Transcript for #1627 - Dan Gable

Is that so you're telling me that this mask is this is a wrestling does this have anything to do with your museum Yes, it's the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, but this is the one out of Stillwater, Oklahoma. And the one we have is a subsidiary one. It's called the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, Dan Gable, you see him in water to my hometown, but they own it. And see, Oklahoma and Iowa are big rivalries in the wrestling over history. And these museums kind of help bring us together. So it's pretty interesting. So the mag is these actually masks that are just the ones out of still water.

when they don't swarm me is when I'm gonna have to worry about you know because I'm for the sport of wrestling I love that sport and it's been my life and I can I want it to continue to be and it's a little bit difficult sport so you know it's something that keeps me appreciative but it also I promoted out there and as long as people I'm okay with it. I might irritate my family a little bit once in a while, but they love the sport too, so they got to expect some of this stuff.

Well, you know, I'm glad you said that because every time I tell somebody their eyebrows do the same when I'm going on this show. And so of course, you know, I knew about this show, but I had to do a lot of homework just to see, wow, you know, it's pretty big. So, you know, I'm excited to be here because I know the effect it can have, not just on me because You know, but on the sport you know, and I love the sport and I'd my hometown of Waterloo was that's why I got started it because it was just dominating wrestling at the time and you know what's funny is that just from a world situation sport brings people together and you know it's like who better than a sport with Russia or Iran or North Korea because you know it's like or Turkey you know they just you know especially the first two you know they just they're always in conflict but when it comes to wrestling we have something in common and We usually end up losing to both Russia and Iran, but sometimes we beat them too. And we are well known for good wrestling and that has helped, I think, the country be better off.

Well, when I won the Olympics in 1972, their most popular athlete was the guy in my weight class. I'd been in the worlds a year before, but before that, he had two Olympic titles and every world title in between. And all of a sudden, he became so popular that the government was a little concerned about him, that the people were more appreciative of him than the government. And so when he went to the Munich Olympics, even though he had lost the year before, because I was there and I won the way class, we didn't get to Russell, but he was there and representing Neuron in 72 and he won his first match by about 15 points. but he pulled out of the Olympics and he end up going to the United States. Because of his being so popular, they were scared. They might do something to him.

Yeah, and they claimed that he killed somebody. you can claim whatever you want to, how satisfied the people, but chances already didn't.

And the Iranian that came here lives still here in the United States.

No, but I appreciate all the sports because I have so many grandkids and a lot of their dads are even baseball players football players and even coaches at that level. So, you know, it's pretty interesting because like one of the baseball coach for my local and where I live in Iowa City is he's got his son named Gabel actually and he's first team all state but in baseball. But when he was back in college, he was dating my daughter and he came to our wrestling practice And we were just doing a running practice that morning, early morning, and we were doing less little less than quarter mile runs. And I'd give him a little time in between, of course. But he used to want to try out what we were doing to see how it compared to what he did or how he trained that way. They trained different ways. He made one really good lap and he stayed right with the group right in there. I think he claimed he might have made another one. I don't know if it was the second or the third, but we were going to do eight. And so I think by the second of the third, he was in a full squat and he couldn't. I mean, his legs just went out on him and he couldn't do it. And I tell you, I think it showed appreciation from him right away from that point of view. So that's pretty interesting that you bring that up.

Well, you mentioned Jordan Burroughs, and Jordan Burroughs was a good wrestler in high school, and he was a good wrestler in college, I became a great wrestler at the end of college, but I shouldn't even say great because you have another level and that's that world and Olympic level. I don't think he really realized his talent and abilities. A lot of it's just because it is a tough sport and that every practice is somewhat of a grind and everything that you do, but if you stick with it long enough, the mind can develop as well and it's when the when Jordan Burrell's mind develop to where he felt he was a great wrestler instead of just he's a good wrestler but this other guy is good and this is going to be a tough match but He stayed in it long enough, worked at it hard enough for where he was able to develop beyond the tools that you need for being on the mat, just technically or strategially, strategically. And so once he got that mind, that made the big difference. And that's what carries him through right now. And again, it's like right now, he's in a big battle to make the Olympic team, which is They're going to happen here shortly because we eliminated some of the weight classes. See, people don't understand in our sport because they say, well, they don't do it baseball, they don't do it football, people weigh 100 pounds, people weigh 200 pounds on the same team and you're competing against them. But in a wrestling match, a few pounds makes a difference when you're at that high level of excellence. It's because of like physics. you know if you understand physics pretty well and positioning and then you can probably be a better wrestler just because of the amount of weight and skill that you have within your own positions. And so for me it was like I could wrestle anybody. I wrestled 150 pounds at the world in Olympic games and I could wrestle the heavyweight who ate 450 and they go, why could you wrestle him? I said because I knew the leverage and I knew the skills and and the strategy and because of that that gave me the opportunity to feel heavier than him and I think that's what a lot of people said you know look at heavy but when I wrestled you felt like so heavy I said well it's because I knew my positions so you know that's where like Jordan Burles is now he's so much better but not just in his skills from on the mat it's a lot in his brains that he knows he's good. He's had a lot of practices where he's done well. I don't think I lost a practice from my junior year in college. So I had my junior year, my senior year, then I had two and a half more years. So that's four and a half years where I went to practice and never lost a wrestling practice. And by that, I mean, I pretty much dominated. And I used the rest of the bigger guys in the room, even though I was a lightweight, this because I could. And because of that, it gave me a lot of confidence. And so people always ask you, how you think you're going to do? You know, I think I'm going to win, you know, I think, I don't really think I pretty much know I'm going to win. So, you know, it's one of these things that when you have that much success at work, and that's where I feel Jordan Burl's is developed to. But like I said, he's got only six weight class that's compared to eight or nine or ten, but we normally used to have, and he's got a world champion coming down named Dake that will challenge him at that, at that, his weight. So they're both Crude highly credentialed and so that's gonna be a big match coming up here probably pretty soon

