the only one that wrestled
4:30
all the way through high school.
4:32
Okay.
4:33
My brother might have.
4:34
So when did you start wrestling?
4:36
I don't remember.
4:37
Like actual like formal putting on a singlet going to tournaments, that kind of thing.
4:41
Yeah, I don't remember.
4:42
As long as I can remember, I was wrestling tournaments, three or four, something like
4:46
that.
4:47
Okay.
4:48
Did you feel like since your dad and your uncle were obviously big, you know, influences
4:51
in your life?
4:52
Did you feel like you, I know I kind of already asked this, but did you feel like you had
4:56
the option to do something else or was it literally just like wrestling just agreed with you so
5:00
much?
5:01
It didn't even matter.
5:02
Yeah, it didn't matter for me.
5:04
My brothers would say that they felt like they needed to at least up through high school.
5:09
They didn't feel that way in high school.
5:10
But when we were kids that, yeah, I don't know that we had much of a choice.
5:13
We had to go to wrestling practice.
5:14
Okay.
5:15
So was that something that you like resented or was that something that, you know, cause
5:20
again, when you look back and you know, oh, my mom and dad, they forced me to do this
5:23
or they forced me to do that.
5:24
Like it's kind of easy to get a little jaded about that.
5:26
But like when you were living it, did it feel like you were kind of under their thumb like
5:30
you absolutely had to?
5:31
No, because I loved it.
5:33
I mean, I had the days like any kid where you don't want to go to practice and your parents
5:36
make you, but it was never like a whole season or a month where I didn't want to go and couldn't
5:41
stand it and felt like I was being forced.
5:45
My brothers again would probably say yes.
5:47
Right.
5:48
They felt a little more like they were forced to.
5:50
So how did that affect your relationship, like with your brothers because like, I know
5:54
there's all those, there's all kinds of familial dynamics and of course, like you've got your
5:57
own kids and you know, we've got our one and you know, hopefully more.
6:01
And you know, there's always those dynamics like, oh, is mom or dad like favoring this
6:04
kid or that kid or like, oh, they're only doing that to make dad proud or something like that.
6:08
So did that ever kind of create issues with you and your siblings that they weren't as
6:11
into it as you were?
6:13
Probably.
6:14
Okay, I know I seem ultra aware of everything going on around me, but I don't think I was
6:21
as a kid.
6:22
I was very narrow minded, focused, you know, was going to make an Olympic team.
6:28
So I was focused on wrestling and didn't really notice my brothers hated it too much
6:31
or didn't like it or if dad was leaning toward me because we liked the same thing, which I'm
6:37
sure happened.
6:39
Well, so like at what age did you, I guess, make the idea in your brain like you wanted
6:44
to be a Olympian because when I was a little kid, it's like, oh, yeah, I wanted to be a
6:47
major league baseball player, but I also wanted to be a soldier.
6:48
I also wanted to be an astronaut like you want to be these things, but like at what age
6:52
or kind of what time period of your life, can you remember?
6:54
No, no, no, I'm going to be an Olympic wrestler.
6:56
As far back as I can remember, okay, would play with my dad's Olympic ring, put on his
7:00
clothes.
7:01
Like I knew I was going to be an Olympian.
7:02
And I thought every kid did that.
7:03
Like I knew every kid wanted to be everything, but I thought they all wanted to be an Olympian.
7:08
And for me, it was easy.
7:11
That was what I was going to do.
7:12
And I didn't really ever want to be anything else.
7:14
I never wanted to be a fireman or whatever.
7:17
Okay.
7:18
So with the kids that you were growing up with that were like your teammates or anything
7:22
like that, that didn't have Olympians like living in their same house or showing up at
7:25
the family barbecue, did you see some of those kids kind of make that same declaration like
7:30
I want to be an Olympian.
7:31
I want to do that thing.
7:32
Like, or was that just not was it so outside the norm?
7:34
Because like for me to say I want to be an Olympian, like no one in my family is even
7:37
an athlete much less in an Olympic athlete, right?
7:40
So like you feel like that.
7:41
Oh yeah, get out of here.
7:42
Do you have been to my family or unions?
7:44
You wouldn't be impressed.
7:45
I'll tell you that much.
7:46
But you know what?
7:47
You know, did that have something to play into it?
7:48
Like did they kind of have the same goal?
7:50
Even though they didn't have the same family set up in wrestling practice?
7:53
Yes.
7:54
We were good.
7:55
A good team, like at church, at school, now, now that was like the normal, I want to be
8:03
an NBA player.
8:04
Okay.
8:05
Like, okay.
8:06
Go for it.
8:07
Well, so with that, there's a lot of people that have goals, right?
8:10
So so I say this all the time, like, you know, people like talk a lot about goal setting.
8:14
I think the second podcast of this podcast was about mainly goal setting, it was a second
8:19
or third podcast, like, but winners and losers have the same goals.
8:23
I love that quote.
8:24
Like, that's I think that's the only quote from the atomic habit books that I've like
8:27
remembered because the book was just kind of, but like winners and losers, losers have
8:31
the same goals.
8:32
And so for you, like, do you remember a time in your life where it's like, okay, this isn't
8:37
just my goal, but this is within reach because I think for a lot of people, like when I
8:40
topped out at five 10, so did most of my major league baseball aspirations.
8:44
They're not a whole lot of dudes below, you know, six foot tall that that make it into
8:47
the majors, you know, regardless of how good they are.
8:51
So like for you, did you have a time period where like, no, no, I, I realized that this
8:54
is possible within my reach.
8:56
Yeah, I think I always felt that way.
8:58
My dad was an Olympian.
8:59
I figured I had better coaching than better chance than anybody else.
9:02
And I won everything.
9:05
My brother, on the other hand, took third at everything.
9:07
He just always was third, didn't like it, didn't think he could make it and looking
9:11
back.
9:12
He lost to John Hendricks every week.
9:13
Okay.
9:14
It was pretty good.
9:15
Yeah.
9:16
He's not bad.
9:17
Yeah, he's not bad.
9:18
But, but at the time, my brother's like, man, I'm not, I'm never going to win.
9:20
So he didn't like wrestling so much.
9:22
He got out of it.
9:23
Didn't do it in high school.
9:25
And so for me, I always thought so.
9:28
Yeah.
9:29
And I think that's an interesting point because when you look at certain people, like, can
9:32
you imagine being the, the guy at the same weight class as Kale Sanderson and Iowa State,
9:36
right?
9:37
Like you're just, cause you didn't know he was going to be what he was like when he got
9:41
there.
9:42
Like you maybe had some ideas that this guy's going to be pretty good.
9:44
Maybe an all American may win some national titles, but you didn't think undefeated, you
9:48
know, four years, you know, running of national titles.
9:51
Imagine being that guy, but imagine that being in like junior high, like the guy that you're
9:55
trying to, you know, wrestle, you know, to just make the team just to be the starter for,
9:59
for the team or whatever, like, you know, the challenge matches and stuff like that's
10:02
got to be like crazy, you know, yes, I, I was trying to set records in high school.
10:09
I wanted to have the most takedowns in the state and I want to have the most pins.
10:12
And so, uh, I would take every kid down five times before I'd pin him.
10:18
Right.
10:19
And man, I talked to a guy the other day, just ran him, he's like, Oh yeah, I wrestled
10:21
you in high school.
10:22
It was like my first week out and you score like 57 points on me and I quit.
10:27
I was like, Oh man, that's not what I was going for.
10:30
Way to go Sam.
10:31
I was not alone.
10:32
Spread the love of wrestling, not like destroying people's hopes and dreams.
10:34
Yeah.
10:35
It's funny how you don't think that way at all when you're a kid and so where'd you
10:39
go to high school?
10:40
Uh, I went to high school in Florida.
10:41
Okay.
10:42
And so like, I know that, you know, every state kind of has their thing and, you know, Florida,
10:46
Texas, California, those are more like kind of the college football, like, you know, or
10:50
high school football areas and then, you know, Iowa, Oklahoma, you might get a little bit
10:53
more wrestling.
10:54
So what was it like in Florida for wrestling?
10:56
Was that like, were you all good at wrestling?
10:59
Is that like a Florida thing or was that something else?
11:01
No, they were not, not good, especially coming from Oklahoma, uh, went to Florida and just
11:07
kind of walked through it.
11:08
And they're, they got a lot better, right as I finished, uh, wrestling in Florida got
11:13
a lot better.
11:14
And I'm going to claim it.
11:15
It was all me.
11:16
Yeah.
11:17
It was a high school kid.
11:18
Exactly.
11:19
Yeah.
11:20
You're starting, but you were undefeated in high school, right?
11:21
I wasn't defeated in high school.
11:22
Okay.
11:23
Time state champ.
11:24
Okay.
11:25
So it's always fun to figure out.
11:26
Right.
11:27
Exactly.
11:28
Well, I'm assuming if you didn't lose that unless you, you know, quit right before the
11:29
end, you know, which we've seen in the Olympics here recently, but, um, but with that in mind,
11:32
like, I guess, were you ever in trouble in any of those matches?
11:36
Because you know, it was it, or was it just, you just took people down, cut them and took
11:39
them down and then eventually pinned them.
11:41
Yeah.
11:42
And in Florida, I don't think I was ever in trouble.
11:44
Okay.
11:45
I was, I was a little, I'd say a level ahead.
11:47
Now I'd go to national tournaments and I was in trouble.
11:50
I had a lot of close matches and, uh, but within Florida wasn't, yeah.
11:58
So is that, so whenever you said that, that just reminded me of something that I think
12:01
I've heard shells on and talk about this about like, yo, El Romero, and he kind of talks
12:04
about the differences between like the American wrestling teams and the Cuban wrestling teams.
12:08
And like the American teams, like they're trying to beat you by as much as possible and
12:12
get to the pin as quickly as possible.
12:14
And effort, effort, effort, go, go, go, whereas like Cubans and Russians and all that, like,
12:18
you know, he would talk about yo, El Romero and some of these, you know, Olympic matches,
12:22
like he would just wait and wait similar to his MMA career and he would just explode when
12:26
he needed to, but he would never give more effort than what was minimally necessary for
12:31
him to win that match.
12:32
Like, so do you feel like your, your, it kind of seems like you're way more on the ladder
12:37
specter or the prior spectrum where it's like, you wanted to just absolutely obliterate these
12:41
people and leave no doubt.
12:42
Yes.
12:43
I leaned that way.
12:45
I will say by the end of my career, I lean more toward, uh, Romero style, like I tried
12:50
to be smarter.
12:52
Part of that I was getting older, but, but, but a big part of it was, you know, conserve
12:58
and energy being smart, right, you know, when the Olympics, everything matters, you know,
13:02
and, and so the US leans that way because Iowa back in the day, dang able and, um, that
13:11
was their, their stick.
13:12
You know, it's still their stick now.
13:14
We're, we're the toughest, we're the meanest and everybody wanted to be Iowa.
13:18
So that became the focus across the nation, uh, but, but you see it at the higher levels.
13:24
They get smarter.
13:25
Right.
13:26
Well, the thing that, that kind of brings up is because you'll see that, especially in,
13:31
you know, we're right in the middle of the Olympics right now and you'll see someone kind
13:34
of take it easy on the semi final thing and then, but then you'll see other people that
13:37
just go balls out in the semi final and the final and win.
13:40
And so I guess it's just different for everybody because everybody kind of has their own gas
13:43
tank.
13:44
But one thing before we move on from high school, so undefeated high school wrestler for you
13:49
growing up in a state where, you know, wrestling isn't worshiped like it is in Iowa or, you
13:54
know, basketball in Indian or something like that, you know, was that good for you in high
13:58
school?
13:59
Like, were you like a recognizable, you know, jock athlete kind of thing because you were
14:03
the undefeated wrestler because there are some schools like we had some really good wrestlers
14:07
at the schools that I grew up in, but we weren't like known for having this lineage and legacy
14:11
of wrestlers.
14:12
And so these, these were just kind of almost under appreciated athletes, whereas the guy,
14:17
you know, that was a decent, you know, running back for the football team, maybe got a little
14:20
bit more play, like for you, like, did that kind of bring you some some plaudits from from
14:25
your, you know, classmates or teammates or something?
14:28
Not at all.
14:29
Okay.
14:30
Yeah.
14:31
Wrestling's never been big.
14:32
Most most people didn't know anything about how good I was or anybody on our team or,
14:38
you know, just wrestling in general, it's not it's never been a big fan sport.
14:44
Right.
14:45
Well, it's that's why whenever you hear people talk about wrestling in such hallowed terms,
14:49
it's because it's not this grand glorious thing.
14:52
I mean, you have Jordan burrows and we'll talk a lot more about Jordan later.
14:55
But you know, when you have a guy like that who's trying to like make a career out of wrestling
14:58
and things like that, and it's like, well, in America, there's not really a market for
15:02
that as much.
15:03
And you know, you got to go overseas and do those types of things to kind of make a career.
15:06
But you know, we'll get more into Jordan here in a bit.
15:08
But for you, obviously undefeated high school wrestler three time state champion, tell me
15:14
about the recruitment process because you ended up at OU, which, you know, doesn't have
15:18
just in the state of Oklahoma, doesn't have kind of the reputation of being like the wrestling
15:23
street.
15:24
Because hey, I'm just saying that I told you about the separation of the table.
15:26
I can at least run.
15:27
I'm hard.
15:28
Yeah.
15:29
Hey, you know, I do live next to hard Elmore.
15:30
Hey, he's in the home of the podcast of shout out to hard L. Yeah, dude.
15:34
Yeah.
15:35
He's great dude.
15:36
Great coach.
15:37
But I mean, obviously Oklahoma state's kind of the one of the dominant forces probably,
15:41
if not, you know, the consensus greatest wrestling school in collegiate wrestling history.
15:46
Yeah, most national titles, I mean, not not as much lately.
15:49
It's more of a Penn State thing lately.
15:51
So take us through kind of the recruitment process, what that was like in the decision
15:54
in up at OU.
15:55
Yeah.
15:56
I knew I was going to go back to Oklahoma.
15:58
I just, I wanted to wrestle in Oklahoma.
16:02
I also, so I looked at OUOSU in Minnesota, I had family in Minnesota, wanted to check
16:06
them out.
16:07
I always liked them.
16:08
Actually called Iowa because I wanted to see what the, all the hype was about and they
16:14
were like, no, we got a 25.
16:16
Okay.
16:17
And not, we're not going to bring in, not going to give you a chance now.
16:21
So I made sure to always beat up Iowa anytime I wrestled them.
16:24
And so how did that go?
16:25
Like just, we're skipping ahead a little bit, but how did that go whenever you would wrestle
16:27
their, uh, 25 or?
16:29
Yeah, I always, I always beat them in college.
16:31
We never, we didn't wrestle them much though.
16:32
I'd see them at national duels or at nationals and that was it.
16:35
Right.
16:36
I think two and all.
16:37
I don't think I wrestled them much at all.
16:38
Gotcha.
16:39
So, so to kind of circle back, I mean, I keep sending you on tangents.
16:41
Yeah, it's all right.
16:42
You know, why did you kind of end on OU?
16:46
Uh, so I really liked the team.
16:48
Um, they, they had more Christians.
16:50
I'm very religious and, uh, they were less like click-ish where, where OSU was very click-ish.
16:57
I didn't even see some of the starters.
16:59
Like I was in the red shirt.
17:01
Freshman was, was the guy that was taking me around.
17:03
And that's all I saw was other freshmen.
17:04
And, uh, also I worked out at each school and OU was the only school that I got beat
17:12
up at.
17:13
Okay.
17:14
I beat the guy at OSU.
17:15
I beat the guy at Minnesota and I wanted to go where I was going to get beat up and
17:18
get better.
17:19
So that was a big part of it.
17:20
When it seemingly worked out because you're a four-time All-American, um, but I, similar
17:25
to kind of what I talked about with Hardell, you know, one of the big things about Hardell
17:29
story is, you know, the fact that he was a national, you know, finalist, but he was
17:33
runner up.
17:34
Like he was, he got the silver medal, you know, as it were, you know, in terms of that.
17:38
And so for you, you never actually won the whole shebang, right?
17:41
So it's nothing to, to, you know, nothing to give somebody like demared or something
17:47
like that.
17:48
You're a four-time All-American at, at a big-time school and that's a great thing.
17:52
But can it take me through that process of like never actually getting through to the
17:55
ultimate goal, which was actually being a national champ?
17:58
Yeah.
17:59
I, I felt like I should have won every year.
18:00
I took third as a freshman, um, lost in the last two seconds of the semis and that guy
18:06
tech the guy in the finals.
18:07
So I felt like I could win it every year, um, and, you know, I never, never quite got
18:12
over the hump.
18:13
NCA is a tough tournament.
18:14
And, uh, I did the same thing for world teams, Olympic teams.
18:18
I took second five or six times and that was a real, uh, monkey on my back, you know, and
18:24
and it was never, uh, a concern.
18:27
I've always been confident every year.
18:29
I felt like I was going to go in and win and, uh, but at the same time, um, you know, it's
18:34
in the back of your head like another second, another second, like how do I get over the
18:38
hump?
18:39
And I didn't feel like it was a mental, but I got to do something to get over the hump.
18:42
And I actually did a year of a sports psychology, uh, which I thought helped.
18:47
It was not at all what I thought.
18:49
I thought I was, you know, I don't know why I thought all the things that come with psychology
18:53
and, and seeing a psychiatrist and, uh, I met with the girl at OU and she knew nothing
18:59
about the sport and worked out great.