Well, I'm gonna jump forth to my high school coach. Even though I got a lot before them. But I'm just, I just remember what he said in the room. And he was by the best high school coach in the state at the time. He said, guys, win with humility. Lose with dignity, but damn it, don't lose! And he put those last two lines together real quick, so he kind of had to listen to him. But it was pretty neat because you win with humility, you lose with dignity, but damn it don't lose. And so, you know, that was my first major coach. that really taught me a lot of those type of principles. But before that, I was a kid that was at the YMCA when I was five, six years old. And basically the reason why I was there because you know, you want to learn how to swim because if you're outdoors guy and you want to be around water and you want to want to make sure you know how your kids swim. So my mom and dad got me to the YMCA. But what they got me to the YMCA really for was they needed help. I mean, they just my dad was a full-time worker in my mom. She stayed at home a lot, but she also helped my dad at the office at home. But I was a little hellian. And they needed me to learn how to swim, but they also needed me to learn how to be a little bit sociable. They needed me to learn how to get along with kids. My first job was at the YMCA. I actually competed. My first sport, competitively was besides practicing, was swimming. And I won a YMCA state championship when I was 12 years old, believe it or not, in the back stroke. which you know on wrestling and I know in fighting you can go to your back and there's lots of tools that you can do there but I hate going to my back you know and I think if I was a fighter I don't I think I hate gravity coming down on me so I don't mind putting it down but you know and their skills there you have to learn but I am I really I really liked the YMCA because it gave me a chance to learn something away from home I was home with my mom it's home with my dad home with my sister four years older than me but you know it's it's just something I call it going for help and I think my mom a dad realized at that time that they need to help with this kid. And I think that's a really good thing to think about as people in the world when you have kids growing up. And if you're not given in them what you need to give them, why not go for help? And there's organizations out there. Now you've got to be careful, you know, who you're putting them into or even if you're given to a babysitter or whatever like that. you know if you're if you're pretty confident that you have a good place to get some help you get some help and I and I as same way as me as a coach same way as me as a husband I mean I got my wife I got my family I got my head my assistant coaches and I got my fans I mean I got I always had them looking up for me. I built that kind of trust with them or more than even trust, just they want to help. And that was a way. Now, you can't go overboard. You still got to make sure that the help you're getting is the right help. But the YMCA was perfect for me because I mean, I can remember the first day they took us to a wrestling room. We had a little wrestling room at the YMCA. I was already wrestling before that because my dad was a wrestler, not a great wrestler, but his friends were. So when they came to the wrestling, learning to support the first wrestling one was at the YMCA, there even though I had been in a wrestling room because he's older guys had drugged me around to do the wrestling rooms, but in Waterloo. But I can remember wrestling a kid, and I had to lean pretty good because I had already been a wrestler in my carpeted home, wrestling outside in the grass, and these people had had a little experience with me. So, but the kid, you know, kind of got mad, so I was waiting for a mom and dad to pick me up after the, after the wise couple hours where he'd be, you spend there, and this kid came out and he goes, you know, you can, you know, maybe you beat me and russ on up there, but he goes, how about a street fight? And I said, whoa, you know, I was probably eight, nine, eight years old at the time. And you know, I was we's downtown Waterloo, Iowa, tough town. I was on one side of the river and he was on the other side of the river growing up. And so he probably had been in more fights in me, but I didn't, wasn't really, wasn't going to fight him. I was waiting for my dad pick me up, and all of a sudden he punches me. And so, you know, what do you do? You got to fight. I mean, you got to run. You know, and I fought, and I did it right. I mean, just like in the Russenrum, I did it right. And so I was, I had, I had some of that in me too. But when I, I had to go on the down, and I kind of let him up, We both looked over. My dad was there standing watching me, and that guy's dad was standing there. And my dad and his were talking to each other. And so, you know, that's part of experience that you kind of grew up in. And I don't know if they even knew each other, but they were kind of supervising yet we didn't know they were there. And that was kind of one of my first experiences with understanding a little bit about competition outside the organized sports you know yeah rock competition right yeah primal yeah so you know actually speaking of the story there it was a really good one this is about my mom and dad my mom and dad were great people but they like to drink a lot of beer and smoke a lot of cigarettes and that's why they probably didn't live so long and they probably had some trouble at home and by that I mean the cops visited home quite often just to break up fights or my mom would probably call the cops on my dad and so The first time I ever really took notice was when they came the first time and they took my dad away. And you know, he had been rough with my mom, so I probably understood. But I saw him kind of throw a handcuff on him. I think they just threw one on and kind of took him out the door. I didn't really see from there. He came home that night later on. He was, he had, he just, you know, I don't know, they brought him back later. But so the next day I went to school and the cop at the policeman had come and picked him up was actually a neighbor down the street. Just lived by the block of from us. And I was really bad, you know, at the police, taking my dad away. Even though probably it was a good thing. But I didn't really understand what was going on at that time. And this is different today, probably wouldn't go on. But the neighbor policeman about a block away had a son in my class at school. So after school, that day, we were both walking home. And I was really mad and I pull out of my pocket a wire. And I took this kid down on the ground and I wired his wrist together. not real hard, but like there were handcuffs and I grabbed the wire and I said this is what your dad did to my dad last night and I'm gonna do it to you and I'm gonna take you and I'm gonna take you home this way and I took him home because he lived about a block away and I undertook the things off and letting go in but it's like puppy fourth grade but My dad found out about that and wow, what did I get in trouble? I mean, he used to hit me on top of the head with a ring, probably why I don't have much hair, but, and he looked at me and he said, you know what? I was intoxicated last night. It was good they took me out of here. But you know what they did to me when I got me down to the police department. He said I played pool with them. They had a little billiards room down there and they played pool with me until I sobered up and then they brought me back. And you did that to his son. I just protected you. I thought, you know, but everybody understood, but it's kind of funny how things are. And I think that's the old days, good old days compared to, I don't know, you know, they'd probably do a lot more. You know, they'd lock you up probably. I don't give you too many breaks but it's kind of funny how that's kind of house you know difference between 40 years ago 50 years ago 60 years ago what do you think better though like the good are the good old days the good old days I think I like the good old days I mean I got picked up one other time and it was my former I was back home in from college and And he was my gym teacher, Nate Thgrade. And Mr. Blue. And he ended up being a policeman. So when I came home in college, so that was about in seventh grade. So we're talking six, seven and eight years later, where I was home for the weekend. And I was driving and he picked me up and probably had a beer in a car or something. you know he he actually let me go but he picked me up again the same night so he took me down second time and he put me in his office in the police station and we talked for quite a while we let me go too but you know You just can't get away with that. I mean, there's just more rules, regulations, if people find out it's like, whoa, whoa, I think the good old days probably gave you a chance to actually realize things better than you can today. You can actually get a second chance, maybe, and that type of thing. So today is not the best day to ask me about the good old days, just because today is, I would say definitely the good old days, because these days are We're divided, you know, that's what it is. And so it's not as much fun. You know, almost scared to talk. You know, what did I want to play? I was I came here in airplane and I out of the airplane, uh, magazine. I picked up something because I thought it was interesting. It'll probably help me because I want to get in trouble. You know, I don't want to get in trouble. And instead of curious about using this article, it was then they, uh, So curious about using gender neutral language in your everyday life.