19:01
She'd.
19:02
Why?
19:03
Why?
19:04
Why?
19:05
I had it in my head there for probably a year and a half that I hated.
19:12
I hated being ahead with 20 seconds left.
19:15
I felt like I lost way more when I was winning by a point than when I was losing by a point.
19:21
And it's funny how the mind works because I know I can't tell a coach that right.
19:26
Yeah.
19:27
You're in your own head like, man, they won't understand like it's for sure.
19:32
Look at all these matches and, uh, I had myself convinced like I would go after a guy with
19:38
a minute left.
19:39
If I was up by one and I'm either going to get up by three or give up a dumb take down
19:43
me down by one because my odds of winning go up and on paper, I was probably right.
19:47
But like you can't have that mindset.
19:48
Right.
19:49
And so I told her that and as soon as I said it out loud, I was like, the spell was broken.
19:54
I was like, man, that was why would who would ever want to be losing with 20 seconds left?
20:00
Like it makes no sense, no one would ever say that and immediately spells broken and
20:05
I'm moving on and then I started winning all those matches, didn't stress me out being
20:10
up by a point anymore.
20:11
Right.
20:12
Now, I mean, who wouldn't want to be up the point, you know, well, tell me a little bit
20:16
more about that because I guess I've never really ran into somebody that, you know, was
20:20
an athlete at that high of a level that admitted to going and speaking with a sports psychologist
20:24
because it does seem a little woo woo.
20:25
It's like, oh, you got to go talk to a shrink so you can perform, but I got to be honest,
20:29
even just for me, like with Jiu Jitsu, like the thought of competing and I've competed
20:34
quite a bit, not nearly as much as I would have liked just because, you know, injuries
20:37
and timing and all that, but the anxiety I get going into a tournament that is not on
20:43
television that nobody's following on, you know, on the internet or something like that.
20:48
It's a tremendous amount of anxiety that's created and for me, if I had to guess not being
20:53
a psychologist, it all comes down to pride for me because it's like, if I get beat, that
20:57
means he's better than me.
20:59
And I can't stand the idea of someone being better at me in anything.
21:03
That's why I stopped playing golf like 12, 13 years ago because just the thought of not
21:07
being really good at something was just, it was crippling for me.
21:10
But for you, you know, I guess what was what kind of preceded the idea to go and do that?
21:16
Was it a coach that sent you over there?
21:18
Like, were you hesitant, were you like, you know, you know, what, what, take us through
21:23
that whole process, I guess.
21:24
Yeah.
21:25
You know, it was getting bigger.
21:26
Been a lot at OU, and I was very hesitant for all the same reasons.
21:31
But at the same time, like, I was started getting second and if it was going to help
21:35
me win, like what, what would I do that's legal to go win?
21:40
And if that means I got to go do an hour talking to somebody and it doesn't work, I lost an
21:45
hour once a week for whatever, 20 weeks.
21:49
Right.
21:50
But it paid off pretty quick.
21:51
Yeah.
21:52
It paid off that year.
21:53
I made the Olympic team.
21:54
Well, it, uh, it was good.
21:56
It was good.
21:57
I think it worked better because she knew nothing about the sport.
21:59
I think had she known it went to work as well because I talked with coaches and we're kind
22:04
of on the same page where her, I had to explain stuff and it, I don't know, it kind of bubbled
22:11
out, I guess.
22:12
Right.
22:13
Kind of some of the silly stuff that when explained it to somebody, it just doesn't
22:16
make sense.
22:17
Right.
22:18
You know, I probably could have done the same thing with the buddy, with the beard.
22:22
You know, uh, it's one of my favorite lines of, uh, oh my goodness, I'm gonna forget the
22:27
name of the movie.
22:28
Uh, that's a knife.
22:29
This is a knife.
22:30
Right.
22:31
Crocodile Dundee.
22:32
Yeah.
22:33
And she's a psychiatrist and he's like, are they not have any mates?
22:36
Right.
22:37
Which I think is pretty spot on.
22:39
Like you got your foxhole group that should, should take care of everything.
22:42
And, uh, in this situation, all my, my buddies, you know, they all knew wrestling and I needed
22:47
to talk to somebody that didn't know wrestling.
22:48
Well, that's interesting cause I was just listening to a podcast here recently, uh,
22:53
where he was talking to a guy that was doing a survey about, you know, friendless American
22:56
males and things like that, which obviously is something I've talked about a lot.
22:58
That's why I did the, you know, how to build a godly and mainly foxhole series.
23:02
But they talked about how modern men are going to their spouses more than they're going
23:06
to friends whenever they have a major life issue, which is not in and of itself a negative
23:10
thing necessarily.
23:11
But as you know, and as most of you listeners know that are guys, there are just certain
23:14
things that women just will never understand and it's because of wiring because believe
23:18
it or not breaking news, there are differences between the sexes.
23:21
And that's kind of one of the things that that's interesting is you probably or maybe could
23:25
have figured it out with another buddy or a mate or something like that.
23:28
But, you know, being able to talk to that neutral third party, that that's not really
23:32
worried about the exes and o's of what you need to do or the technicalities of finishing
23:36
a double leg this way versus that way.
23:38
I think it kind of removes them enough from your situation.
23:41
And guess what?
23:42
They're not expecting a thank you note if you make the Olympic team like they're just
23:45
there to talk to you, they're there to help in whatever way they can, but I can see that.
23:49
And I don't know if that it was like that for you.
23:51
I could see that a lot of guys would not want to do that because that would show that they're
23:54
mentally weak, right?
23:55
I got to go talk to a shrink so I can perform in sports, but I guess you never really had
23:59
that mindset that that was kind of like a mentally weak thing to do.
24:03
Yeah.
24:04
Yeah, I'd never had that mindset.
24:07
I was anxious like anybody like, I don't know, this is going to be a waste of time, but that
24:11
was easily overrun by if it's going to help me win, it's worth it.
24:14
If it doesn't, it's an hour, right?
24:15
So you mentioned wanting to be an Olympian and making the Olympic team, but kind of take
24:20
me through that process.
24:21
Okay.
24:22
You're a collegiate wrestler and for most of the listeners, they don't really know kind
24:24
of the process of, okay, how do you go from being like a high school wrestler to a collegiate
24:27
wrestler to an Olympic level wrestler or like a national or international level wrestler?
24:32
So kind of take us through that whole process because again, you know, when you're in high
24:35
school or whatever, it's still just a goal, like you're not an Olympian automatically.
24:39
And so kind of take us through how you kind of were put on the radar for the Olympic team
24:43
and kind of what that whole process was like.
24:45
Sure.
24:46
I loved it.
24:47
I was real fortunate.
24:48
Like I said, my dad was an Olympian.
24:50
So I was, I was right into that, that path.
24:54
The Navy team when we were in Florida, I lived in Pensacola and the Navy team trained there.
24:58
The Greco Navy team, Rob Herman was the coach.
25:00
And so I would go up and work out with them all the time.
25:03
And I went to my first US Open the summer after my senior year of high school took, took
25:08
fifth in the US.
25:09
And so right away, I was now I'm on everybody's radar and got in with the club and did Greco
25:16
through 2009 and then switched over to freestyle and made a freestyle Olympic team.
25:22
So I was always on the radar.
25:25
And you asked earlier, I'm trying to remember what you asked, but it was different back
25:29
in the day.
25:30
We didn't have the internet and YouTube and Twitter and flow wrestling.
25:35
So people didn't know, you knew about your state and you had that one big national tournament
25:39
where you kind of get to see who the best kids are, but even then it's hard to tell.
25:43
He could be sick that day and he was really good in high school.
25:46
So people tended to go to their favorite college, you know, that's where you went.
25:52
I went to Oklahoma.
25:53
That's Florida.
25:54
I didn't have a college wrestling team.
25:55
Oklahoma did.
25:56
I loved Oklahoma.
25:57
So I went to Oklahoma.
25:58
Iowa kids go to Iowa, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, you know, and now it's not that way.
26:03
Most of the guys on a team aren't from that state.
26:06
So it's changed a little bit and, you know, the internet's helped wrestling.
26:10
It's making it evolve way faster, especially at the youth level.
26:14
It's crazy how good little kids are nowadays.
26:17
You would kick my butt.
26:18
Well, and I look at kids now, like we have some kids at the Forge here, I talk about
26:21
the Forge a lot on this podcast.
26:22
So that's our Jiu Jitsu.
26:23
Right.
26:24
As I should.
26:25
Right.
26:26
As I should.
26:27
But these are kids that from the age of five or six, they are wrestling and doing Jiu Jitsu.
26:31
And I roll some of these kids that are like, you know, 14, 15, 16, like they're getting
26:35
into high school.
26:36
And I'm like, holy crap, if I wasn't physically stronger and better than them, this would
26:41
be a problem because it's like, you know, I've been training Jiu Jitsu for four years,
26:45
but they've been marinating in grappling arts since they were a little kid.
26:50
And as you know, like as you do a sport as a young kid, your body develops for that sport.
26:55
So you'll walk up to somebody that's like a Jim bro superjacked and they grab you by
26:58
the wrist and you can easily just get your wrist away, but then a wrestler that's been
27:01
grabbing wrists their entire life or a Jiu Jitsu guy that's been snatched and next their
27:05
entire life.
27:07
It's a different level of grip strength.
27:08
Like people don't really fully understand that.
27:10
So like that's crazy because you're experiencing this now as a coach and obviously you have
27:13
a son that wrestles and you kind of been around that kind of the youth wrestling, the revolution
27:18
is going to be insane.
27:19
I can't imagine what we're going to be watching.
27:20
Same thing with MMA.
27:22
Like all these kids, like think about it, like, you know, for Chelsea on it and Randy
27:25
Couture and, you know, some of those more early guys, they were a thing.
27:31
And then they added the other stuff.
27:32
So they wrestled their whole life and then they had to learn how to box and do everything
27:34
else.
27:35
Kids from a very early age are training.
27:37
All of it.
27:38
They're doing Muay Thai and Western boxing and kickboxing and Jiu Jitsu and wrestling.
27:42
And so like, I guess for you, does that, does that make you feel like a little bit like kind
27:46
of a crotch of the old man?
27:47
Like, I want to go back to the old days where everybody went to their same state or does
27:50
that excite you about the sport?
27:52
I love it about the sport.
27:54
And I'm also the, the crotch show guy like back in my day, we were tougher.
27:58
That's right.
27:59
You know, every previous generation was tougher.
28:01
It's harder.
28:02
Now I get now why they said it, you know, like you can't go on technique, new generation
28:06
is going to be better.
28:07
So you have to be like, we were tougher.
28:08
Yeah.
28:09
You know, that's kind of how it goes.
28:10
We cut weight uphill both ways, of course, of course, now kind of getting back into the
28:14
Olympic stuff.
28:15
So you talked about Greco and freestyle.
28:17
Now you made the Olympic team as both, correct?
28:20
Like at different times, I made the Olympic team and freestyle and I made a world team
28:24
in Greco.
28:25
Okay.
28:26
So I guess for you, well, I guess, first of all, let's kind of back up because I'm assuming
28:29
people know all these things.
28:30
So explain just kind of the fundamental differences between freestyle and Greco for our listeners.
28:35
And then kind of go ahead and flow into, you know, why did you choose freestyle this time
28:39
and then moving to Greco that time.
28:41
Yeah.
28:42
So Greco is just upper body, no foot sweeps, no shooting on legs.
28:47
It's like the traditional style from, from back in the day, although who knows, they may
28:52
be grab legs, but right back in the day, the stance was standing straight up.
28:56
So it's kind of considered Greco.
28:58
And freestyle is a lot more, it's a lot closer to what we do in the US, folk style, collegiate
29:03
style.
29:04
It's, it's a lot similar to folk style.
29:06
Okay.
29:07
So then for you as you're competing, because what was the age that you were when you made
29:12
your last Olympic team?
29:14
29.
29:15
29.
29:16
And then as, as a world team competitor, you at the age of 36, 35, 36.
29:22
Okay.
29:23
35, 36.
29:24
So you were competing at a high level for a very, very long time.
29:26
And let's maybe talk a little bit about that.
29:28
But like, you know, for you, take us through kind of what it here, I can't exactly figure
29:34
out what I would do.
29:35
So we'll start here and then we'll go back to the Olympic career.
29:37
Let's talk about, you know, competing at a high level at kind of a elderly age, because
29:42
at the age of 35, 36, that is like aged for a wrestler, but you made the world Greco team
29:47
at that age.
29:48
Correct.
29:49
So what, is that easier if you're older to kind of do Greco, because there's not as much
29:53
shooting there, I guess there's not as much wear and tear because you're not dealing with
29:57
the lower part of the body and having to fight hips and that kind of thing.
29:58
But kind of take us through what it was like being a competitor that was that old.
30:02
Yeah.
30:03
You're a lot wiser, you know, you're every coach, say it, like if I knew now back then
30:09
and right, so I was a lot wiser about how I went out, went about things.
30:14
The biggest thing I noticed is recoveries a lot slower.
30:18
It's the injuries take longer to heal a hard practice, it takes longer to get my body back
30:24
where I can do another hard practice.
30:26
So I had to be a lot more wise about my workout schedule.
30:32
No one went to stop listening to my body and, but at the same time, not being like a wimp,
30:38
you know, not just taking it off because I'm a little sore.
30:41
And that's hard to get somebody to tell you that because there's not a lot of guys that
30:44
go that old.
30:45
So that was the, that was the struggle.
30:47
The wrestling I know, I know how to wrestle, you know, I got to keep getting better, but
30:51
I know wrestling.
30:52
So I didn't spend as much time on technique as much as I did strategy and just making
30:59
Charles in shape and healthy.
31:01
That was, that was the, yeah, the struggle with doing it older.
31:06
The longevity, just, you hit it real quick, so I'm going to, I listened to, I think you,
31:12
you posted it.
31:13
Maybe you're the one that turned me on to it.
31:16
And interesting and they were talking about what is, what is an expert is that the guy
31:19
that wins the Olympics once and never comes back or the guy that makes four Olympic teams
31:24
never wins it.
31:25
But you know, he's, is he a master and I thought that was real interesting and I liked it because
31:31
it gave me a chance to be a master.
31:33
Yeah.
31:34
I've been around a long time done this, but I think it's cause my dad didn't have that
31:39
same Iowa mindset.
31:40
We didn't cut a lot of weight.
31:41
He wasn't a big fan of cutting weight and we're seeing that now a lot of the best guys
31:45
don't cut a whole bunch of weight anymore.
31:47
It's still around.
31:48
It's still prevalent.
31:49
But I never cut a lot of weight and I think that saved my body, allowed me to have that
31:54
longevity and just wrestling smart, being smarter about it, being willing to take a day off
32:01
if I needed it off, but also pushing myself in practice, right?
32:08
I don't, if I'm going to do the practice, I'm going to be the hardest worker in there
32:11
and allow myself to have a day off.
32:13
I don't, I don't go half way through a practice.
32:17
It's either on the hardest worker in there or I'm taking the day off.
32:20
Right.
32:21
All right.
32:22
I'm going to take us on another tangent.
32:23
Yes.
32:24
We're just going to have to embrace that for tangents for this podcast.
32:25
So if it's driving you nuts, you type A people, I get it.
32:26
I completely understand.
32:27
What do you mean?
32:28
Well, you blame me.
32:29
Yeah, exactly.
32:30
Blame, same.
32:31
Yeah.
32:32
Blame, blame Sam.
32:33
But at the same time, let's, let's circle back to your Olympic career.
32:35
But I do want to talk about the concept of weight cutting, especially for kids.
32:39
Because we hear a lot about weight cutting in MMA because we're seeing some of these
32:42
dangerous weight cuts where people are being carried to the scale and they're passing out
32:46
on the scale even.
32:48
And the UFC, which is the biggest MMA organization, they're not really, they haven't had anyone
32:52
die from a weight cutter, complications from a wake up, but that has happened in MMA.
32:56
You don't see that unboxing.
32:57
You know, collegiately, I think there was that one summer where like three different collegiate
33:01
wrestlers died from weight cutting or the hydration related things.
33:05
And then automatically the NCAA said, no, and we're getting rid of that.
33:09
And so they did basically do like a hydration test and tell these athletes here's the lowest
33:13
weight class that will allow you to compete at is that kind of how it goes for collegiate
33:18
wrestling now?
33:19
Yes.
33:20
Okay.
33:21
It's a kind of silly test.
33:22
Because I have guys that are way overweight that'll fail a hydration.
33:25
You don't have guys that cutting a whole bunch of weight, but do it right.
33:28
And it says they can lose 20 more pounds and they can't.
33:31
Yeah, it's seemingly, it's not a perfect test, but it's better.
33:33
They haven't had any issues with it since then.
33:35
But I had to talk through that because I've literally witnessed, you know, dads running
33:40
kids before tournaments.
33:42
I mean, we're talking kids like nine, 10 year old kids and having them cut weight.
33:46
And these are kids whose body obviously are still developing at an extreme degree.
33:50
So for you personally, what is your kind of personal approach and mindset when it comes
33:55
to weight cutting for adults, but then especially for youth?
33:59
Yeah.
34:00
I got a, again, my dad.
34:03
It's what he kind of did and I think it makes sense that whatever you lose in a normal practice.
34:10
So if I lose four pounds in a practice, I won't do more than like two practices worth.