Well, I just caught up, you know, some guy just texted me the other day after a speech and gave me really a lot of hell.

Have a friend of yours? I haven't seen him for about 30 years. Well, did he give you hell about? He said I used the word she and he and all this kind of stuff.

You got to fuck off. You know what? I believe of what you said because listen. One of my former wrestlers who is a school teacher right up to campus at the University of Iowa. And he's pretty strong in his beliefs because he grew up in a family that didn't have a dad and he, you know, government took pretty good care of him and also one. He was, he, he just sent me a note. I told him that story. And he, cause, and he told me that, um, well, here's how you can talk and he told me how I can talk. But then when he got done, he says, and then go tell that guy to fuck off. So that's exactly. Well, this is great.

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

You know what? I like when you're saying that, but I like you're saying it, not me, because you know, they're coaching the university. Well, not anymore, but yeah, I mean for a long time, but I like somehow get those ones, those people that you're talking about. to see the light. I really would, I would like, and that's kind of a goal of mine to see the light like that. But I do have my setbacks. The other day, I was having breakfast with my family on a birthday breakfast for one of my grandkids, and we had a big table full of, we have 23 of us, but one family wasn't there, this one here, that one that's with me today, Danny Olste wasn't with me, so he has five of them, so we had 18, and we just had a, breakfast and we had a birthday party and at a restaurant and so I'm gonna go pay the bill and the bill was you know It's not bad it was 135 bucks, but that's 135 bucks for breakfast for you know a nice little restaurant so and I and so I went up there and and You know you have to wear your mask until you get in and sit on an eat and so then I had my I just got up from eating and I had my mask in my hand and I was and I was I was looking down at the Cash register in this the girl that was there said to me she goes and I didn't look at her she I was looking down and reading the bill and she said Put that mask on and I'm looking down and I'm not looking up. I'm not looking up, but I lost my cool And I put my mask on because I had it right there and I was gonna put it on anyway, but I just hadn't put it on yet, so I put it on And I said... who really pissed me off. And she just didn't know what to say. She didn't say a word. Well, she, you know, because it wasn't her place. She was just working there and stuff like that. But, you know, and pretty young gal. And so, and then she gave me the bill and she didn't say anything and I didn't say anything. And I gave him the right tip because it was a different late. So then I finally looked up and I said, I never forget. That's what I said to her. And the funny thing is, I didn't mean to do harm to her, but probably scared to shit out of me. Yeah, I know. So it's because the owner is probably pretty decent friends of my family.

Especially when you're working out every day too. Yeah. And you look because you don't really want to wear a mask when you're working out.

You know, here's another thing, because it's quite along the same line. And I hope I don't get emotional on this one. But so, you know, when I was 15, I'd want to stay championship. My first day championship in wrestling, first year in high school sophomore, because that high school started then. And anyway, long story short, this neighbor kid ended up murdering my sister. And he had walked to school with me a couple of weeks before that and said something to me who I, if I would have communicated, It might have saved her life, you know, just because she probably would have never let the guy into her house.