34:17
So eight pounds is the most I'm going to cut.
34:19
Okay.
34:20
Now that may mean I get my fighting weight down where I'm practicing it this way so I
34:24
can make eight pounds or, or it just may mean I don't, I don't know if the weight's 25,
34:29
33, I wait 34, I could go 25, but if I wait 35, I'm probably going to go 30.
34:33
Okay.
34:34
I'm outside of that, that eight pounds.
34:35
And, you know, for a kid, it might be a pound of practice and I, I think a kid cutting two
34:41
pounds is okay.
34:42
I think that's, it teaches them you got to be smart.
34:45
Don't eat the dessert if you're smart.
34:48
If you're smart, you teach kid how to do it right.
34:51
He's learning some self control, self discipline and it's, it's not hurting him, right?
34:57
But beyond that, especially kids, I don't, I don't like it.
35:02
As an adult, you can make up your own mind.
35:04
If that's how you got to win and I get it, I still don't like it, but I get it, right?
35:11
I want to make an Olympic team.
35:12
The only way I can do it is cut down to this weight and that means I don't work out.
35:16
All I do is cut weight.
35:17
Hey, man, not everybody makes an Olympic team and that's your choice as an adult.
35:23
But you have the kids.
35:24
I don't like it.
35:25
I'd rather, I'd rather see bump up, keep it fun, wrestling stuff enough.
35:29
You don't need to add to add anything to wrestling to make it tough.
35:33
Well, focus, focus on the fundamentals, which, you know, I have much more of a baseball
35:37
background.
35:38
And so, you know, when I talk to, I had someone reach out to me recently asking me about a,
35:41
you know, coaching for their kid that's trying to get into baseball and probably the best
35:44
advice that I gave them aside from just the general advice of they're not going to make
35:48
the major leagues this year.
35:49
They're eight.
35:50
Like, let's not put too much, you know, pressure on them.
35:52
But the second thing was, is like, if they get asked to pitch, when I watch the Little
35:55
League World Series every year, I see these kids throwing these curve balls and these
35:59
sliders and putting it in, you know, there's, there's a lot of debate as to whether or
36:02
not that actually affects the elbow and affects the shoulder.
36:04
But when you see all these pitchers that were throwing junk from an early age, getting Tommy
36:09
John in the major leagues, you can't say that there's no correlation.
36:12
But I'm, I tell them, I'm like, look, focus on being able to throw a strike, throw a
36:16
foreseen fastball for a strike, because you can, you can make it to the minor leagues.
36:22
You can be a professional baseball player with two pitches, a foreseen fastball to change
36:26
up.
36:27
Like, if you know where it's going and you can, you know, live on the outside parts of
36:31
the plate and different things like that, the outside parts of the strike zone, that's
36:34
going to be way better than being like 10 years old, trying to throw the world's best
36:38
curve ball.
36:39
It's like, it doesn't make as much sense.
36:41
Just throw strikes.
36:42
And so I would see that kind of being a corollary for wrestling to where it's like, I understand
36:45
this kid might be physically bigger than you, but there were guys that were physically smaller
36:50
than me in the, in the short time that I wrestled in high school that just, you know, rolled
36:53
me up like a pretzel and it was because they were superior at wrestling, right?
36:57
Like they were a better wrestler.
36:59
All of their angles were better.
37:00
All their technique was better.
37:02
And so I think that's an important thing.
37:03
And I'm glad you kind of said that, but I do like what you said about, you know, maintaining
37:07
a little bit of that discipline, like, Hey, we're not going to get ice cream tonight because
37:10
we got a tournament coming up and those types of things.
37:12
And so you're keeping it in the back of their mind without, you know, risking their health
37:16
down the road.
37:17
Yeah.
37:18
The only pushback I'll give is a, I don't know about other sports, but wrestling, like
37:23
I'll take the tough kid over the technical kid any day because you can teach technique.
37:28
It's really hard to teach toughness and you almost have to do it from, you know, first
37:33
grade through, through high school, because they're not, it's rare that you see a kid
37:38
all of a sudden they get tough in college.
37:39
It can happen, but, but it's rare, you know, that's a quality that's really hard to teach.
37:45
And that would be my only pushback.
37:46
Right.
37:47
I'm still.
37:48
Well, how does other ways to be tough than just cutting weight, but right, but how would
37:52
you evaluate toughness then?
37:54
So like, so let's say there are wrestling coaches listening to this, which I'm sure
37:57
there are, you know, how do you evaluate that tough kid?
37:59
Because I would tend to agree with you because I was never the best athlete on the team.
38:03
I was the, the most grinder of an athlete.
38:05
I was a guy that worked hard to set practice.
38:07
And so how do you evaluate that in a, in a healthy way as a coach?
38:12
It's really, really hard.
38:13
And, and I think the easiest way is seeing them in practice.
38:17
That's where you can tell a lot more tournaments.
38:21
It's more you're seeing, not necessarily the toughness as you are, like, who's got that
38:26
ability to like, to close out, to find a way to win.
38:30
You'll see a little bit of toughness.
38:31
They just stay in a match and grind and grind, but practice is where you can really see it,
38:39
which it's getting harder for college coaches to go to a practice and watch.
38:41
They're making more and more rules and making it tougher.
38:45
And it's more your, at least in wrestling, we have to lean on the youth coaches, the
38:50
high school coaches as a kid tough is, you know, and, and most coaches know to tell the
38:55
truth.
38:56
Like if I lie to this college coach, he's not going to listen to me again.
38:59
Yeah.
39:00
And so they'll usually shoot you pretty straight, you know, and, and so that's, at least that's
39:04
what I'm finding.
39:05
That's how I have to do it.
39:07
And I'm still young to coach and I'm still new to coaching.
39:09
Cool.
39:10
And, and we'll get more into kind of your coaching and your philosophy that you're developing
39:13
and all that.
39:14
But I do want to get back before I segue to another thing about your Olympic career.
39:17
So take me through the process because I'm assuming the overwhelming majority of the
39:21
people listening to this, yours truly included, have never been an Olympian, right?
39:25
So we've never had that, that satisfaction of making an Olympic team, wearing the rings,
39:31
wearing the flag and representing the country in any type of a formal professional way.
39:36
So take us through kind of the story of you actually making your first Olympic team and
39:40
kind of that, that whole process of leading up to be coming in an Olympian, going to the
39:45
Olympics kind of that whole thing, just fire away.
39:48
Sure.
39:49
So I, I trade up for my first Olympic team in 04 and in wrestling, only the number one
39:53
guy goes.
39:54
No, nobody else.
39:56
Number two guy, if one gets hurt, two gets to go, but two doesn't go to the Olympics,
40:01
they don't get to wrestle, so that makes it tough, you know, only one guy.
40:05
It's a lot of sports, top two can go, some sports, top three and so on.
40:09
But only the number one, so 04 is my first Olympic trials and I lost in the semis to
40:15
Dennis Hall, who was an Olympian up a weight, world champ.
40:19
He dropped down and I lost four to two or three to two and he was way bigger.
40:26
I was still small then.
40:27
I wasn't right for the weight yet, but that match I lost and I still considered one of
40:31
my best matches ever.
40:32
That was when I knew I'm like, I'm there.
40:34
This guy was a world champ up a weight and I, I only lost four too, like I can do this.
40:41
Anyway, took third there and then tried again in '08, so that's my second Olympic trials,
40:46
made to the finals, lost.
40:49
So I was alternate for 2008 Olympics in Beijing and then we get to 2012.
40:55
This is my third Olympic trials now, so that's a lot of years into it and make to the finals
41:02
and I'm against Nick Simmons, who beat me the year before for the world team.
41:06
We did a best of three matches.
41:08
I won the first, he won the second and third match, he goes to the Olympic team, our world
41:12
team.
41:13
So now Olympic year, he wins the first match.
41:17
He's only got to win one more, you know, and this time I win the next two matches and
41:20
I make the Olympic team and it was awesome.
41:24
Yeah, you can't put it in words, like all that, all that work and time.
41:27
I'm going to make you put it in words.
41:28
Yeah, it's hard.
41:29
Put it into words.
41:30
Like from an early age, you wanted to be an Olympian and then you were down a match and
41:34
I mean to wrestle back and win those last two, I mean to become an Olympian, like I'm
41:38
going to do it.
41:39
Yeah, in the words.
41:40
No, that's why it's hard, I'm going to mumble around every time I talk about it, there's
41:44
a lot of ums and so it was fun though, lost the first match, won the second, was winning
41:52
the third, I had the only takedown, but back then they did a, you know, you had the coin
41:56
flip and they did a ball grab, which was one really weird thing wrestling did in the stands.
42:01
You know, people were like, "Blue ball, come on, pick the blue ball."
42:05
You reach in the sack and get the blue ball, it was really weird, but sure enough they,
42:10
you know, they grabbed the blue ball.
42:11
So I get to start with the leg.
42:13
The overtime was one guy starts with like a single leg or a high crotch or whatever shot
42:18
and you got 30 seconds, you finish you win if you don't, the other guy wins and 9% of
42:23
the time the guy that gets the leg wins.
42:25
So I get to start with the leg, I'm running toward the edge and you can watch it on video.
42:30
Like I just slip, I just sweat spot something and lands flat on my belly and that's where
42:36
that toughness came in and I ran my feet and somehow finished with, I don't know, a half
42:41
second left and so I make the Olympic team and yeah, a lot of energy bubbled out.
42:47
I went from extremely tired to jumping all over the place, you know, and I'm not an emotional
42:54
guy, I was actually talking about this with Nate Tom cello, one of our wrestlers who's
42:59
third for the Olympic team this year.
43:03
Just how like in college, I never really got excited, third, like I felt like I should
43:08
have won.
43:09
When the U.S. Open, that's what you're supposed to do, you know, act like you've been there
43:12
before.
43:15
On the one hand, I think you've got to have that mindset to a degree.
43:19
The guys that aim for a national title become all Americans, the guys that want to be an
43:23
all American, they fall short, they die.
43:26
So that was one of the few times I had a lot of emotion and I think I wish I would have
43:32
taken in other wins more, if it's not really a regret.
43:36
But I wish I would have, you know, that's one where like I'd finally reached the goal.
43:41
That was a big goal for me and something I've been wanting to do my whole life and my dad
43:45
was there and was 40 years since he made his Olympic team and so it was a really, really
43:49
cool moment, we're the only father, son and USA wrestling to be Olympians and I guess
43:57
that makes my mom, the only mom, wife.
43:59
There you go.
44:00
That's right.
44:01
Yeah.
44:02
So it was a lot of fun, you know, and I made the team and then you enjoy that night and
44:07
then it's back to work.
44:09
Now it took me 12 years of trying like specifically to make an Olympic team, you know, I'd been
44:16
doing it my whole life.
44:17
12 years to make the team, now I got one shot at the Olympics, right?
44:21
I got to go and I instead of just the best guys in the country, it's the best guys in
44:24
the world.
44:25
And how old are you at this point?
44:26
You're late 20s?
44:27
Yeah, 28, 29.
44:28
Okay.
44:29
Something like that.
44:30
And so how long of a gap is there between the Olympic trials and the Olympics at that
44:34
point?
44:35
So for wrestling, it's not very long because injuries is a real deal.
44:38
Some sports know a year out.
44:39
We know like three months out, you know, that night you're buying flights, you're trying
44:43
to get a flight, you're trying to get hotels because most of them are already taken for
44:46
Olympics, you know.
44:47
So yeah, we find out about three months out.
44:50
We do a couple world team or Olympic team camps, and then we head over to the Olympics.
44:56
So it was one day of fun, enjoy it or one night really, and back to training.
45:00
Right.
45:01
Got to get ready for the world now.
45:02
Okay.
45:03
So that was that was 2012.
45:04
And so that's a London London Olympics.
45:06
And so okay.
45:07
So tell us about the process because obviously I'm assuming the training was hard and difficult.
45:12
You know, I was going to kind of skip over that.
45:14
I mean, one quick thing before we go into, I want to hear about your Olympic experience
45:17
and flying over there, you know, opening ceremonies and all that.
45:20
But what is the difference between training to wrestle guys that you might be, you know,
45:25
training with all the time versus how you're preparing to wrestle someone from Iran or
45:30
Cuba or somewhere else?
45:32
So when I first started, I, I'm training for the world and if I trained for the world,
45:37
I beat the Americans.
45:38
Right.
45:39
We were just saying earlier and it didn't work out too well.
45:42
Okay.
45:43
Olympic team, I trained for the Olympic guys.
45:45
I studied up on them.
45:46
I made sure I had my game plans, everything ready, I make the Olympic team.
45:50
And now I switch over to the, the world level guys, you know, the, and a lot of them I've
45:55
wrestled because you travel all over the world wrestling, you get an experience.
45:58
So I know a lot of them, but I'm making sure I know everybody because, you know, within
46:02
a couple of weeks of us making our Olympic team, you know, everybody asking me on the
46:05
Olympic teams for each country so you can go watch film and get ready for them.
46:10
But what I learned, especially in that Olympics, maybe just before it, but after that for sure
46:18
was, I got to worry about me, like if I'm, I got to know, train my stuff, like I, if,
46:25
if I'm worried about them, I'm wrestling their match, you know, whoever controls the ties
46:28
controls the match.
46:29
And if, if I know I should know he's got a, I'm wrestling Jordan Burroughs, I should
46:34
know he has a good double.
46:35
Right.
46:36
If I don't go into it knowing that, I'm in trouble.
46:38
But if I go in that match, like if he shoots double, I'm going to do this.
46:41
If, you know, I'm going to make sure I stay low and I'm going to make sure I stay away
46:45
from this.
46:46
And I'm already wrestling his match, like he's wrestled people that have done that.
46:50
He's rustled guys that won't let him shoot a double.
46:51
He has an answer.
46:53
And so I have to be able to wrestle my match while being aware of whatever it is he's best
46:58
at.
46:59
Okay.
47:00
And the guys that are, are best, the Jordan Burroughs, the guys that beat everybody in
47:02
the world forced them to wrestle his style.
47:05
You know, he's getting his double leg, they're not stopping it, you know, and, and that's
47:09
really the trick, uh, for the, to be that highest, you force people to do what you want
47:14
them to do.
47:15
Okay.
47:16
Very good.
47:17
So you're an Olympian.
47:18
You're flying over to London.
47:19
Yeah.
47:20
We have to go on a private jet.
47:21
We're, we're on the only teams that did that.
47:22
Our team leader, uh, paid for us have, uh, private jet, uh, shout out to Nova grads.
47:29
He's out in New York doing Bitcoin stuff.
47:31
Okay.
47:32
Yeah.
47:33
Yeah.
47:34
He took care of us.
47:35
And so we get to fly over private jet, uh, which was awesome, but at the same time it's
47:39
kind of we wrestlers were not, you know, we're not, you know, we're gonna be full of athletes
47:43
and, and we're cutting weight and you've got this fancy jet and they got all this food
47:47
out there, like sitting out and we're all just like, this is terrible.
47:51
Right.
47:52
Just give us each 20,000, whatever it costs, 100,000 to send us over and we'll just take
47:56
a normal flight.
47:57
Like, like, that's what we're used to, but, uh, it was an experience, you know, at, at
48:01
the time we would love to have that money, but it was an experience.
48:03
I got to fly over first class, you know, a 13 hour flights, all sold in the 11 hours
48:08
and it's, and it's done like that.
48:09
You know, so that was a lot of fun, but we're the only team that got to do that.
48:14
We get there.
48:15
They tell us, uh, we're not going to do the opening ceremonies.
48:18
We got to go train and cut weight and all the guys on the team are like, oh, no, no,
48:23
we're going to, we, we trained a whole life for this and, you know, uh, the guy that's
48:27
made is like on his third team's like, well, we don't have to go, you know, like, no, we're
48:31
going, man.
48:32
Come on.
48:33
Uh, so we, we, we get to do that.
48:35
We stay at the Olympic village, which is surreal.
48:38
That's awesome.
48:39
You know, you feel like a, like you're one of the gods, like a great God.
48:42
It's Olympic village.
48:43
You know, everybody's young, athletic, good looking, and then you got like servants walking
48:49
around like it's going to rain today.
48:50
Here's an umbrella with Olympic rings.
48:51
You know, here you go.
48:52
Wow.
48:53
Thanks.
48:54
I'll take three.
48:55
Yeah.
48:56
Exactly.
48:57
Uh, so that's just, that's kind of surreal.
48:58
Although what was crazy.
48:59
Olympic court, like the food court, and you have each country so you can, this is what
49:03
Africa eats.
49:04
This is what Asia eats.
49:05
This is what, and so you can try whatever food.
49:07
And then over in the corner, you got to McDonald's because they're a big sponsor, you know,
49:12
and every day they'll, the line for McDonald's was so long, and I'm like scratching my head
49:18
like this, the Olympics.
49:19
Right.
49:20
Don't we?
49:21
You get anything.
49:22
Yeah.
49:23
What do you, how do you guys do this?
49:24
Like we got to compete.
49:25
Hey, go ahead and grab me a navy muffin.
49:27
Right.
49:28
Exactly.
49:29
That's odd to me, but we go, we get to the opening ceremonies and, you know, we're United
49:36
States.
49:37
So we're like the last team in there.
49:39
So it's four hours walking down this path toward the stadium and you're here in the
49:42
crowd.
49:43
Just crazy.
49:45
And you're pumped and you're pumped and then you're kind of like us taking forever.
49:48
And like, there's no way they're going to be cheering by the time we get in there.
49:51
Four hours that my voice is done.
49:53
Nobody likes America anyway.
49:55
Right.
49:56
So we went in and that was, that was up there like top five experience in my life.
50:01
Walking in that stadium and everybody's cheering so loud and that was very surreal and awesome
50:09
and we're trying to video and you're trying to take it in, but you're trying to video
50:12
it.
50:13
So you have it on video and it was surreal.
50:15
I feel bad for the Olympians this year that don't get to enjoy that the same way.
50:20
Yeah.
50:21
The opening ceremony was weird.
50:22
Like empty stadium and they tried, the Japanese tried to do everything.
50:25
I'm glad they did it.
50:26
Like I'd rather had the Olympics than not and I'm glad they let some people in there.
50:30
You know, that one section had had people, but I feel formed because that was yeah, might
50:37
have been the best experience of the Olympics was walking in there.
50:40
It was awesome.
50:41
Well, in the lot of times the commentators during the opening ceremonies, they point
50:44
this out, which is exactly true.
50:46
A lot of these people, that is their Olympic moment is the opening ceremony because like,
50:50
you know, we, we spent a lot of time focusing on the gold medalists and you know, Michael
50:54
Phelps with eight gold medals and all of the Usain Bolt and we, we focus on those people,
50:58
but there's a lot of people on the US team and the Jamaican team and every other team
51:01
that that's it.
51:02
Yeah.
51:03
And you have these like super, super tiny countries that have like four or one.
51:06
Yeah.
51:07
Olympian.
51:08
And it's like, that's their moment.
51:09
That's the last time we're going to hear that person's name.
51:11
So you got to experience that.
51:12
You got to go through and kind of see all that.
51:14
But now kind of take me through the mindset shift of, okay, that's done.
51:18
Video's been recorded, you know, you've worn your Ralph Lauren polo USA stuff.
51:23
You got all your stuff, you're swagged out, but now it's time to get down to business.
51:26
So take, take me through kind of the training time.
51:29
How long was it after the, you know, that opening ceremony before you had your match
51:34
and kind of take us through what the competition was like for you?
51:36
Yeah.
51:37
It was, so we get done the next morning, we flew out to Serbia out in the middle of nowhere
51:41
in Serbia to train, which is good, you know, it's easier to get your mind right.
51:47
Being at the Olympic Village, we're wrestlers.
51:49
We could do it.
51:50
We face adversity.
51:51
Like it, it wouldn't have been terribly difficult, but it would have been harder.
51:54
You know, you want to go see the sights.
51:56
You want to go do the stuff.
51:57
So we went to Serbia.
51:59
It was us, India, I think maybe Germany, maybe one other team.
52:05
So there's four teams that are training and just trying to get away and you're really,
52:09
at that point, energy's not an issue.
52:12
You're not worried about being out of shape and you're in great shape and the amount of
52:18
energy that you have just for being the experience is enough.
52:22
So it's more sharpening your skills, getting your weight just right where you need it so
52:27
you feel the best and without feeling small or being waterlogged.
52:32
So it's very, you know, you're just dialing in there.
52:37
And that was, it was quick, you know.
52:39
It's hard to remember what all that was like.
52:41
It was monotonous, it was same stuff every day, just focusing in and normally that'd
52:49
be rough.
52:50
It wasn't rough at all.
52:51
You're getting ready for what you've been training your whole life for.
52:55
So then we fly back and we get there maybe two days for it and wrestling is the last
52:58
three days of the Olympics or at least it wasn't 12 and I wrestled the second to last
53:04
day.
53:05
So the Bummer thing was we didn't get to enjoy the Olympic Village.
53:07
You know, we never really, we were there that first day, enjoyed it, didn't get to join
53:11
the rest of the time, which I'm all right with.
53:14
Okay.
53:15
I'm all right with that.
53:16
So we show up the day before and now you're in your last day of weight cut.
53:22
So you're pretty much in your room or in the sauna, you know, and then we go wrestling,
53:28
make weight and wrestle and that was intense.
53:33
It was kind of a bummer because in the US, you get to wrestle on the backside of a bracket,
53:40
come back and get third.
53:42
For international, you only get to wrestle for third if the guy you lose two goes to
53:47
the finals.
53:49
So like I lost first round to a guy and he lost in the semis to the ventral champ and
53:55
so he gets to go for third, I don't.
53:59
Like two months later, he bumped up a weight and beat our guy that won bronze in the Olympics.
54:03
I'm just like, man, I was right there, but I wasn't, I needed to win it.
54:08
The other thing was that ball grab.
54:09
So a normal wrestling match, six, seven minutes, it was back then, it was three, two-minute
54:14
periods and you just got to win two of the three periods.
54:17
So I was done in four minutes.
54:19
He won the first period, second period, he played all defense because the ball grab, you
54:24
got a 50-50 and then you play defense again in the next period and you have a better chance
54:28
at it being your ball.
54:29
So you're going to win.
54:31
And he played defense, he won the ball grab, that was it, it was over.
54:35
So that was a bummer, it was over quick, four minutes like that, dreams done, you're hoping
54:41
that guy does good and you're kind of, you don't want him to do good because he doesn't
54:46
want to beat you, you want him to do good so you get pulled in.
54:49
But all the same days, Jordan Burroughs and he won the Olympic gold and so it was still
54:53
fun.
54:54
It was a great experience but to what you were saying, there's what, 300 events, so if you
54:58
want to call it 300 gold medals and I know some are teams.
55:01
But let's call it 300 gold medals, there's 10,000 athletes and most of them are going
55:07
home without a medal and even the ones, you were in silver like you enjoy that later.
55:12
Like at the moment you were so close to what you wanted, like you're not excited about.
55:16
It's always weird that the bronze medalist seems way more excited than the silver.
55:20
Yes.
55:21
Like almost across the board.
55:22
Yeah, you get to finish with the win.
55:23
Right.
55:24
The other guy's finishing on a loss.
55:25
Right.
55:26
That's rough.
55:27
That's why in wrestling we have, and probably other sports, we have a true second sometimes.
55:30
Where if the third and second didn't meet, they get to wrestle for the true second and
55:35
that's, man, that's like the toughest match in wrestling.
55:38
See, I should have won and now I got to go and like, what does it matter?
55:41
Second, third, what does it matter?
55:43
That's a rough match and I flip flop on that.
55:48
Right.
55:49
Sometimes I like it because it's very wrestling.
55:50
It's very like, face adversity and at the other, I've been on the other end of it too
55:54
and like the last thing you want to do is go wrestle.
55:57
Right.
55:58
Let me actually, you know, before we move on and talk about this year's, you know, Olympic
56:01
wrestling and all the stuff that goes along with that, you trained your entire life.
56:06
You train literally decades to become an Olympian and your actual physical athletic Olympic moment
56:12
didn't last very long.
56:13
No.
56:14
So you said it was a bummer.
56:15
You said that multiple times, but I do want to press you a little bit more to a guy like
56:19
me, right, who's never competed at that level in anything.
56:23
That seems crazy, like, cause you have to sacrifice so much, so much time with friends,
56:30
so many Doritos, like so, like so many things to get to that moment.
56:34
And then it didn't work out the way that you wanted to.
56:36
But now you're, you're several years past that, right?
56:39
Like it's been a long time since then, almost a decade since then, how have you kind of internalized
56:44
what happened there?
56:45
Like talk to me a little bit more about that realization that that was it.
56:48
That was probably my one shot.
56:50
Yeah.
56:51
It hadn't bothered me much, like NCA's bothers me way more.
56:54
I felt like I should have won NCA's Olympics.
56:57
I knew it was going to be tough, you know, and he wins the ball grab.
57:01
I win the ball grab.
57:02
I think I win the match.
57:03
I had him tired.
57:04
Like I had him exhausted and I felt like I was in a good spot to win it.
57:09
So it, I don't know, it didn't, it bothers me in that, man, I think I could have went
57:14
and won it.
57:15
Like I think I could, like I said, I'm confident.
57:17
I feel like I could beat everybody in the world that year.
57:19
I'd wrestled most of them.
57:20
I was like 50-50 with them.
57:23
But at the same time, I've like, that's part of the sport, man.
57:27
It's part of the Olympic experience and competing at that level.
57:33
It's a ball grab.
57:34
It's a bad call.
57:35
It's the guy that woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
57:37
It's all the more impressive those guys that repeat at the Olympics and go years being undefeated
57:44
is incredible.
57:47
Their mastery of the sport is unreal because I'd like to think I'm one of the best in
57:50
the world.
57:51
I could beat anybody on the right day.
57:56
And those guys to do it continually is unreal.
57:59
Which speaking of that, Krelen, you know, lost to, oh my goodness, we long guard.
58:04
We long guard going for his fourth and we got, there's Cuban going for his fourth.
58:07
Right.
58:08
And he's the heavy favorite.
58:09
He's the two and his fourth.
58:10
Yeah.
58:11
I can't imagine.
58:12
The only way he loses is if somebody buys him out for a ridiculous amount of money.
58:16
Certainly possible.
58:17
But I would assume that he's probably going to leave with another gold.
58:20
Man, they don't make much money there.
58:22
And with everything going on in Cuba, I would imagine there's a price that he would take.
58:28
I don't think he will either, but there is certainly a price he would take.
58:31
Right.
58:32
Well, before we get off the Olympic subject and kind of move it, well, we're going to
58:35
say only Olympic subject before we get off your Olympic experience, I want to know just
58:38
a couple of quick questions.
58:39
So first one is, what are the best and worst things about being an Olympian?
58:44
The worst you miss out on a lot of stuff.
58:46
I never went skiing.
58:47
I never did.
58:48
I skipped all that, I knew it was kind of unsafe for the knees and just not smart and
58:52
I'll do it when I'm done.
58:54
Right.
58:55
So you miss stuff like that.
58:56
I actually listened to a radio host the other day.
58:58
He was like, "That kid is 19, he won the limb because he said it was like, his lifelong
59:02
dream came true."
59:03
He's like, "It's 19."
59:04
What life?
59:05
Yeah.
59:06
It was funny in two degrees, right?
59:08
But man, yeah, you give up on a lot of stuff that other kids are going and doing.
59:12
You're doing the practices.
59:14
Those girls in gymnastics, they're seven hour days, eight hour days, every day.
59:18
It's crazy what they go through and wrestling.
59:23
It's crazy too, but it's so hard of a sport.
59:25
If you do a four hour day, I mean, that's a long.
59:28
That's a lot of wrestling.
59:29
Yeah.
59:30
You're like two practices, four hours, you're probably only doing one the next day.
59:33
That's a long day.
59:34
So we don't have the same time.
59:37
We have more body issues and it is still time consuming, but like my brother was trained
59:42
for an Ironman, put way more hours in than I did, way more hours.
59:48
He had 5 a.m.s all the time.
59:51
I'd be like, "Well, I'm going to sleep till seven."
59:52
Yeah, no kidding.
59:53
We got to practice that.
59:54
You enjoyed that, man.
59:55
Yeah.
59:56
So I don't even remember the question.
59:57
Well, it was just like, what's the best and worst things about being a lesbian?
1:00:00
So that's the worst.
1:00:01
That's the worst.
1:00:02
Yeah.
1:00:03
The best is, you know, you accomplish your dream.
1:00:05
Yes.
1:00:06
It was something big that not very many people do.
1:00:09
You know, I take a lot of pride in that that I accomplished it and I feel like my dad's
1:00:15
system that he set up, that he made an Olympic team, it works because there's a lot of guys
1:00:19
that they have their system and their kids don't make it and that may not be the reason
1:00:25
why.
1:00:26
Right.
1:00:27
It's just hard to make an Olympic team.
1:00:28
But I felt like that proved there's something to the system that we use and just a lot of
1:00:32
pride in that, a lot of pride in the family name and wrestling.
1:00:36
I do camps now and kids have no idea who I am.
1:00:39
I'll go do a camp.
1:00:40
They have no clue.
1:00:41
He's an Olympian.
1:00:42
Who?
1:00:43
Yeah.
1:00:44
He's Winkles at fake, fake names.
1:00:45
Yeah.
1:00:46
You know, yeah.
1:00:47
So there's not a lot of that in wrestling.
1:00:48
You know, people don't know who you are.
1:00:49
Jordan Burrows, people know who he is.
1:00:51
There's about three or four guys in US wrestling that are common names.
1:00:55
People know, that's it.
1:00:57
You know, and I can't name guys on Olympic teams from two Olympics go.
1:01:01
Yeah.
1:01:02
It's hard.
1:01:03
Yeah.
1:01:04
It's just kind of the part of the sport.
1:01:05
I'm all right with that.
1:01:07
I wouldn't change it for anything.
1:01:08
All right.
1:01:09
Maybe golf.
1:01:10
Yeah.
1:01:11
Maybe golf.
1:01:12
Four US Open's in golf.
1:01:13
I'd be doing all right.
1:01:15
Maybe a little bit different.
1:01:16
Thanks, dad.
1:01:17
Yeah.
1:01:18
Exactly.
1:01:19
What a loser.
1:01:20
All right.
1:01:21
What is the biggest misconception about being an Olympian?
1:01:22
Oh, I have no idea.
1:01:24
I'd have to think about that.
1:01:25
I don't know if I've ever thought about that before.
1:01:27
I know it when I hear it.
1:01:28
I'm like, oh, that's not true at all.
1:01:30
I'll tell you one, everybody thinks it's an orgy over there.
1:01:34
Right.
1:01:35
That was the first thing you mentioned in the Olympic Village.
1:01:36
I was like, oh, yeah.
1:01:37
That's just like STD factory.
1:01:38
Yeah.
1:01:39
That's essentially right.
1:01:40
Everybody says, you know, that's what they think.
1:01:41
I didn't see it, which I'm not in those circles.
1:01:43
You also said you weren't there for very long.
1:01:44
I wasn't.
1:01:45
You missed out on all the work.
1:01:46
So it could have happened.
1:01:47
But I will say, I mentioned earlier, the umbrella had the Olympic rings.
1:01:50
So everything they gave you has Olympic rings on it.
1:01:52
And we hear, hey, down to like the medical, they got condoms and they got the Olympic
1:01:58
rings.
1:01:59
Is that for real?
1:02:00
Yeah.
1:02:01
And so they're like, Sam, go get it.
1:02:03
You're married.
1:02:04
You go get them.
1:02:05
I'm like, done.
1:02:06
This is like the best dirty Santa gift ever.
1:02:08
Like, I don't want to call them.
1:02:09
Oh, cool.
1:02:10
It's got Olympic rings.
1:02:11
All right.
1:02:12
That's actually cool gift.
1:02:13
So I go down and I'm like, hey, there's the bowl with all the condoms.
1:02:17
So I just like take the whole bowl, you know, and I get back to the room.
1:02:21
I dump on the bed.
1:02:22
All the wrestlers like flood in and man, they're just Trojans.
1:02:26
Come on.
1:02:27
No rings.
1:02:28
So they all leave and I got this pile of condoms on my bed and it hit me.
1:02:33
That's how those, that's how those rumors start.
1:02:35
Like the lady down things like those wrestlers, they're dirty.
1:02:38
The cleaning ladies are like, oh my goodness, there it's an orgy for sure.
1:02:42
There's an orgy going on.
1:02:43
Look at all these condoms on his bed.
1:02:45
So that, that backfired a little bit.
1:02:47
All right.
1:02:48
Well, that's a pretty good misconception.
1:02:49
So that'll give us a good segue into the 2021 Olympic.
1:02:52
So obviously if you're listening to this on time, the Olympic wrestling matches, they
1:02:55
start today.
1:02:56
That's when the competition starts.
1:02:57
So for my money, like you follow this a lot closer than I do, I feel like for, for the
1:03:02
United States and we'll, we'll just focus on freestyle.
1:03:05
The best chances for gold medals from the outside really looking in are Kyle Dake, Kyle
1:03:10
Snyder and Gable, Steve, okay, that's, that's my money and I don't have their, their weights
1:03:15
right here on top of my head because when you go from collegiate to, to that and then
1:03:19
you lose all the weights, I forget and I'll do kilograms.
1:03:21
What am I supposed to do?
1:03:22
Am I supposed to convert things?
1:03:23
I'm an American.
1:03:24
All right.
1:03:25
We do things our way.
1:03:26
We don't do the metric system.
1:03:27
We don't do any of that nonsense.
1:03:28
In your perspective, do you agree with my assessment that Dake, Snyder and Steve Sin are the kind
1:03:33
of the favorites to win gold medals and did I leave anybody out?
1:03:36
Uh, David Taylor has a real good chance.
1:03:37
Okay.
1:03:38
That's right.
1:03:39
That's right.
1:03:40
Yeah.
1:03:41
That, that isn't oversight by me.
1:03:42
Sorry to David Taylor in the entire Ohio State family for doing that.
1:03:43
That's my bad.
1:03:44
And so I guess from, from your perspective, if you had to actually give a prediction,
1:03:49
though, right?
1:03:50
Because we're hopeful, we're hopeful that all four of those guys win, win a gold medal.
1:03:55
Which ones do you think actually will?
1:03:57
Uh, Kyle Dake's going to be probably the most fun to watch.
1:04:01
The top three guys there could all beat each other.
1:04:04
Uh, is going to be really interesting.
1:04:05
Kyle's two time champ last two years, up a weight.
1:04:08
And then you have the guy at 74 that has beaten burrows, uh, a couple of times now.