he just said like boy you got a hot sister you know and and he was kind of my age one year older than me but my sister was four years older than me so he was probably 16 and she was 19 and and she had a boyfriend and she was living in home yet and and so so the funny thing is is I didn't I actually was going to come home and say something to her, but when I got home, I got distracted and I said, oh, it's just boy talk, you know, it's this boy talk. And it was mostly about he just thought my sister was really hot, and that he would like to do something, whether, you know, but he never really said it outright. I just figured something, you know, the boy boys would like to do, you know, but anyway. So, you know, that two weeks later we're on a fishing trip with my mom and dad and my sister's supposed to join us and she doesn't show up because she worked for my dad after she went to college for a year and then she worked for my dad after that as a secretary in the real estate business. So, she didn't show up so we called the neighbor and back in those days, she didn't have cell phones so we had a phone uh... that was outside of cabin that we rented out and out and out and i can date because the date at the cabin we rented for four bucks a night so you know it's just unheard of and that was you know been uh... nineteen sixty four so so we were at a pay for one about a half a block from from the cabin that we were running and we we'll roll the window down and you put the dimer nickel in the phone and you call my dad called the uh... I was in the front, backseat, my mom and dad were in the front, my dad was driving. And he called the neighbor and asked if my sister's car was still in the driveway and he said yes. And she was supposed to be, well, that's 90 miles away, that morning she and show up. So my dad and my mom get really nervous and they tell them to go get break into that house if you know if there's nobody you can't get in break into it or she doesn't answer the door but you know get into that house and call us back so it's you can see the tension in the front seat of the car You know, I can see my mom and dad. We're in the phone rings finally at about 15 minutes later. And all of a sudden, my dad drops the phone. And my mom was going, she was kind of starting to go hysterical. And I don't know what was wrong. And he looked over. I'll never forget this. You know, with me in a 15 year old kid, and I looked at my dad said to her, Diane's not alive. and oh my god you know it's just my mom opened the door of the car she took off running back to the block to the cabin I got out ran after when I when I followed her into the cabin by that time she was already on the floor and she had grabbed her hair and she was pulling her head hitting the wooden floor and she looked up and she had blood all over her forehead and So, my dad then followed in and we packed up real quick and black. Like 10 minutes we left half the stuff then we took off from my hometown and my 90 miles away but within 15 minutes within a half hour of that phone call. I was in the back seat and there was a lot of trauma going on in that front seat and I said to my dad, Dad, I may know something about this. I don't know for sure, but I may. And you know, he overreacted. He slammed the car, the brakes on the car, got out of the car, came around, opened the door, pulled me out, slammed me against the door. What do you mean? You may know something about it. And then I told him the story about the two weeks before that me walking to school with a neighbor kid, and that what he had said. And he just hugged me and threw me back into the car. And we stopped at the next town, which is about 15 miles later, and went into the police station. And then we told the police what had happened as far as a sister daughter getting murdered the night before and we were on our way there. But my kid told me a story that I think if you could help me. as soon as possible. So they called a head to the Waterloo Police Department. The Waterloo Police located. He was at work. Second groceries the next day in a grocery store. And so they and he'd actually admitted right there that he did it. You know after they they got him. But the thing is what's amazing is This guy, then he escaped from prison after about 20. It was only 16. He went, got life in penitentiary. And he escaped. And that pretty much doomed him ever getting out. And then, because he was out for a month before they caught him. And he actually, in the trial, he was so mad about getting sentenced to life in prison that he pointed to the cable family. And on the way out, and he said he was going to kill us all. and so anyway this guy goes to prison and he lives and he dies in prison after he broke out he never really got a chance to ever let him out but here's the thing So it's this about I don't know say it seven eight years ago when he passed away, but we're we got another cabin now it's about 30 miles north of the cabin that was we were in that time and that was a rental cabin that's torn down now and we go right by that place So we're going right by that place. Actually, I've been in my wife had been at our cabin that my mom and dad owned and I inherited it when they passed on. But we were at that Kansas cabin and we were coming home and we were going right by the spot where that pay phone was and where we had learned about her death and as a cell phone call. It's the warden. of the prison he sent. I think it was Indiana. He was Indiana the prison and the warden told me that the guy that murdered your sister just died. The exact same spot where I learned of the murder I was driving by and it's 130, it's about 150 miles from Wales. Actually a lot further than that. So it's like spooky. It's like real spooky. And then what's really amazing is what he said to me, the warden. He said before he died. He was seeing a counselor and a counselor told me this, that he said, you know, I really, he repented. He said, I really shouldn't have. I feel bad about killing Diane Gable. I mean, this is years later, but that he had told, and he had been rehab somewhat, and he goes, and the reason why he said, I know I was going to kill somebody, but he said, because she was such a nice girl.

He said he knew he was gonna kill somebody.

And they told me that. And you know, I cried for an hour. And I got a lot out of me. But, you know, as bad as my dad felt my mom felt. And you know, I felt probably. I kind of got rid of a lot of hatred. when he told me that that he admitted that she was such a nice girl that he shouldn't have done it. And it was, you know, probably not too full for it. He probably did it on his deathbed or something, but he probably had all these guilt, but you know, it helped me too. And it helped me because even though I cried for an hour, and I think that stuff you build up inside just sometimes, you just, you don't know what it's going to take to get it, get it out of you. And I think that really helped me with my situation because you always feel a little guilty because of maybe you could have saved your life. But more than that, it's been something that I based my whole life on too. Just communication. I mean, this is your business communication. I mean, sometimes my wife tells me I'm telling her too much. You know, you don't need to tell me. You know, we don't need to talk about this. I said, yeah, I do. I do. You know, I need to talk about it. It's not just that. It's just anything that there's crops up. I need to go home and I need to have a conversation with somebody that I like and love. and to be able to see whether I'm doing the right thing or I'm not doing the right thing or I'm getting feelings. It's like right now talking to you. I love the conversation and I love what you're saying. Even though I may not feel exactly the same way you do, I love it that you're saying it because you're saying it the way I want to say it. And I probably do behind my back, I probably don't understand public, but I'm probably trying to help some people to and heal some people, or even maybe get them to change, or not feel like, because I've been through so many kids. I just seen what some of the things that you've done with these kids and how you've made big differences. Just like Rico Chaparelli, what you're talking about. Just like Kidney Brad Penworth, who had a twin and he was not going to make it in the life very far. by changing, like for example, Brad was, he needed to stop drinking, you know, for good, you know, I couldn't drink. I mean, right now I can drink a beer, I'm not gonna go crazy, but if he drank a beer or two, he'd go crazy. I'll get in trouble every time. Every time he had a, um, um, gotten in trouble, it was, was alcohol related. And I didn't even know it. What's funny about this kid, Brad Penorth, he, he won a national championship for me as a sophomore, And he got in trouble within a week or two after he got one of the national championship. And it was the first time he ever made the paper. They picked him up for intoxication. Well, you know what? Once they looked him up, He'd already been arrested quite a few times the year before and they'd never even put his name in a paper. But once he became a famous guy, he made the headlines. And so I didn't even know if I had known he'd been getting in trouble, I'd probably been working on him before. But it's one of these things that that it's like who are who are sometimes and but he's he did well he ended up being three-time all-american he got in the national final three times and he won he got beat both times the other ones but but you know it's controversial there's calls could have went his way and he went to become a world silver medalist in the in the world championships and and but you know what he had to do he had to He's one of these guys that he can't drink. So he gave it up and he hasn't had a drink till it. And he hasn't had a drink ever since. And he's in his 50s though. And he's doing really well. Good wife, good kids. You know, here I am. I have a beer and we're probably going to drink a beer here sometime, but you know, but some people can't drink. Yeah.