1:04:14
He's the two time champ last two years at 74, which is the Olympic weight.
1:04:18
And then you have Chamizo, who, uh, is maybe the best athlete right now in wrestling and,
1:04:24
and if you count him out, you're an idiot.
1:04:28
So those, those three are going to be excited.
1:04:30
And I, I think the one that ends up by himself, you know, two of them have to be on the side.
1:04:37
And the guy that, that ends up by himself, I think probably wins because they're, it's
1:04:40
going to be really close.
1:04:41
I'm pulling for Kyle Dake.
1:04:42
Um, David Taylor probably is the best chance at winning.
1:04:47
He'll, he has one other really hard guide his way at Yazdani, who's considered maybe
1:04:51
the best in the world on paper, but Taylor's beat him twice, soundly, both times, uh, Taylor
1:04:58
is coming off an injury.
1:04:59
So that could hurt him, but he's 47 and all the last couple of years, uh, international
1:05:03
experience and he beat the brakes up on nickel in the, I was, I was shocked by, by that.
1:05:09
I mean, I guess I shouldn't have been, but like, he, he beat bow nickel pretty easily.
1:05:12
He's got a brother on them.
1:05:14
They joined together and, uh, and, and Bo's got some learning to do.
1:05:18
He's, he's getting better.
1:05:19
But he's not there yet.
1:05:20
David definitely is Kyle Snyder.
1:05:23
It's me round three.
1:05:24
That's going to be exciting to watch him and, uh, man, I always say this dude's name wrong.
1:05:28
Yeah.
1:05:29
The Russian dude.
1:05:30
Yeah.
1:05:31
Said July.
1:05:32
Yeah.
1:05:33
They, uh, they're one in one.
1:05:34
I think this will be the third round.
1:05:35
Uh, they both won the Olympics in 16 two different weights and, uh, it's going to be
1:05:40
it.
1:05:41
That'll be a really good match.
1:05:42
And there's a, like a wild horse there, uh, I can't even say his name, the Iranian.
1:05:47
He, uh, metaled back in like 14 failed for drugs, missed like four or five years.
1:05:54
Uh, and now he's back.
1:05:56
He's got to win over Snyder and, you know, I would imagine he was using steroids the
1:06:01
whole time.
1:06:02
Just cycled off.
1:06:03
I don't, I don't think he's bad.
1:06:04
Yeah.
1:06:05
We got, there's, that opens a whole bunch of stuff.
1:06:06
Right.
1:06:07
There's a lot to talk about with Russia, you know, the Olympic committee, Russia Olympic
1:06:10
sounds better.
1:06:11
Right.
1:06:12
Um, I, and on that.
1:06:13
So part of the, like Olympic experience, 2012 we won an Olympic team, USA men's wrestling.
1:06:21
At the time we didn't Russia won.
1:06:23
We took second three years later, part of the reason that Russia is not in right officially
1:06:28
in right now, uh, two of the Russians failed to the, the drug test.
1:06:33
You take them out.
1:06:34
We win the Olympic.
1:06:35
We're the, we're the Olympic team champ.
1:06:36
So I'm going to Olympic champ.
1:06:37
Right.
1:06:38
There you go.
1:06:39
And like, no, that's hard.
1:06:40
Yeah.
1:06:41
Yeah.
1:06:42
Exactly.
1:06:43
So that's interesting, but I'm getting off topic.
1:06:46
I'm going down.
1:06:47
Well, no, like that's, that's ripe with everything because calling it the Russian Olympic committee
1:06:50
is just ridiculous.
1:06:51
And it's just, and I forget who was talking about it.
1:06:54
They were talking about like these peptides and these different things that you can, you
1:06:57
can use and these things that leave your system so quickly and to think that, yeah, to think
1:07:02
that these countries aren't doing that.
1:07:04
And like I'm a little bit jaded and cynical about it to think that the US isn't doing that
1:07:08
in some, some certain shape or form, I think is a little bit, a little bit crazy.
1:07:12
But it's just like, well, we are.
1:07:13
Yeah.
1:07:14
And it's just fair.
1:07:15
We, we are, you know, Armstrong, I don't know.
1:07:18
Yeah.
1:07:19
Lance Armstrong.
1:07:20
Yeah.
1:07:21
He got caught.
1:07:22
I will say our kind of joke and wrestling is like the US, we're learning how to catch
1:07:27
the drugs.
1:07:28
Like this is how you test for this, with this, what they're using in Russia, they're learning
1:07:32
how to do the drugs.
1:07:33
Like they're, they're, you know, they're figuring out how to cheat where we're figuring
1:07:36
out how to catch the cheaters.
1:07:38
And yeah, I'm torn on it because if I'm training for the Olympics, my whole life and the quad
1:07:44
before me, those guys all cheat and now I don't get to be in the Olympics would make
1:07:48
me mad.
1:07:49
However, Russia, it's, it's blatant there and it's from top down.
1:07:54
So there needs to be a punishment and I don't know the right answer, but there needs to be
1:07:58
a punishment.
1:07:59
And this is, I don't.
1:08:00
Well, because people are like, Oh, you can't punish the athletes, but it's like, I mean,
1:08:03
the athletes had a choice whether or not they would do these things.
1:08:07
I mean, they, they could have just not been an Olympic athlete, which I've never been
1:08:11
in that position to make that, you know, moral stand like, no, I'm not going to put that
1:08:14
in my body because it's the wrong thing to do.
1:08:16
And I mean, this is their entire life as well.
1:08:18
And whenever somebody that works for Vladimir Putin comes in and says, all right, we're
1:08:21
going to put you in this black hood or we're going to take you over here.
1:08:23
We're going to, we're going to inject you with something that's going to make you super
1:08:25
man.
1:08:26
Like, I mean, that's, that's kind of a hard spot to be in one thing before we move on.
1:08:29
We talked about Dake Snyder and Taylor.
1:08:30
Let's talk about Gable Stevenson because, you know, he's somebody that's kind of like
1:08:34
really broken out for a lot of people. And there's already rumors about what he's going
1:08:37
to do after the Olympics. But how do you look at his chances of winning? Because he's that
1:08:41
heavyweight, right?
1:08:42
I think he wins. I think he wins in style. I will say that there's two really tough
1:08:48
guys there that have won like the last six world Olympics. There's really nobody else
1:08:52
at the weight. Those two won the last three and won one three before that. But Gable just,
1:08:59
he crushed our our number one guy who was a bronze the last two years and just, yeah,
1:09:05
right through him, right through him, he shows up with his level of confidence. You
1:09:08
know, he, it's going to be ridiculous. It's going to be ridiculous.
1:09:12
So could he be the breakout star for like in a way for team USA, at least for team USA
1:09:17
wrestling?
1:09:18
Yes, absolutely. He'll be like, he'll be like Snyder was, you know, he's Captain America
1:09:21
now a Snyder. And when he wanted it, whatever it was, 18 or 19, when the Olympic became
1:09:27
huge star, immediately Gable will be the same way. Although I think he's pretty set. I'm
1:09:31
going to WWE. You know, they're, they're already pushing him hard and he'll fit right in. He's
1:09:36
very, he's got the first, you know, yeah, I would like to see him do football, but,
1:09:41
but I get it.
1:09:42
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he could build a great crowd. I mean, look at Brock Lesnar. He's one
1:09:45
of the biggest, you know, WWE wrestlers of all time. And you know, it's just, this was
1:09:49
a guy who's a national champion. Jack Swagger, shout out to us, our hockey. He's on heavyweight
1:09:55
when, when I was at OU, right? And he's still fighting Bell Tour, right? And so like, you
1:09:59
know, there's, there's, he could have a chance to do some of those things. So you look at
1:10:03
it. Look at a guy like DC, one of the greatest MMA wrestlers ever, or sorry, one of the
1:10:06
greatest MMA fighters ever in MMA wrestlers, I guess. I mean, before he lost his teammate
1:10:11
the second time, I had him on my, my Mount Rushmore for MMA, just because of the guys
1:10:14
he had beaten. It's like, yeah, there's not a whole lot of shame in losing to John Jones,
1:10:19
right? And that's because that guy may be the most dangerous human being to ever walk the
1:10:22
face of the planet. But I mean, for, he started his MMA career at like 30. Yeah. And so if
1:10:26
you're gable, I mean, you can go make a crap ton of money. And if you want to go do the
1:10:30
real thing for a while, Brock Lesnar did that. And he got a pop back and forth and, you know,
1:10:34
he got a lot of assistance, uh, physically, you know, with some syringes while he was
1:10:37
over in WWE, which I never met. Yeah, he knows a guy, you know, all of a sudden he rubs his
1:10:41
cream on his butt and all of a sudden he's enormous. But that's kind of a cool thing.
1:10:45
I was 12. Yeah, B12. We walked in on Cuba one time and then they were getting shots in
1:10:50
the butt and the lady looked like everybody looked like a deer in headlights and the ladies
1:10:54
like B B12. Yeah, B12. I'm sure exactly. So yeah, I'm excited to watch him hit wrestling
1:10:59
is kind of see what he has to do. I do want to talk about, because you mentioned earlier
1:11:02
in the show that this one rep per country per weight and an international competition
1:11:07
that limited weight classes. Okay. So, uh, do you know why there's only one rep per country
1:11:13
per weight? And do you know why the weight classes are so limited? So, uh, what I've
1:11:19
been told, it's metals and time that's part of it just by the Olympic committee down.
1:11:25
Right. Um, but wrestling has the most metals of any sport. Like most countries get a metal.
1:11:31
And so I think that's a big part of it. If, if you make it word, only two or three, each
1:11:36
country, you know, it's going to be Russia and USA and Iran. And that's they're going
1:11:39
to win all the medals and nobody else will. It's also part of the reason we have two bronze
1:11:43
in wrestling, which I think is kind of crazy. Yeah. You know, I would rather have another
1:11:48
weight class. If you take out all the extra bronze, you add another two weight classes.
1:11:52
I would rather see that happen because we have 10, I think in world years, we, we drop
1:11:58
it down to six for Olympics. And so you have all these guys meshing and it adds some fun,
1:12:03
but I'd rather see more weight classes. Uh, but that's still how I understand it. We
1:12:08
okay, that's, that's part of the reason we should ever have been taken out of the Olympics,
1:12:11
but that was part of the reason we got in. And, uh, that's, there was a lot of craziness
1:12:15
that day, a bunch of the, a bunch of the world team, like the people that vote and the Olympics
1:12:23
on what gets cut weren't there that year. And like I said, wrestling's a lot of countries.
1:12:28
It's the only sport they have a chance of meddling is wrestling. So it was crazy. You
1:12:31
got cut. Yeah. Yeah. That's not even worth talking about. It was such a stupid thing to
1:12:35
really go into, but the, the limited weights in the limited reps for a country that leaves
1:12:40
out Olympic gold medal champions like Jordan Burroughs. So obviously Kyle Dake, that was
1:12:45
the big news for me from the Olympic trials, US Olympic trials for wrestling was that
1:12:49
Kyle Dake finally got over the hump because Kyle Dake is, was always a little bit big
1:12:55
for, for that class. The weight cut was hard. And I don't know if it was just a mental thing
1:13:00
that he couldn't really get through Jordan Burroughs and like he had, you know, it took
1:13:03
him so long to make his Olympic team because he had that guy, one of the greatest of all
1:13:08
time and his way. You talked about earlier, right? Yeah. Do you know if you have this
1:13:11
guy behind you? Well, and so that, that's the thing that, but it's crazy to me that Jordan
1:13:15
Burroughs is watching the Olympics. Yeah. Right now because now for all intents and purposes,
1:13:20
Kyle Dake, the, you know, if you just look at the scores, it doesn't look that way. But
1:13:24
if you, if you believe your eyes, Kyle Dake dominated those two, those two matches against
1:13:29
Jordan Burroughs. Absolutely. And like, it was like Jordan was, he was either really
1:13:33
gun shy. Yeah. Tim is probably the perfect word. Like I was like, what am I watching? And
1:13:37
I'm like, OK, this is an Olympian. This is a gold medalist. When he lost the first match,
1:13:42
I was like, he knows something that I don't. He sees something in Kyle that I don't. Maybe
1:13:46
he knows that Kyle gets tired. Maybe he saved himself, said, ah, you know, if I lose the
1:13:49
first one, no big deal, I'm definitely going to win the second two. But the second match
1:13:52
went just like the first one. And I didn't see that, that urgency, that sense of urgency
1:13:57
from him like, Oh, I got to shoot. I got to do something. But what was interesting is in
1:14:01
the final like 20, 25 seconds of both of those matches, he turned it on. It's like, there
1:14:05
he is. There's Jordan Burroughs. Like, and you could see Kyle Digg was, you know, kind
1:14:09
of going into extreme defense mode while still trying to, you know, you know, you know, and
1:14:14
what's crazy, the first match that last 20, he had a chance. So Kyle's really good body
1:14:20
lock when he shoot. Right. And Jordan's a shooter. And Jordan's always won the battle.
1:14:26
Kyle thrown, but he'll get more takedowns and then Kyle gets throws off it. And he looked
1:14:30
timid about it. He looked worried about it. He shot in once early in the match. Kyle
1:14:34
kind of tossed on Kyle scored. So 20 seconds left, Jordan shoots in again. And it, it,
1:14:42
who am I to correct Jordan Burroughs? Hey, you know, but I was watched the sack. I couldn't
1:14:46
believe it. So he could have ran his feet and seen if he can get the takedown. But instead,
1:14:51
like he's going to lose anyway, right? Like he gets thrown, okay, he's already losing.
1:14:56
But he goes down to like that defensive mode and tries to scramble down the ground, which
1:14:59
what he did earlier and Kyle scores again. And then he comes in the second match still
1:15:03
timid. And it really surprised me that he didn't go all out on that shot to see if he
1:15:09
could finish again. When, when my thought if I'm timid, and I'm worried about my best
1:15:13
move, and I'm already losing short time left, I'm going to hit it and see if I can hit it.
1:15:18
Right. I'm not, I don't want to go into the second match, the same mindset. And yeah,
1:15:22
some, some was off for sure. I, I thought Jordan would win. I thought he had big brother
1:15:27
on him. But I knew it'd be a match. I didn't think it'd be like that. Kyle blew him out.
1:15:32
Yeah. I mean, great for Kyle Dake and he has performed good. He looks good. Yeah. So we'll
1:15:36
see how that works out for him. But the other thing that we thought was going to happen
1:15:40
was that with the US trials, it was like, okay, it's either going to be Jaden Cox, or it's
1:15:44
going to be Kyle Snyder. Right. And because those are, because when you look at it legitimately,
1:15:49
Jordan Burrows, Kyle Dake, Kyle Snyder and Jaden Cox all had opportunities to win Olympic
1:15:54
gold medals. If there were that many weights available, right? Yes. But we never got that
1:15:58
match between Kyle Snyder and Jaden Cox because supposedly apparently, I don't know, Jaden
1:16:05
Cox didn't make weight. So I'll give you what I remember from the story. But you tell me
1:16:10
because you were there on the ground that day, like, you know what was happening. But this
1:16:13
was what I got from Twitter and everything. So Jaden Cox was on was ready to make way.
1:16:18
He was kind of making his way to his weight. But he said that a representative of USA wrestling
1:16:24
who just so happened to be his coach, told him the wrong time for weigh in, right? And
1:16:30
then when the time came for him to weigh in, he wasn't ready to weigh in. He wasn't at
1:16:34
his weight. And then, you know, boom, just like that, he's got to leave the trials. He
1:16:40
can't, he can't compete in the trials. And you know, afterwards, he's saying he's going
1:16:44
to, you know, there's going to be some legal things that he's going to try to go through.
1:16:48
And all I'm sitting here thinking is like, okay, so even if he goes to the courts and
1:16:52
a judge agrees with him that there was this egregious error, what are they going to do?
1:16:56
Bring Kyle Snyder out and say, all right, well, let's just get you two guys weeks later,
1:17:01
months later, like to deal with this and figure out how it's going to be. It's like, I don't
1:17:05
think there's a scenario where you make the Olympic team, Jane, but that's exactly what
1:17:08
they do. It happened. It happened. It's happened before. It happened to one of the Smith brothers,
1:17:12
I think, really? Okay, that's, yeah, crazy. So I guess take it shouldn't happen. It shouldn't
1:17:18
have happened, but take me through what you experienced and what you heard on the ground
1:17:22
because you were there during the trials.
1:17:23
Yeah. So, uh, I'm there with a Nate Tom cello and we're getting ready and, uh, WANs are
1:17:30
seven 30 day. And so Nate goes back to seven 30 Nate, you know, and you got all the guys
1:17:36
down there. They're all sitting around waiting for WANs or, or still cutting weight. Nate's
1:17:40
one of those. He had to cut right up to seven 30, maybe seven 40. So actually, I think it
1:17:45
was seven 40. Uh, so Nate, Nate heads back and, and the mat, we were having him run on
1:17:52
and lose his weight. Uh, Jane Cox is running on and Jane's not cutting weight, right? It's
1:17:58
it's not a weight cut for him. He, uh, he's the one like it's, uh, he's not going down
1:18:05
away. He's going up. You know, so it's not an issue. That's the other thing that was
1:18:08
really weird. Yeah, it's not an issue. So I'm like, he's jogging. He's, you know, he's
1:18:12
not worried. He's going to wait until everybody's done. That's nice of them. They can go get
1:18:16
their drinks. You know, he's not still in their spot in line. Like what a nice guy.