Well, let me tell you. Going into a senior year, he got in trouble. And I AD called me in. His name was Bump Elliott. We just passed away a couple of years ago. He's a great, great AD. And he said, Gabel, you're winning all these titles. You don't need this kid on your team. He's been in trouble too many times. And I want you to kick him off. He'd only said, kick. I want you to take him off the roster. And right there I just I just froze because I knew this was his only thing and if this is his only thing that's holding together we got to figure something out and I told my athletic director about his history where we come from, he's got a twin brother, his twin brothers, getting any wrestling and he's all kinds of, you know, this and that and I said a few things and I said the one thing in his life that is good is wrestling. I said, do we want to take that out of him? You know, after actually talking to a guy that would listen, he looks at me and he goes, you know, I'll buy that. But let me tell you, this is what we got to do. in-house treatment for 30 days in a hospital. And if you can't do that, and he can't successfully come out, then he's off. And he went in 30 days. He came out and never drank sense. And that was 1988, 1987, her 88. And here it is, 2020. He's got a nice wife, nice kids. And he's doing wellness life. And some good decisions by coach and athletic director.

And that Brad was right with Rico, you know, and Roy Saladrass, another name that's crazy. And these guys were, were Helians, but they could kick butt on the russly mat, but they liked to go down town. And that's when those days, that was the hard days on me because I had to go down town and kick him out of the bars. Well, they actually worn the bar people. that own the bars that I would be coming in at 12 so they would be hiding out the back so let us know and we'll run out of the back door you know so so you know those days they should have probably happened I shouldn't let it go with that far but when you're winning seven eight nine straight national titles you know sometimes you give a kid a break to and some it comes back to haunt you so you know so It became kind of a ritual for me to go leave home about 1130 every night to go down town to Iowa City to walk into bars to see where some of the guys were and try to get them home and you know that was probably not the right way to go about things I should have had them to where I didn't have to do that but you know you just You have went in the big tens every year. You went in the nest those every year. Sometimes you just, you lose control. And it's kind of like how I lost my last matching college. And that's another whole story. But yeah, you win a lot. And sometimes you think you can cut corners.

entire high school career and entire so seven years and that was in scholastic wrestling not freestyle wrestling because I didn't start wrestling freestyle until I'm in college but that's the international style but and I did lose there but but for scholastic wrestling high schools undefeated and then I was undefeated in in college until my last match but you know My coach is, and here I'm going to be, I was going to become a coach. I didn't really know what for sure, but I didn't know anything else, you know, because I was always a team captain team leader and all these kind of things. So I'm going into the national championship and it's like, wow. I'm the show. I mean, I couldn't look at a newspaper because I was on the front page of the Chicago Tribune and you know, the sports pages and it was in it, uh, uh, uh, Evan Stan Allenoi. And, you know, every place I'd go with, you people, you know, it's come up to me and all this kind of stuff. And so I, um, you know, from a coaching point of view, if my coaches had to do it over again, and they actually apologized to be years later, but it was like, nobody thought I was going to lose. except for one guy. One guy actually said I can beat him. But he didn't tell me if I got to tell me. So I didn't take him for granted. I took him for granted. And so I always went through routines, warming up, getting ready, mentally. We weighed in five hours before a match. From then on, you ate and drank a little bit and then focused, focused, rest, focused, focused. I was doing interviews with wide world of sport. right during the national finals and I wasn't the talker like I could talk pretty good now because I learned to talk but at that time off the mad I couldn't talk to anybody and so when they put a mic in front of me and they wanted to know about hey can you just say this say hey I'm Dan Gable come watch me next week on wide world of sport as I finished my career 182 and oh and I had wrestled the match yet and so I I was supposed to say that but you think I could say that Hell no, I couldn't say that. I kept stuttering, not saying it, and they kept redoing it. So finally after about 15 takes, they rolled it out on big cards. And so I took about seven takes with that one. I think I got it done in about 22 takes, but then when I got it done, it wasn't good either. They just finally said, oh, that's good enough. Get out of here. So I turned. I'm on deck. I'm on deck. So they already went through the 1-18, 1-26, 1-34, and I was 1-42 at that time. So 1-34 is just wrestling, and I always warmed up for, you know, a good 45 minutes to an hour. So I hit a quick warm-up and went out in that match, and I didn't realize there was going to somebody that actually thought they could beat me. And even though before I always did the routine, I went through it, but I'll tell you what, you skip once, you're vulnerable. For only time my life that within a minute into the match, I could hear the crowd. A minute into the match, I could feel how I felt, and I was feeling tired and weak. I mean, I never knew how you felt in a rusty match until the match was over. And once it was over, Yeah, sometimes I felt good, but sometimes I felt weak and tired, but I didn't show it because I didn't think about it. I didn't know it, but the one time he didn't prepare, and the guy thinking that he could go with you, and he could You know you you take on everything so you take on way more than just your opponent and So I talked myself into wrestling after a minute one I kept saying I got I got to keep going I got to keep working hard and so I got to early lead just quick to first take down But I kept feeling my entire day was and I kept hearing the crowd. Why do you think you were so tired because I didn't warm up? I was doing talking. I was not focusing on my mask.