1:18:20
Uh, then it's seven 45, then it's seven 50. And I, uh, so I walk over to KJ and I'm like,
1:18:28
hey, uh, WANs are done in 10 minutes, you know, and he's like, no, no, WANs are eight, eight
1:18:34
30. I was like, no, no, no, there's look like guys drinking water. Yeah. Do that before
1:18:40
happens. And, uh, he's like, no, no, it goes till eight 30. Like maybe he knows something
1:18:45
I don't cause he is one of the, one of the USA wrestling coaches. So I'm like, okay,
1:18:50
I walk back there to see what's taken eight so long. Maybe his weight's not on yet. Maybe
1:18:53
he's running around, you know, just see if he needs anything. And, uh, so I come in walking
1:18:59
back to the WAN area and they're like, Sam, do you know where Jaden is? You know, you
1:19:02
know where Jaden is? I'm like, yeah, he's over there jogging. They're like, well, he's
1:19:05
got five minutes. All right. So I go running back and I'm like, Hey, man, they need him
1:19:11
now. They're calling for him over there. And coach kind of looks at me like, kind of looks
1:19:16
at his watch. He's like, no, I'm like, huh, well, I've told him twice now. Yeah. Uh, that's
1:19:21
kind of weird. So I'm like, what am I going to tell him? So I walk over and sit down and
1:19:26
out comes Tom cell and now there's three minutes left. Tom cell is like, Jaden, man, you gotta
1:19:32
go way in right now. They're like, you got two minutes. They're yelling for you. And
1:19:36
you start hearing people in the back like, where's Jaden? And, and then so then KJ is
1:19:41
like, Jaden, we got to go and they spring off and, uh, he gets there on time. Uh, maybe
1:19:50
two minutes left or something. Wait, wasn't an issue, but with his stuff on, he's over,
1:19:55
right? So he's got to strip down and strips down, makes way. It's after time. And so
1:20:01
then they were fighting it. And I don't see where they thought they could win. I don't
1:20:05
see it. And what, in what way they thought they got, you got to set time and it's terrible
1:20:11
because he was on such a role coming into the trials. Go coming into COVID. I thought he
1:20:17
was the best in the U S right then had been taken down in two years. He was on top of
1:20:22
his game. I had him beat in said July of who unbelievable good five time champ. Right.
1:20:28
Like that guy is really good. Him and Snyder back and forth. I had, I had Jaden win and
1:20:33
everything. I thought I beat Snyder. He beats said July of crushes everybody. I will say
1:20:38
he didn't look great. Come through COVID. They did a little preemptive flow wrestling, did
1:20:42
a thing and he didn't look as good. Uh, so then I was like, well, it's curious to see
1:20:47
who's going to win. Snyder of Cox. I don't know. Uh, but that should never happen. Both.
1:20:53
I always knew when Wayans were you're cutting weight. Like that's the one thing you know
1:20:56
is like, I can't wait for 7 30. Right. I'm going to be on the other hand, like not cutting
1:21:03
weight. You got your coach saying, yeah, it's at eight. Okay. It's at eight. Like what?
1:21:08
I could see myself also being like coach said it. He's on it. Uh, what's really weird to
1:21:13
me though is that not neither one of them were aware enough to see like there was a bunch
1:21:19
of people on the mat cutting weight. Now they're all gone. I see people drinking water because
1:21:24
it starts 7 30. There's guys that are out of there at 7 31 and 12 seconds, chugging water,
1:21:29
you know, there as soon as Wayans. So it was, there was a very bad breakdown of something.
1:21:36
Uh, I just as a guy that's, I mean, if I'm all in time, I feel like I'm late. Like if
1:21:41
I show up at 10 o'clock for a 10 o'clock meeting, like, Oh my gosh, like I'm just incredibly
1:21:45
anxious about that. But like, I don't understand how five years of training since the last
1:21:51
Olympics, right? Yeah. But your entire life kind of similar to you is spent doing this
1:21:57
thing and the, the hard part is the wrestling. The easy part is all the stuff you have to
1:22:02
do just to get to the mat, right? And again, it's easy for me to be on the outside looking
1:22:08
in at the situation to where I was like, I was hoping you were going to tell me that
1:22:11
there was some other nefarious thing that happened. And you know, there was an axe to
1:22:15
grind by this coach and all that. And then he like sabotaged his appearance, but it was
1:22:19
like everything. Like, I'm sure Kyle Dagan Jordan burrows like that was the, the marquee
1:22:24
matchup. But like one B was this matchup at the Olympic trials, like of all the Olympic
1:22:30
trials of all the sports, that was one of the things I was looking forward to the most.
1:22:33
And as a wrestling fan, we didn't get to see it, but like, I don't know. And I haven't
1:22:37
heard anything from Jaden Cox since his little presser that he did right after this whole
1:22:41
thing went down. So have you heard about kind of how he's reacted to this out in Poland
1:22:45
with us, he wrestled in Poland and seems like he's dealt with it real well. He's done a
1:22:50
good job dealing with it. I'll give him that I'd be, I'd be mad at myself, at my coach
1:22:56
at the situation. Yeah, it was a one of the crazier things I've ever seen in wrestling
1:23:02
just because it shouldn't happen. It was odd, man, it was real odd, but he seems to
1:23:08
be doing really well. I don't see any consequences. I don't, which is crazy to me. I feel like
1:23:14
there should have been something, a USA, one of the head coaches and their guys late and
1:23:21
I don't know. They made more money than me. People are making those decisions. Well, I'm
1:23:27
actually something I don't. I'm glad they didn't just from a standard of fairness. I'm
1:23:32
glad that they didn't, you know, bend some rule because that's the exact thing. It's
1:23:35
like if you if you bend, you know, one minute here, you got to bend an hour the next time.
1:23:39
And so like, I'm glad they went through and did that. I agree. And it's a different tournament.
1:23:43
And I probably let him in. Right. Yeah. But everybody wants to see me. Yeah, the trials.
1:23:48
It is what it is. So you got to be responsible. That's the extreme ownership mindset of Jocko
1:23:52
is here. You'd say the same thing. So before we kind of get off the Olympic thing, I do
1:23:56
not love both those guys. Yeah, exactly. I love you. We're not talking trash only those
1:24:00
guys. And that's the things like those are great American athletes and hopefully that
1:24:04
hopefully he gets his moment down the road. So we'll see how that goes. But before we move
1:24:08
on to some of your coaching career and kind of some other stories there. There's a lot
1:24:13
that's been made so far because the the ratings for the Olympics are abysmal right now. And
1:24:19
they're not normally abysmal, right? And some people are like, Oh, it's because it, you
1:24:22
know, it's not on an even numbered year and people are used to that. And you know, with
1:24:25
COVID and maybe people are busy and blah, blah, blah, and all those types of things.
1:24:29
But I would say the people that have said it has a lot more to do with there's no cohesive
1:24:33
unity behind the American flag and behind competing for the United States. That that's
1:24:38
why. So like for me, I'm not going to be watching the NFL this fall with all the Black Lives
1:24:42
Matter chicanery and the Black National Anthem, whatever that is playing that before the actual
1:24:46
National Anthem and all the protests there with the NBA, like all the crap that they pulled
1:24:51
like I'm done watching that as well. Like I'm trying to figure out how to be the best hockey
1:24:54
fan possible. But for me as an American as an incredibly patriotic American that looks
1:24:58
forward to these Olympic games every four years and I guess every two years of the account,
1:25:02
the winner Olympics, I'm astonished at how how much play is being given to like the number
1:25:09
of articles I've seen about whether or not the women's basketball team is going to protest
1:25:13
or not during the Olympics or the run up to the Olympics or anything like that. I'm like,
1:25:18
is that what we're really talking about? We're not talking about their chances at gold. We're
1:25:22
not talking about the teams that are going to challenge them for supremacy in the sport.
1:25:25
This is what we're talking about. You have Gwen Barry, a hammer thrower who got third
1:25:29
place in the trials who is lucky to even be an Olympian. She's somehow one of the heroes
1:25:34
of the Olympics because she refused to turn and salute the flag of the United States
1:25:38
of America during the national anthem. She refused to be respectful for 90 seconds of
1:25:42
her life for you as an Olympian for somebody who's not only a patriotic American, but somebody
1:25:47
whose job it was to represent the United States of America professionally with the rings on
1:25:52
your jumpsuit and the American flag. What does it feel like for you to see these athletes
1:25:57
that are doing these things and protesting the country they claim to be representing?
1:26:01
It's hard for me. The first thing I did when we got to Olympic Village, I put my flag in
1:26:05
my window. I hung the American flag. I still have it. I had everybody on the team sign
1:26:11
it. It's one of my keepsakes I really like. It's really hard for me. Man, it's rough
1:26:19
to watch. I don't like, it seems right now, culturally, it's all about having enemies,
1:26:29
all about blaming somebody. The news, and it's maybe a nefarious thought, but rather
1:26:42
than the Olympics has always brought people together. It's about coming together. Look,
1:26:47
we can compete and still come together to be on the same page, cheer together. It was
1:26:52
one of my wife's favorite parts of it. She's in the stands cheering and I ran right next
1:26:57
to them cheering and they're cheering with each other and helping and high-fiving. That
1:27:01
doesn't happen. Actually, I think it happens more than people want to admit. Not people,
1:27:07
but whatever the man. They want enemies. It seems like that's the big push. We're normally
1:27:13
the Olympics. It's very much look how they're doing, look all good, good-wethered stories.
1:27:21
This person, they had a rough upbringing and they made the Olympic team and this person
1:27:25
did this and look how they've come together. This one's very much like everything being
1:27:32
pushed is divisive. How are they going to do this? I can't believe they did that. The
1:27:41
ratings are down. That's not what Olympics is about. People don't want to see that and
1:27:44
they don't want to hear that. We get enough of it, especially the last few years. That's
1:27:49
all it's been is divisiveness. I think that's why. I really think that's why the Olympic
1:27:55
Olympics aren't a big deal right now. It's still getting pushed at the one thing that's
1:28:00
supposed to, and throughout history, sports has always been what brings us out of stuff.
1:28:06
You had the Great Depression. You had the racing. You had the boxing. You weren't supposed
1:28:11
to be doing it. They found a way and the betting. It's always helped. Sports is what helps people
1:28:17
get through hard times. We have the sports and we're not being allowed to use it as a
1:28:24
way to get out, to get away from all the divisiveness. This is my word right now. I hate seeing it.
1:28:31
I absolutely hate seeing it. It's frustrating. It really is. I'm a little bit devil's advocate.
1:28:40
I think you said it in your podcast. I made a bunch of money as soon as she did that. If
1:28:44
I'm an athlete and fame's what I'm supposed to be trying to get, here's a way I can be
1:28:50
famous. If I hadn't done this, nobody knows who I am. Nobody knows who she was until she
1:28:55
does that. I get why they're doing it. What we say as a culture like this is what you
1:29:04
should do. This is how you become famous. Famous is the best. Make lots of money. That's
1:29:08
the best. Sports is supposed to be the way to get away from that to remind you.
1:29:16
I'm saying I don't want to be hyperbolic. Whenever I make a prediction about the future
1:29:21
on my podcast, I try to provide some caveats and different things like that. I feel like
1:29:25
if we seed sports and the cat may already be out of the bag here with this, if we can't
1:29:31
rally around sports, professional sports, college sports, Olympic sports, whatever,
1:29:37
that is one of the things that will lead to the downfall of this country because we don't
1:29:41
have a reprieve or a rest period from the craziness of the divisiveness of left and right or a
1:29:48
Republican and Democrat or liberal and conservative. We don't have that separation anymore because
1:29:53
guess what? When your wife is high-fiving, another wife from Iran, they're not thinking
1:29:57
about the Iran nuclear deal. They're not thinking about the potential of their state-sponsored
1:30:04
terrorism and what we're trying to do to combat that. In an American context, if you're rooting
1:30:10
for the Buffalo Bills or the St. Louis Cardinals or the University of Texas Longhorns, I just
1:30:15
brought that up because you're wearing those shirt. If you're rooting for those people,
1:30:19
you're not rooting for them. You can do it in the studio if you want to, but there's
1:30:24
no video, so we'll never know if it actually happened. That's the thing is you're not a
1:30:28
Texas fan who's also wearing a Bernie Sanders sticker or a MAGA hat or something like that.
1:30:33
You're a Texas fan. You're a Cardinals fan. You're this fan. You're that fan. We've
1:30:37
gotten to this point now where you can't even do that. You can't sit in the stands next
1:30:43
to somebody that disagrees with you about potentially a super minute political issue.
1:30:47
It's like, "Hey, this person disagrees on tax policy, so I can't be associated with
1:30:52
them in any way, shape, or form." There's no things in. Again, I'm a walking contradiction
1:30:57
in that. I just did a podcast on my university changing their fight song and going at it
1:31:02
and trying to figure that out, but it's like, how can you support an entity that claims
1:31:06
to be neutral and claims to be something for everybody when they're doing something that
1:31:09
is so divisive? I'm stealing your word of the day kind of a thing, but it is for me.
1:31:13
It is a rough thing because I want Americans to be able to rally around our teams and around
1:31:18
our female and male athletes. It's just really, really hard to do because for me, I'm finding
1:31:23
myself cheering against the United States women's soccer team. By the time this episode comes
1:31:27
out, who knows if they moved on to the next round or if they've been eliminated or whatever,
1:31:31
but I want they can repeat it. I don't want her to get injured. I'm not going to wish
1:31:34
injury on her, but I want them to get smoked in every single game because they're disrespecting
1:31:40
the country they claim to represent. Nike making their warmups to say Black Lives Matter. Again,
1:31:46
Black Lives Matter, the sentence makes perfect sense, but Black Lives Matter, the organization,
1:31:51
is an evil organization whose ideologies are founded in a Marxism, which goes back to basically
1:31:55
atheism and Satanism and all those different things. Now I'm getting off and I'm recording
1:32:00
my own podcast here. Let's get back to this stuff you're doing. You got me all hot and
1:32:03
bothered now. You're just answering the stuff the way you should be answering it, but it's
1:32:07
good to hear that perspective from a former USA athlete, but you have eventually, you're
1:32:13
technically now, I guess, retired from actually competing and you've moved on to coaching,
1:32:17
which is a common thing for a lot of people who can't come. But you did and you can coach
1:32:24
now. Obviously, there's a lot of differences between being a competitor and being a coach.
1:32:28
I feel like it would be unfair right now since you're still so early in your coaching journey
1:32:32
to ask you which one that you like better. Because obviously, I figured you would just
1:32:36
say competing, but as a coach, what are the things that you like about coaching? Is there
1:32:41
anything that has surprised you? Have you taken to it like a duck to water? What is it about
1:32:45
coaching that was kind of appealing to you and is keeping you attached to it?
1:32:49
I love it. My dad did it. I always knew I'd coach when I was done. I like to think it's
1:32:57
been a smooth transition for me. Some of the things that are hard, like my pride will
1:33:03
get involved now and then wrestling. It'll be awesome. It's about me. I've got to beat
1:33:09
them, let them know. Two degree you need that. Two degree, it's kind of surprising me when
1:33:14
it happens because I'm not that way. So it surprised me when any time that comes out.
1:33:21
But I really love helping give direction. Wrestling, what's great about wrestling is
1:33:26
anybody can do it, everybody can do it. We got guys without a leg winning. We have big
1:33:31
guys, little guys, long guys, short guys. We have it all. It's fun helping steer them
1:33:40
because you don't want to steal what they're good at. They got to college for a reason.
1:33:45
They're going for a world Olympic medal for a reason. They did this, that made them real
1:33:49
good. But you want to shave that time off. I want to tell them being up with 20 seconds
1:33:56
left is a good thing. Don't start thinking it's not right. You don't want a year there
1:34:01
of mistime. You're trying to help them find their path without stepping in the same potholes
1:34:08
you stepped in. And no one, they can't do it the exact same way I did. Very few guys
1:34:13
wrestle the exact same way I did. And that's a lot of fun to me. Trying to keep their what
1:34:19
makes them unique and got them there while getting rid of all the bad things is a lot
1:34:25
of fun. And you know, I do a lot of little league stuff. I help out little league. My
1:34:31
son's in it. And that's part of my role. RTC. I want to help out the whole state. I'm not,
1:34:35
I'm not just an OU wrestling coach, right? I'm right. So RTC is a regional training center.
1:34:41
And so you are a coach with with OU, but you do more things than just coach collegially.
1:34:45
Correct. I'm the guy that helps when they're done with college and they want to make the
1:34:50
Olympic team. I'm the, that's me. I help them make Olympic teams. And, and so I also help
1:34:56
high school kids that want to be on that and little league kids that want to be on that
1:34:59
path to make an Olympic team. I help steer them toward the right people. And, and it's
1:35:05
kind of my job. And I like the little league because you can do a lot more in their life.
1:35:15
Like I can set them on help them get on the right path early. We're college, you're kind
1:35:19
of setting your ways. You know, I will say college, you make big decisions and we can
1:35:25
help with that, which I like. That's, that's, you know, you're starting to make the really
1:35:28
big decisions in life. And we can be a shoulder to lean on in the ear and, you know, we can
1:35:34
talk to them a little and help guide them there, which I really enjoy too, because it's more
1:35:39
than just wrestling, you know, it's on the mat. It's in life. It's what we do.