I used to be a pretty well even today as you get older you notice how if you don't warm up and you hit something really hard you get you get exhausted. That's probably kind of like that. Usually what I did for warm-ups is probably within a half hour of my match. I would get match heartbeat rate up and go for three or four minutes that way. So not you don't get real tired, but then after that you would probably have a little drink and get ready to go.

Pretty much. Pretty much. stretch in and jogging and then actually wrestling actually wrestling pretty hard and to where you would actually sweating good and then I actually got to the point where if I had a lot of time before my match I would actually go take it on the shower But usually when you were the fourth guy out or something, you just kind of stayed loose, but you didn't really. And then right before your match again, you might get your heart rate up again, because your heart rate didn't really go down below 100, probably. And you need it in a wrestling match is probably going up to 170, 180, you know, stuff like that. But you wanted to have your heart rate up to your match pace heart rate for not seven or eight minutes because that you're going to be not going to recover quickly enough. You still be tired. You want to be tired. So you'd get it up there and spike it up and down for two or three minutes and hit some really good execution of wrestling holds. We do hand fighting a lot of hand fighting. And that hand fighting can really, uh, can get that heart rate up and pushing and shoving and hitting some live techniques where the guy was letting you do it, but you're doing a live pace and you do some sprints and do some tumbling, gymnastics tumbling.

When I got done with the 20 second take of the of the of the of the, uh, And I was the net I had that match to warm up so I I probably had 10 minutes instead of my normal 45 minutes or so But I thought I was still ready and But it was something out of my control actually and it took up took me over but I did talk my way into because I got a head but then I got real far behind I mean I was behind my 6 points and then I got ahead by two or three points and that was right towards in the match and Then there was a flurry Could it win either way, but the referee went his way and that's the way it is I mean it's just It's just that's the calls. Does that haunt you to this day? Oh, of course it haunts me but guess what? I needed that loss. I really did. That loss took me to unbelievable heights that I would have never had without that loss. What's unbelievable is if you ask the guy that beat me Larry Owings. He said if I had to do it over again, I might have lost that match on purpose or not even on purpose just because I didn't know how to handle it. I wanted to be an Olympic champion. I wanted to be a world champion. But when I won that match, there was so much hype. I didn't know how to handle it. He said even broke up my marriage. He was married again. That's what he claimed. He claims. And we probably came home and just didn't know how to You know, you're not supposed to be. It's kind of like with me when going down town that now, you know, I probably shouldn't have been, but my wife is behind us and everything, but I probably shouldn't have stayed at, but sometimes I didn't tell you this, sometimes I stayed at the bar for a little while. And I think came home, but you know, I'll probably shouldn't have stayed at the bar. And there's a lot of times when I was on my way home, that after coming home at 6.30 or 7 o'clock at night, then I had kids at home in a wife and they had dinner and they probably got tired of waiting for me, that they did get tired of waiting for me. They would, go have dinner and then time I get home I'd probably have to walk in the bedroom kiss the kids good night cuz they're already in bed and that was a tough time my life too because the next year we end up losing the 10th championship going for the all-time record again going for the all-time record once you think a guy learned because then you got 10 years later you kind of forget and do the same damn thing but you do it not as an athlete you do it as a coach and about about I think about and in my marriage because my wife I think was pretty upset with me and then I got upset with my wife about things and so we struggled pretty hard and you think you'd learn but sometimes you forget and and that loss was, well, I don't, I don't, I don't forget, yeah, I'd love to have won that match. I would love to win that match, but not how I won it. Because I could have got to call it the end, too, and maybe still won the match could have went over time. But you think the loss was very important.