1:35:45
Absolutely. So one thing about coaching, and you and I've talked about this several
1:35:49
times off air, and I actually asked that of Hardell Moore, who was previously on this,
1:35:53
the concept of young boys wrestling young girls. And so I think if I can, you know, remember
1:35:59
exactly Hardell was very, very okay with that. Like, hey, just is what it is. If you're, if
1:36:04
that's the person that's in your bracket, that's the person that you're gonna have to
1:36:06
wrestle. But for me, as the father of a now 15 month old boy who will very, very likely
1:36:12
get into wrestling, you know, we're, we're not going to require our kids to play particular
1:36:15
sports, but we are going to require them to play sports and we are going to push them
1:36:18
towards things like wrestling and jiu-jitsu. I have, I have some issues with that personally,
1:36:25
because we're, we're trying to teach these young boys to model what it is to be a man.
1:36:29
And a man doesn't physically dominate a woman. Now there are scenarios. Like if a woman breaks
1:36:33
into my house in the middle of night and she's trying to physically dominate, like at that
1:36:36
point, I'm going to hit a woman. I'm just going to be real honest with it. Like, but
1:36:39
there aren't a whole lot of other scenarios like that, right? The break in in the middle
1:36:42
of night, they're trying to kill my family thing. Yeah, I think it's okay for you to hit
1:36:45
a woman at that point. I don't think God's going to be mad at you. But for me, whenever
1:36:48
you are trying to teach your eight year old son that you're, you're to honor women and
1:36:53
you're not to, you know, physically dominate them, you're to protect them. But then also
1:36:57
you're doing a very physically dominant sport where it's like, it's just you and them, you're
1:37:02
in singlets and you're saying go and dominate that female. It's not the same as baseball,
1:37:08
because if you're a pitcher and a girl comes up to the plate, you're not physically doing
1:37:12
anything to them directly. You might hit them with the ball and accident, but you're not
1:37:16
doing anything physically to them directly. So for me, I haven't fully fleshed out my
1:37:20
opinions, but in my head, I think I would be more comfortable with my son forfeiting
1:37:24
those matches and possibly made for those few years that he would actually be competing
1:37:28
against girls while they're more physically developed and there aren't as many guys or
1:37:31
young boys in the bracket. But from your perspective, what are your thoughts and I guess for you
1:37:36
growing up and for your son with wrestling girls when you're in kind of those younger
1:37:40
age brackets, how do you feel about that? So growing up was absolutely not allowed to.
1:37:46
And I was from your dad. Your dad just straight up saying just tournaments and thankfully
1:37:51
never happened. I never, never had to wrestle a girl. I had a couple in my bracket at times,
1:37:56
but we never met up. And I agree. I think there's a, it's a big topic and I lean toward no.
1:38:06
I need to flesh it out. Like I really need to think, sit down and think about it. But
1:38:10
it seems to me, uh, all the reasons you gave are absolutely right. I'm teaching my son
1:38:15
to respect women. I, I want him holding the door open for girls. You know, I'm, I'm old
1:38:21
school. I'm old school. Yeah. I'm a fan of it. Uh, and it's at the same time, most sports
1:38:30
guys, guys, guys, girls with girls and wrestling's finally coming around to that. We have girls
1:38:36
leagues. We have girls teams. We have girls state and I'm 100% in. Like I want my daughter
1:38:42
to wrestle. When I was a kid, girls weren't supposed to wrestle. That was, that was my
1:38:47
dad's rule. Like girls shouldn't wrestle. And, uh, I've, I've changed my mind on that.
1:38:52
I think it's, I think girls should wrestle. I want my daughter to wrestle. Uh, it won't
1:38:55
bother her if she don't. Yeah. But if she wants to go wrestle, like, let's go, let's
1:39:00
go. You could be, you could be the third generation. Let's go get it girl. Uh, but guys wrestling
1:39:05
girls. I don't, I don't personally, I don't like it. And I think it shouldn't, it shouldn't
1:39:12
happen. Guys should wrestle guys, girls to rest of the girls. It's, it's pretty simple.
1:39:15
Uh, we do. That's how it works in, in every sport. Uh, well, you say, you say it's not
1:39:21
fully fleshed out yet, but let's take the scenario of your son who's how old now he's
1:39:26
seven, seven, right? So he's right at that age where you know, you're doing the tournaments
1:39:29
and he's like, you know, obviously he's done those before. He's in a bracket and, you know,
1:39:35
a girl ends up on the other side of the bracket. We know what your dad's rule is. What's your
1:39:38
rule? I don't know, to be honest. Uh, and it hadn't happened. So I haven't, I would
1:39:45
lean toward like, if it, right now it happened, I'd probably be like, no, can't, can't wrestle
1:39:49
over. Okay. Um, but like my dad, I would let him keep wrestling. And if they meet, they
1:39:55
meet, then then we have to make that choice. But until that comes, we're not pulling them
1:39:59
out of a tournament because there's a girl in this bracket. So with that in mind, I guess
1:40:03
the one thing I would encourage you to do, which, you know, hear some advice you didn't
1:40:06
ask for is like, you should probably figure that out before that time comes because, you
1:40:10
know, uh, I'll know for me when I've been put in, in the heat of a moment, sometimes I make
1:40:14
good decisions. Other times I don't. And it's like, it was because I didn't spend enough
1:40:17
time beforehand thinking about it. But let's just, let's play this out just a little bit.
1:40:21
Let's say this does happen, whether you thought about it beforehand or thought about it in
1:40:24
the moment and you say, no, I'm not going to let my son wrestle against this girl. And
1:40:29
he gets upset. He's disappointed. Like maybe this is a gold medal match. Like maybe, maybe
1:40:34
this was, you know, the, you know, a very important tournament for them. So now Sam Hayes and
1:40:39
Winkle the dad, cause you're always Sam Hayes and Winkle the dad. You're not always Sam
1:40:42
Hayes, Winkle the coach, but you're Sam Hayes and Winkle the dad. How do you explain that
1:40:47
to your son in a way that they would understand like, what would be maybe your advice to guys
1:40:51
that are listening to this? Who maybe have kids that are maybe they've had some of these
1:40:54
same ideas and thoughts? Yeah, I, I think I would do like my dad and keep it simple, keep
1:40:59
it black and white. Boys don't wrestle girls. We don't, we don't wrestle girls and keep
1:41:04
it simple. It's, it doesn't need to be. But daddy, why? Yeah, but anyway, like, what
1:41:08
do you say, you know, I, I think there's arguments on both sides. And I say, we don't, you know,
1:41:13
what, for a lot of the reasons you said, we don't, we respect women. And I'll be honest
1:41:22
with them. Like, that's what my dad did. And I, you know, I don't see, I don't have a
1:41:28
reason yet to change it. I haven't been convinced otherwise. And I know a lot of guys I respect
1:41:35
that are all for it. And so that's why I say, I think it's an issue that there's maybe
1:41:41
some argument on that, that I would need to think out. The good news is Josh could care
1:41:45
less. Yeah, he would be like, sweet, let's go home. I want to play Bayblaze. He is not
1:41:51
into wrestling yet. And, and to what you were asked in early, I make him wrestling. He has
1:41:55
to go to practice, not allowed to quit in the middle of a season, you know, and you, you
1:41:58
got to do it. Yeah, you're still young. I'm telling you what to do. We're, this is what
1:42:02
we're doing. But we're doing that with all any sport. Sure. He starts soccer. He doesn't
1:42:06
want to do soccer halfway to the season. You got to finish season. Right. You know, I, I
1:42:10
even put him in basketball once, which was for those of you that can't see right now.
1:42:16
So Sam Haysman goal is one of the toughest human beings I know, but he is not exactly
1:42:20
one of the tallest human beings I've ever seen. So there's not a whole lot of guys your size
1:42:25
that end up as point guards in the NBA. Even John Stockton, everyone thought he was a midget.
1:42:29
That dude was decently tall. Chris Paul, like these, these guys are doing short. There was,
1:42:33
uh, what is the name? Muggsy Bogues or Spud Web? See, right. So, but they were tall. Yeah,
1:42:38
they were a little bit taller. So just for our listeners, how tall are you? Oh, man. Well,
1:42:42
I got it as already a how do I tell? Do I feel? No, no, I don't care about how you feel. Right.
1:42:48
But I'm just going to go ahead and say this for any of you out there thinking that you're
1:42:55
going to tackle at that. You're the baddest five, five guy on the planet. Right. So there
1:42:59
you go. It's like you're, you're the guy. I think so. Okay. I think so as well. So I,
1:43:03
I do want to kind of tee you up for this because I've heard you tell a really crazy
1:43:08
story whenever you were overseas and you were there for a wrestling competition. And so
1:43:13
I'm just going to back away from the mic because I've heard this before, but I want you to regale
1:43:18
our, our audience here with this insane story. So ready to set go. Okay. So I show up in Denver
1:43:24
and we're flying over to Serbia and the coach, we had a coach on staff at the time that was from
1:43:29
Serbia and he's not going, which probably should have been a flag. Flag should have went off. He's
1:43:35
like a god there. He was a two time Olympic gold medalist and he's not going and the head of USA
1:43:39
wrestling shows up and he's like, guys, if you don't want to go, you don't have to. The embassy's
1:43:44
saying shouldn't go overseas, shouldn't go to Serbia. But hey, man, Dave Schultz, you know,
1:43:50
he would go to Russia when it was USSR and you weren't allowed to do that. And he's America's
1:43:54
greatest wrestler. And so we're wrestling and I'm like, well, man, Dave Schultz did it. And
1:44:01
well, I'm not going to be the first one to raise my hand. If anybody else says, no, they're not
1:44:04
doing it. I'll, I'll join them. But if everybody's going like, can't be that big of a deal. No one,
1:44:09
no one raised their hand. So we all go over. And to be fair, we had the Navy coach with us. So we
1:44:14
got a military guy with us. I wasn't overly concerned. And we show up, we got our police escorts,
1:44:21
which is not uncommon, depending on where you go in the country at police escorts. And they have
1:44:25
AKs that's a little less common. Usually they just have their guns, you know, but AKs like, but
1:44:30
all right, still not terribly uncommon. Seen that before. Everywhere we go, we got them. Now we're,
1:44:37
we're going to our last practice. It's the, you know, it's 5 p.m. We're going to do this practice
1:44:42
tomorrow morning with Wayne's and 5 p.m. We're going and we pull on the side of the highway. And
1:44:47
they're like, well, big protest today. And they found out Americans were using the university and
1:44:52
they they've surrounded the university. It's no problem. It's like, oh, yeah, okay, no problem.
1:44:57
We're sitting on the side of the highway. Well, Graham buster going by Graham buster. And before
1:45:02
you know it, the highway's starting to back up. And we realized, you know, it's everybody going
1:45:06
this protest. And it's all like college age kids because that's protests, right? Sure. It's what
1:45:11
happens when you don't have sports and you got all this excess energy, you got to go spend it
1:45:15
somewhere. And, and so there, there's these buses and they're going by. And one of them, I'm kind
1:45:21
of looking, you know, and he holds up a, what was it, a pirate flag that had USA and duct tape with
1:45:29
an X through it upside down. And I'm like, oh, man. And everybody, we're from Canada, right? Let's
1:45:36
practice. Oh, Canada. Yeah, exactly. This is getting bad. And about that time the cops come back
1:45:43
and they're like, okay, we're good to go. We go to the university. Sure enough, no one there. Cut
1:45:47
weight. Good. Go home. Cut and wait. All right. So we can't drink in fluids like the normal. You
1:45:53
take a shower, you flip on the TV, and it's always in whatever another language, but you watch, you
1:45:59
know, and every channel is like a building on fire. We're like, man, there's not even anything on TV,
1:46:03
the stings and coach comes walking by the room. And he's just like, what do you mean? Well, get
1:46:09
someone to be over here. We need a beep, beep, beep, beep, he's off on the hallway. Like, that was
1:46:14
weird. Uh, yep, still building is on fire. So then coach comes by again, he's like, listen,
1:46:20
fellas, we're leaving the country right now. Uh, the protest became right. The American embassy's
1:46:26
on fire. They've, you know, they're, they're trying to kill everybody and all the military is
1:46:30
getting the diplomats out. Like we have no help. We're on our own. And we're sitting there like,
1:46:36
no, no, no, we're cutting weight. We're wrestling. Right. You're like, no, we're leaving right now.
1:46:42
We're like, no, he's like, listen, pack up. Like, can we eat? Like, we're not wrestling.
1:46:48
Yeah. See, uh, so then you start drinking flu and you're kind of half pack and once you get some
1:46:54
fluids in you and it's food, you're like, feeling good. Oh, this is real. Yeah, it's getting real
1:46:57
down. You know, you kind of realize what's going on. And so we pack up and we already couldn't stay
1:47:03
in the city because everything going on. And we're in this little town where they would come by
1:47:08
every morning and throw coal out front, just a big pile of just coal. And they throw it in the
1:47:12
furnace down low and the power was on nine a.m. to nine p.m. Well, we're loading up, boom, power
1:47:17
goes off the whole city, like the town, whatever. Uh, so we're finishing loading up in the dark
1:47:23
because there's no power. And, uh, no, no, like hyperbole, we take actual dirt roads out of Serbia
1:47:32
into Turkey, uh, through whatever those mountains are and it takes forever because we're on dirt
1:47:38
roads and there's nothing just straight. You're, you're winding and through the hills and we get
1:47:41
pulled over three times by like, uh, security patrol and border patrol, whatever. Each time
1:47:49
they make us all get out, they got like eight case pointed at us, line up against the bus,
1:47:53
they go through all our gear, load it back up, put us back in. Each time we're like,
1:47:58
we're in the middle of nowhere, like in the mountains, if one of these people, uh, and, and
1:48:03
so, you know, so Serbia was had, you know, Texas decides to leave the U.S. and Serbia is like,
1:48:11
yeah, we're on Texas side. Uh, so whatever state in Serbia was trying to leave Serbia
1:48:18
and the U.S. I don't know who the U.S. was back in. Yeah, but we were on the opposite,
1:48:23
like in the bad area, you know, where you don't want to be a U.S. person. And so, uh, we're leaving
1:48:28
and we're thinking like, if these guys are on the other side, like, we're done. Like, they're
1:48:32
gonna get us. Yeah. And thank the Lord. None of them were. Uh, we made it to Turkey and I wrestled
1:48:39
so good in Turkey. Like, there you go. That's the by far the best I ever wrestled. I crushed
1:48:44
everybody. Uh, it was just great to be alive, you know, and, and it was crazy. We didn't have
1:48:50
cell phones back. Like there were cell phones. Nobody owned a cell phone, you know, and so
1:48:55
you would do a collect call and, and Rachel's at work and, or at church and somebody's like,
1:49:00
hey, so how's your husband? Like, yeah, they burned down the American embassy and they're
1:49:04
trying to get everybody out of the country and there's hostages and she's like, what?
1:49:07
Shame on USA wrestling. Nobody called our families. Yeah, we're in the back roads, you know, so
1:49:13
she didn't get to find out for a couple days and finally we get a collect call home and
1:49:17
I guess I'm safe. I'm okay. Like, nothing to worry about. And yeah, again, very surreal. Like,
1:49:23
yeah, going through it was just, it was surreal. And I don't think we realized the kind of danger
1:49:28
we were in. And so now I tell kids, you know, the good coach I am, if, if the head of USA wrestling
1:49:34
shows up, yeah, don't go. It's one tournament. You'll be okay. All for the love of wrestling.
1:49:39
Yeah, it was the love of wrestling that almost got your head taken off. Yeah, Dave Schultz did it.
1:49:44
Hey, but you SSR, but we're glad you're here. We're glad you made it out a lot. I made it out.
1:49:48
It's a good story now. Before we wrap up and go into our last section, I would be remiss if I
1:49:54
didn't mention the fact that part of the reason why you and I are connected is because you and I
1:49:57
go to the same church, like you are a member of my foxhole. You are saying the coach as per my
1:50:01
foxhole episode episode 104, you know, we've trained together a few times. Yeah. Hey, thank
1:50:05
you. Appreciate it very much. But like, you know, we've trained together, you know, have done some
1:50:10
wrestling and done a little bit of jujitsu as well. But one of the defining things about you is not
1:50:15
just your athletic exploits. It's your Christian faith. And I will say that you and I own the same
1:50:20
Bible, the ESV study by years is quite a bit more worn than mine is. And I don't know if that's
1:50:25
just by virtue of the fact that I, you know, printed books, I tried to, you know, really keep
1:50:29
him pristine. I don't really like writing in them and are highlighting. But that is something that,
1:50:33
you know, just watching you being in Sunday school, sitting at the same table doing those things,
1:50:37
you are constantly looking at the scriptures. And so I don't know if that's just for play or for
1:50:41
show because you're at Sunday school or whatever thing is, I get the sense that that's not the case.
1:50:45
But talk to me a little bit about your Christian faith and about because you mentioned at the top
1:50:49
of the show that you're very religious and, you know, that can be taken about a million different
1:50:52
ways. But you know, talk about your Christian faith and, you know, whether or not for you
1:50:57
that has an impact on what you do in wrestling as a competitor or a coach.
1:51:00
Yes. So I'm a Christ follower. And it's very much part of it. My dad was too. So I'm a second
1:51:06
generation Olympian and a third generation Christian, which the older I've gotten, I realized,
1:51:12
and that's rare. There's not a lot of third generation Christians. And so I'm very blessed
1:51:17
in that way. And it was a big part of my dad's philosophy. And so it's become a big part of mine
1:51:23
is we, we look through the filter of the Bible and then wrestling for whatever in life. That's how
1:51:30
we do it. We look at what the Bible says, we look at wrestling says. And that's all my philosophy
1:51:36
in wrestling comes to that. The Bible says, you know, give 100% heart, mind, soul to what you're
1:51:40
doing and do it for God. So my wrestling, I give 100% heart, mind, soul. And I do it to glorify God.
1:51:47
He gave me these abilities. And so I'm not trying to wrestle for me, which we all do. We're all,
1:51:53
you know, and to degree, that's good. You should wrestle for yourself. You know, you want to go
1:51:56
in. But, but I try to keep it that I'm wrestling for Jesus. Like that's, I'm trying to showcase
1:52:03
the abilities he's given me, the situation he put, put me in. And I just want to be, you know,
1:52:10
showing others to Jesus. That's, that's my goal. And I use it very much in every part of wrestling,
1:52:18
every part of it. And you know, when you're sitting at home, you can always think of all the ways
1:52:23
that you do it. And anytime means somebody asks, it's always hard to come up with one, you know,
1:52:27
but there's plenty of them. Maybe they'll come to me here as we talk. But no, that's good. And
1:52:32
that's the thing about it is to work on to the Lord is a hard thing for people that hate what
1:52:37
they're doing. Right. And so to any of those of you that are listening, just as a little side,
1:52:40
I know your job might suck. I know your boss might be a pain in the neck. I know that, you know,
1:52:46
perhaps you're not making as much as you want, or you're not at the station in life within your
1:52:50
career that you thought you would be at by this point. But when you change your mindset to work
1:52:54
under the Lord, it changes not only your gas tank, it changes, you know, the focus of what you're
1:52:58
doing. And so I think that's something that you kind of touched on a little bit is that, you know,
1:53:02
you're not just training for you, even though you are training for you, you're not just
1:53:05
training to impress people, even though you are trained to impress people, your coaches or your
1:53:08
teammates or whatever, your training is on to the Lord, you're training to serve in the way that
1:53:12
you're serving. And so you're going to be the best competitor you can be because that was your job.
1:53:16
Now you're trying to be the best coach that you can be because that is your job. And the impact
1:53:19
that you're going to have on people could have a ripple effect that you may never even realize.
1:53:23
And so that's a very, very important thing for all of you is carry the gospel wherever you go.
1:53:27
You know, I just talked about, you know, hanging out with Phil Robertson and he's marinated in the
1:53:31
gospel. That guy just the gospel just spews out of him whenever necessary, right? And even when
1:53:36
it's not necessary, he just kind of still throws it out there. So that's a big deal. I appreciate
1:53:40
you sharing that with us. But we are going to come down to the end of our show here.
1:53:43
And we're going to do for the first time live, the segment called what would you say to someone
1:53:48
that said? So you know, since you're a listener of the podcast, this is lightning round. All right,
1:53:52
so I'm going to throw out these random statements to you. They're going to start with what would you
1:53:55
say to someone that said, I will end the statement, but you got 30 seconds tops, right? You got 30
1:54:01
seconds to give me your answer. So you up for it. I am up for it. If you let me ask you a couple
1:54:05
first, you, well, this might, this is my show. Like I can't just like switch it up on. Oh, he's
1:54:10
got his notepad for those of you that can't see this. He's got his notepad out. I feel like
1:54:12
you're prepared for this. I can't prepare it. I try to. Okay. Well, I agree. Yeah, sure. Why not
1:54:17
here? Yeah, you go ahead and take over my show. I was trying to launch into my last segment here,
1:54:21
but yeah, sure. You go ahead and take over Sam. Go for it. Okay. What would you say to somebody
1:54:24
that said redheads are stepchildren for a reason that nobody wants to claim them? Well, I would say
1:54:32
that redheads are obviously a walking genetic deformity. And so that is what I am. I've accepted
1:54:37
it. I have no soul. It is what it is. Ding. Right. Correct answer. Okay. What would you say to somebody
1:54:42
said alpha males are toxicity. And they had their chance to lead. And now they need to step aside
1:54:48
because betas are the new alphas. betas are not the new alphas. And I will tell you that these
1:54:53
betas will be looking around for the alphas when things are hitting the fan, right? Because it's easy
1:54:57
to be a sheep when the wolves aren't around. But whenever the wolf shows up, the sheep will be
1:55:01
looking for a sheep dog. Nice. Would you rather? Well, if you're going to do my segment, you got
1:55:08
to do it right. You got to say, what would you say to someone that said? Come on now. Okay,
1:55:11
what would you say? I can't even read your questions because your chicken scratch is on your side.
1:55:14
What are we doing here? I'm trying to decide which one here I you can ask all of them. I got
1:55:19
mine ready to go. We'll eventually get to mine. There we go. Eventually. Okay. And I'm trying
1:55:23
to think of my answers for yours. So I don't look like an idiot. You don't know what I'm
1:55:26
going to ask you now. I'm going to throw you out a bunch of stupid ones now. Great. Who's
1:55:30
tougher? What would you say to somebody that said that the clown is tougher than the bull rider?
1:55:34
Oh, man, that's a really good question. I would say that I would disagree with them
1:55:42
because the clown has to deal with the bull from a distance, but the bull rider has to hop on top
1:55:47
of that thing. And so the clown is in trouble. And those are some brave SOBs, even though they
1:55:52
look like clowns because they are dress like clowns. But I would say the guy that's actually
1:55:56
have to get on the back of the bull. That's a little bit of a tougher situation. Well, you'd be
1:56:00
wrong. So, okay, you're not even going to explain anything wrong. You're just going to go to the
1:56:03
next. Okay. Yeah. Great. This is going wonderful. That's it. What would you say? It's the last one.
1:56:08
What would you say to someone that said, I could beat you and my at the same time? You could be
1:56:15
saying that again. I'm going to make you say that again. What would you say to somebody that said,
1:56:21
I could beat you and my at the same time? I'm not even going to dignify that answer
1:56:29
with a full or that question with a full response. Yeah. How dare you ask me such a ridiculous question.
1:56:34
Yeah. It worked on me. I got asked that once and I was like, you can't turn me. And they asked me
1:56:38
and I was like, what did you and I got turned? Well, well done. That reminds me of a time when I was
1:56:45
training with shout out to Tyler Murrah, who is a Brown Bell IBJJF World Champion in Jujitsu. He's
1:56:50
been since promoted to blackbell. But early on in my Jujitsu career, I'm trying to go crazy. We're
1:56:56
about the same size type of thing. And I'm going crazy. I'm trying to like do whatever and I'm a
1:57:01
white belt. He literally was in such control. He reaches over to off the mat where his water bottle
1:57:07
was. And I'm going to do this next to the mic so you can hear it. He unscrews his water bottle,
1:57:12
takes a sip, takes the time to screw the cap back on, set it down all the while I'm trying to get
1:57:18
out. Yeah, I'm trying to figure I'm trying to sweep. I'm trying to escape. He was in such control.
1:57:23
He had time to take a break in the middle of a role. So Tyler, I love you, but screw you forever.
1:57:27
I hate you for embarrassing me like that. But I'm going to take back over Sam. This is my show. All
1:57:31
right. I'm going to comment on that. One of my lines I like using to mess with the college guys
1:57:38
that are getting better. But I'll be like, yeah, I know what you're going to do before you know
1:57:41
what you're going to do. And sometimes it's true. Like I can see it in their eye. Here it comes,
1:57:45
you know, and you get to have some fun with it. So hey, you know, even just saying that to them,
1:57:50
that's a little bit of a screwy thing inside the mind. So it's a good trick that you're playing.
1:57:53
But now, now, Sam, you settle down there. We're going to go into my side. Let's go. Are you ready?
1:58:00
Sam, Hey, Zwingka, what would you say to someone that said? I would wrestle, but I don't like the
1:58:04
idea of sweaty men grabbing all over me. Well, you're shouldn't be in wrestling.
1:58:11
And he's now they're not ready for it. I've heard that from a lot of people before. That's what's
1:58:15
going to break you. That's what breaks you. Then you probably shouldn't wrestle. All right,
1:58:19
here we go. What would you say to someone that said, I would wrestle, but singlets are really
1:58:23
awkward. I would say you're kind of right, a little bit right, but they're there for a reason.
1:58:29
Fingers don't get tore up. You know, no shirt might look better. We might have better more fans
1:58:37
if we just had fight shorts, but it gets slippery quick and gets really weird and you've got a
1:58:41
face full of then now you are talking about like, what's the movie? The guy that does jump shot
1:58:46
and he goes like, Hey, it still is. Yeah, nobody wants that happening along K and Polly. I think
1:58:52
that's the one. All right. All right. Here we go. What would you say to someone that said,
1:58:56
kale Sanderson is the greatest collegiate wrestler of all time. I would disagree. I think Kyle
1:59:04
Dake is and here's my reasoning. So I have this argument a lot. I think we'll have somebody go
1:59:09
undefeated four time before we have somebody win at four different weights again. All right.
1:59:14
What would you say to someone that said kale Sanderson will go down as the greatest collegiate
1:59:18
wrestling coach of all time. I would say he is very much on track for that. Eventually,
1:59:24
somebody will beat him. But for a while, I would say yes. All right. What would you say to someone
1:59:30
that said, John Smith is the greatest American freestyle wrestler of all time. I don't
1:59:36
that's a it's a really hard argument. Bruce Baumarner, I think is probably a little bit better.
1:59:42
But there's there's arguments for for John. I'm gonna go Bruce though. Okay. All right. Just
1:59:48
few more left here. What would you say to someone that said wrestling is the most important discipline
1:59:52
in mixed martial arts? I would say they are correct. I'm gonna ask you give me a little bit more on
1:59:59
that. Give me a little bias. I think a bunch of the champs, if you look historically the last few
2:00:03
years are wrestling is there. I'd say they're main, you know, and there's ones that say it and
2:00:08
they're not and and there's a lot of wrestlers that go out that don't make it. So there's arguments
2:00:13
all the way around, but I would say yes, I would say if if I'm getting my son ready to be UFC champ
2:00:20
and I'm not worried about his his wrestling, I'd still wrestling would be our main thing we do
2:00:24
growing up. All right, two more. What would you say to someone that said a great jujitsu player
2:00:29
will always beat a great wrestler? I'd probably laugh and think it's a joke. You know, I wrote it
2:00:36
down in my journal instead of funny joke today. Yeah, whatever. Uh, I yeah, I give a lot there.
2:00:43
When they know what they're doing, it's yeah, it's rough. And I love it. I love that part of
2:00:52
jujitsu because uh it's just different. It's different than wrestling and uh I love the mindset. I love
2:01:00
the learning and and I love that it's less injury intensive unless you're against an idiot that
2:01:06
just throws on a bar arm and tries to break your elbow, you know, it's always not rolling with an
2:01:12
idiot. I love that it fits real well for wrestlers as as we're aging. It's something we can jump into
2:01:17
and enjoy and uh I'm excited to see it grow. I'd love to hear how they're going to get it
2:01:22
like into schools. I think it would help a lot. You know, like judo's not in schools, wrestling is
2:01:27
jujitsu's not. We need more combat sports in school and I would love I think it's one that
2:01:33
could fit in because that that the injuries are lower and anybody can do it and that's a pet peeve
2:01:40
of mine, but I'd love to seek it in. Yeah, jujitsu seems like a perfect Olympic sport,
2:01:44
considering some of the Olympic sports that I've seen. Uh that one seems to be the best one
2:01:47
but we are at the last and probably the most important question of the day. Most important
2:01:51
question of the day. You ready? Ready. Okay. What would you say to someone that said the coolest
2:01:56
thing about wrestling is the cauliflower ears. I'd say they're probably right and I'm so happy
2:02:02
because back in the day it wasn't when I was a kid no cauliflower ears were bad and now they're
2:02:06
good and I love that. I love that they're they're uh seen as like a trophy because that's why we
2:02:12
always look at it's like the trophy can carry everywhere. So yes, they are they are right. That's
2:02:17
one of the one one of them. One of the top three. It is the international symbol for don't mess
2:02:22
with me. I've done things before that you would probably not appreciate. So that I've done it to
2:02:28
people like that have like road rage or something. I'll like point at my ear at them. I don't think
2:02:33
it ever works. But in my mind, I'm like, I'd say it's a deterrent. It's a pretty good deterrent. But
2:02:38
Sam, we have gone everywhere in this conversation. We've talked about a lot of different things.
2:02:41
So I appreciate you giving us this amount of time. But that is all for me. Is there anything else you
2:02:44
want to get off your chest? Oh, man. Check out Checkout Undaunted Life. I love it. Everybody I talk
2:02:50
to that starts listening loves it. And you know, yeah, spread the word. Oh, yeah, I will say one other
2:02:57
thing. Yeah. Part of my job is fundraising. That's easily the hardest part for me. I love the wrestling
2:03:02
part. If you're interested in helping wrestlers achieve their Olympic goals, we'll have it in the
2:03:09
show notes. But okay, RTC dot org. That's okay. Like Oklahoma, RTC, like regional training center.
2:03:17
Okay, RTC dot org. We need all the help we can get. You can, you can help us. You can help kids
2:03:23
reach their goals and learn how to be successful, both in wrestling and in life. And because that's
2:03:30
our, that's our biggest thing, you know, that the odds of someone making the Olympic team very low,
2:03:35
the odds of them learning how to be successful in life very high. And I'll finish with that.
2:03:41
It's something that I preach going back to the Bible that Jesus tells a parable
2:03:46
about the, the master and he, he's going to leave and he gives the, the gold talents,
2:03:52
talents like a year's worth of wages, you know, and he gives one five and one three and one two and
2:03:56
or five, two and one. And he leaves and when he comes back, the guy that had five turned it into
2:04:03
10, the guy that had two turned into four and the guy that had one hit it. And it seems very
2:04:08
appropriate to, to life and to wrestling, you know, some of us, and I love that it's
2:04:15
talents. I love that it. That's what it transfers over into English. We're all given talents, you
2:04:20
know, and some people are going to be better. I could do basketball. I could do everything right.
2:04:25
And LeBron James is going to beat me every time, every time he's got more talents. And
2:04:31
as a coach, I can tell you that the guys that, whether they have
2:04:34
a great aptitude for wrestling, they have five or they only have two, but they go out and they
2:04:40
give everything they got, they are in their best. That is the best chance for them to succeed in
2:04:47
wrestling. It's not cheating. It's not trying to do something you don't have. It's being the best
2:04:52
at what you have. And, and the master's proud, master's proud of the one of the five. He's
2:04:57
proud of the one of the two. Right. What he's mad about is the one that, that hit it, that had
2:05:01
this talent and like we're worried and scared and fearful. And I think that's a big part of what
2:05:08
we're trying to do at the OKRTC. You know, we're, we are looking to teach kids to use the talents
2:05:15
they have if we can grow a few more on that and, and find success and realize some people just have
2:05:22
more. You know, some people are just better and it's amazing how many people don't, right? They don't
2:05:27
do, they don't use their talents. And that, that guy with five, and then he had the guy with three
2:05:32
that turned it into six and the five is just sitting on his five. That, that guy with less beats them
2:05:38
because he's, he was willing to put in the effort and get better. And he's never going to beat the
2:05:43
LeBron James that, that did it right. You know, some people are just, they're, they're better at
2:05:47
their, they're made for it, you know. But, but they had the opportunity and they're going to find
2:05:52
success. And I find that's true in whatever you're doing, whether you're a dishwasher or a podcast
2:05:58
or a wrestling coach. If you're taking the abilities and talents you've been giving them and you're
2:06:03
doing your best with those, if you're, you're trying to double them, if you will, you're going to be
2:06:11
successful. You're successful. You know, I agree with that. That's a great thing to end on. Sam,
2:06:15
Haze Winkle. Thanks for coming on a Daunted Life, a man's podcast. Absolutely. Appreciate a cop.
2:06:19
There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed my interview with Sam Haze Winkle. And guys, hey,
2:06:24
he is in my foxhole. All right. You can't have him. He's my friend. Okay. Before we let you go,
2:06:28
we are going to do a quick resilience boost. As you know, by now at Undaunted Life,
2:06:32
our mission is equipping men to push back darkness. And specifically, we do that by giving you guys
2:06:36
content like this podcast. It helps you forge spiritual, mental and physical resilience. So for
2:06:41
today, I've got one link for you. That is a link to the Oklahoma Regional Training Center. That is
2:06:44
where Sam is the head coach. We talked about it in the show. If you are a supporter of wrestling
2:06:48
and you want the love and grandeur of wrestling to get out to more kids, make sure you go to OKRTC.org.
2:06:54
That is in the show notes. All right, guys. Thanks so much for listening to the podcast.
2:06:56
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive review. If you want
2:07:01
me to come speak at your live event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email to info at undaunted.life.
2:07:06
That's i-n-f-o at undaunted.life. You can follow us on Instagram and TikTok and like us on Facebook.
2:07:11
You can also check out our website for everything else, including how to donate to keep more content
2:07:15
like this coming your way. Just go to www.undaunted.life. We also want to thank the band August Burns Red
2:07:21
for allowing us to use their music for our content. The Enter Outro track on this podcast is their song
2:07:25
"Cutting the Ties," which is off their 10th anniversary re-recording of their album Leveler.
2:07:30
The links are in the description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness,
2:07:37
keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
2:08:07
[Music]