And pretty much dedicated my life to that moment, as far as how I was going to make it proud, you know, that type of stuff. And, you know, it's pretty amazing that those low light, those low points can bring you out and get you back on track even though, you know, it's hard to, it's hard to say that there was good in it, but you know, one thing I, another thing that I really was scared of my life that when My mom and dad wouldn't make it together. And I started as a pretty young age, and it went all through high school. Because even after my sister was murdered as a tenth grader, it didn't let up in my household. A lot of late night drinking and yelling, and before that, before that tenth grade, it was just mad at each other about something. But then after that it was a lot of it was about that murder and they blame each other and stuff like that and We did move back into the same house Because they never felt they never found the murder weapon was a knife it could have been one of our knives and It was a lot of blood all over our house and and They didn't want to move back in, but I convinced them that we shouldn't move back in. And one of the ways I convinced him was about a month after the murder when we did move back in. So it was probably the second month they were up arguing. And I was in bed and I heard my mom say something that I thought was really stupid. She said, I wish I would have raised her a whore because she didn't give in. She would, she could have gave in. She would still be alive when I heard that. I got up and I came out and our home really hadn't become a home again. It'd been a house. We moved back in it, but it hadn't gone. That her bedroom was like just there. It was just there and it was always door was always closed. And so I looked at him and I said, you know what? I'm tired of this fight and I just heard the conversation that was going on. I am moving out of my bedroom and I'm moving it right now. I'm going into her room and her room is going to become my room and I'm staying there starting right now. So I went in, open the door, went in, closed the door, went to bed, got underneath her covers, went to bed. That room probably hadn't been, nobody been in that room for 30 days, probably 45 days. about ten minutes later, I heard a door, they thought I was sleeping, they looked inside and saw me sleeping in there, but I wasn't sleeping. I don't think I slept that night at all. But that is the turnaround for the Gabel family in that house. We stayed in that house. And I never thought they would stay married. And so that was one of the reasons why besides my sister, I just give them something to really focus on and concentrate. So when you went away, they could go to all these events Hell, my dad, when I won the World Championship, and it's the only time he didn't go to my event that was a major event, my mom and dad, because it was in communist, bulk-sulfiabalgaria, and when I won the World Championship, he was down at the Waterloo Career Paper. with the editor down there and it was it was odd hour and he was waiting for the teletype or the machine to come over and say how I see how I did in that event. It wasn't that easy to find out. So all of a sudden it comes over its type and it was a headline across the the paper said Dan Gable wins world championship. my own man ripped that paper right off that teletite machine and he ran outside and it was early morning and people coming to work and he was running down the streets swinging his that little newspaper yelling hey my kids a world champion my kids a world champion and you know that that kind of stuff is it's just you can't you can't make that kind of stuff up and it's just it's just it's just amazing that that But anyway, so what happened is I found out once I went to college that my mom and dad really liked each other I never knew that because now they only had each other and I wasn't there But they could follow me and they followed me for every and and they they They wrote me every day so I could go to them I'd get mail every day I'd go to the mailbox and I'd have a letter from my mom every day seven days a week, but I was going only 90 miles. And in those letters, She, we used to drink a lot of high sea. And when you take the labels off, you could send seven or eight of them in and they give you a money back. So my mom would send me in in little, she would have a little letter and she'd say, here's your, here's some money from the high sea and how you doing or something like that. And there always be a quarter, a nickel, a dime, you know, that type of stuff in there. So it's, it's pretty amazing. And she did that, I'm, I'm three or four times a week, I would get change in the mail. But you know, not a whole lot. I was getting a full right scholarship. That day, you got 25 bucks a month for whatever you wanted to spend it on from from the school. And then my dad gave me an extra 20 a month. And that was all he was costing him 20 bucks. He did more than that because he bought me a car. Nice little car. And to send me off to college. And, you know, that type of stuff. But, you know, it's pretty amazing that, you know, what When you find out stuff that they really like you, but yet they still need some common person to follow. And I was that guy, you know, when I when I was in when I was in high school, I am I was a state champ as a sophomore, which is the first year of high school. Then I won state champ as a junior, but I was wrestling. I weight was 95 as a sophomore, and 103 as a junior. And college the first weights were 118. And my dad thought I should get me getting bigger, plus it wasn't really, I was pretty skinny. And so my dad says, you know, I want to get you a job this summer going into your senior year, because I, the job you're going to get. You're going to want it because you like working out hard and stuff like this. But this job's going to be a workout all day long. It's going to be with a cement crew. He says, you're going to be hauling bags, 94 pombags, a Portland bank of cement. You're going to be digging and shoveling cement. You're going to be digging holes. You're going to be doing this all this hard work carrying buckets of mud by that thing they call this cement. And so on and so forth, you're going to swing in a sledgehammer. Because you're gonna be dealing with a lot of basements because of my dad with dealing with the house business and So he got me a job when I was 16 years old It was still 16 yet in the summer of my junior year so he got me a job Little did I know Again, it's the old days. What's what's good about the old days? They had to be 18 to get the job It was one of those, you know, remember you had to be a team. And I was 16, but he was a house, my dad was a house builder and he'd always hired this guy to build the basements. And he told the guy wanted me to get a job. And the guy says, well, I can't really put him on the books. So he says, I'll keep him off the books. We'll hire him anyway. But he says, You know, we'll just pay him under the cash on the table. But my dad says, you don't even have to pay him. I'll pay you. So after about three days of work, Because my dad had scared that daylights out of me telling me how hard I'd have to work. I didn't realize there was people that were just putting their hours in. Some of them. And I was working arms and legs around these guys carrying and running and the people kind of looked at me funny for a while, but then they realized I was on a mission. But finally, the owner of the cement company, Martinist and construction Jerry Martin soon was his name. Call my dad after three days and said, Mr. Gable, you're not going to pay your son. We're going to pay your son. We'll just do it under the table as well. We're going to pay him. We're not going to let you pay him. You're not going to have to pay him. He's working everybody under the table. He's getting along with everybody. In fact, it lunches, before we lunch, he always wants to wrestle everybody on the crew. And the first day these guys, they're old timers, but they're big guys. And he's weighing a, you know, he's, he has a wrestle 103. So he probably have to 125 right now. And he's 125 pounds. And he's 250 pound guys. And he can't beat him. He said he's kicking a lot about every one of them. And they love him. And there we have a great time with him. In fact, every all the hard work there's given you all the hard work. In fact, when he moves those 94 pump bags of cement off the truck to where they're supposed to go. That's not enough for him. So they tell him to move those bags again to the other side of the house. So it's just crazy and they're all loving it. And so, you know, we're gonna pay your son. We're gonna pay your son. So, you know, my dad was looking out for me. They looked out for my dad. That's a good old days. The police were looking out for my dad. You know, you just, some, I don't know if we're looking out for many people today. And if we are, it's probably of the like. and you know what we all need to be of the like.

I couldn't, but I gained strength. You know what? I wasn't carrying 94 pombags. I put 3 m on there. So you take 94 times 3 and that's when I was carrying as 125 pomb kids. Yeah, so I was unloaded them because they load them up on me on my arms and I'd carry them over to where they supposed to be. Couldn't pick them up all at one time. So, you know, I was crazy. I was crazy. I was definitely crazy. And I used to run to work sometimes. And it was a couple miles away. And then run home. But guess what? I always had a fight. So we get home about 530. My high school had an open practice for wrestling. From 530 to 630 every night after that work. So I'd go to work all day late, late, late, late, late, late, late, late all day. Then I go to rust and practice for an hour. It's independent rust and practice just open the mat and there's somebody it always show up. I'd always show up and somebody it always show up that I could wrestle. So I was getting all that work eight hours of weight lifting in in a hard type because I would go crazy. I'd run back to get the bags run between things and then I'd go to rust and practice for an hour. So then I go home and eat. I'd go to bed. So I was sleeping by eight o'clock eight thirty every night because he had to get up at six o'clock in the morning. Go to work. But I'll tell you. Major tough. Major tough. And there's a lot of things that you did back in those days that you now know that maybe you can't you shouldn't just ease your ways to not ease your way. Smarter ways to do things that you probably wouldn't take give you some more longevity. Because you know, I've worn out my hips. I mean, I got six hips, you know. I got my own two and I got four others.

Hey, you know what? That's some of the rewards you get. people name cheers yeah people name on beer after you I got a I got a nutrition drink this cable beer comes out it's a brewer brewery one half a block from the Gabel museum in water to Iowa single-speed single-speed brewery guess what guess who owns it though Dave Morgan guess who Dave Morgan is state champion wrestler I didn't know about 30 miles north of what's good beer you'd better be I sampled it. It's good to think I want a bad beer. No, it's it's a good beer. Yeah, it's a good beer. Yeah, it's a good beer. You know what here's the thing when it's been in two contests. You go out to it's the biggest contest two out in Denver somewhere and the first year I didn't get in the ward. So I said, you know, like what are we going to do about that because You know, I don't like a beer out there without an award. You know, I wanted to win in these prizes. And they said, well, you know what, we got the information that the judges gave us. We're going to take that. We're going to make it better. So they made it better. So the next year they went back and they got, they might have got a bronze medal or they might have got one round of place and something. But they went, they survived the cut and went along with. And they felt pretty good to me. And I said, It's not gold. So somebody heard that and they, I liked it. So they come up with a gable gold nutrition drink and it's up a new Lisbon West Cons and there's a former wrestler again Brian Slater who in one of my former wrestlers Barry Davis works up there. used to be the former Wisconsin coach and was a three-time national champion for me. We'll pick silver medals, Olympic silver medals as well. But he works up there and they made a nutrition drink in the last year. It's called Gabel Gold. So I got a Gabel beer. It's a Munich style hell. That's where I won the Munich's. And if you read it on there, what's it say? It says, Gabel, one word can say so much. In our city, few words, if any, resonate with the name Gabel. I can't even read. I got to get my glasses here a little bit better. He says, but in commemoration of his Olympic triumph in Munich, 1972, we've crafted a beer much more appropriate approachable. then adversaries found Dan to be on the mat. He says, it's crisp and cold. We can't think of a more fitting tribute. So Dave Morgan got this beer. People love it. They want to get it outside Iowa, but it only is in Iowa because I found out you can't sell it outside without going through a lot of, so it goes to the border. Now I've snuck it across the border a few times. We got it here. We're in Texas. We snuck it across the border. We hit it.

It's very good. Well, it probably go to another level if, you know, if we would.

We're talking about me, but you know, all my friends when they found out I'm coming down here. They all have got to hold me and they all want to tell me to tell them hi and tell them this tell them that and tell them I'm in their number one fan you know and so you know you're a big deal I just want you to know that you're a big deal and and you know that but it's but it's not like you care as much as like me you know you know I want to be successful and I want to win I want to be do all this great stuff but you that's just part of what I want to do you know it's not a big deal it's just what I want to do and so if people have a beer to celebrate with great now I do have a limit and it's I got a book here too and it says no your limits there's a chapter in that book that's the limit well for me it's still different than most whatever you can think you can limit for me it's 32 ounces. And I usually just say two beers, but these are 12, so I could have two and a half these. But that was back in a few, you feel years ago. I'm getting older. I don't know if I can still do that limit. Because if I look at the times that I've been in trouble with something at all, it's always been a little beer.

A little head a little beer in me, whether it be with a police or whether it be with my wife or whatever. So, you know, so you've got to be sorry.

Well, I owned my own two because I was, you know, had two pretty good ones. But when I was, let's see, when I was 48, well, actually, I went out to run when I was 38. and all of a sudden my hip start hurting. So I ran through my hip for 10 years. If you run far enough, you didn't have a hip pain. The pain of the pain of running. The pain of running, just the hurtness of your, can't breathe, you know, you're running hard. So for 10 years, I did a stupid because I didn't really know what it was and I didn't really pay attention.

Yeah, so finally when I was 48, I jumped out of bed one morning And when I jumped out of bed, I collapsed. And I felt something crunch couldn't get up. It was my last year of coaching, actually. And I didn't know it was going to be my last year of coaching. So I went to the doctor and the doctor, Dr. Marsh, a great doctor, orthopedic surgeon. Actually, he was a surgeon. Actually, he was a, when you're getting an accident, I can't remember the term they, they crisis, not a crisis, but a certain doctor, where they, where you bring him in when there's big accident. And they brought me into his place. And he looked at it and he says, wow. You got a bad hip. Really bad. And you just fractured it. It's just splintered. It's splintered. When you jumped out of bed this morning, it was been so fragile. It's just splintered. And I had been kind of working through the pain for 10 years. So I had to get it fixed during that season. And so when I got it fixed, immediately it felt good, immediately. But then I didn't realize my other one was hurting because that one had the most pain. So it was overtaken the other one, even though the other one was bad. So he says, we got to do the other one. I said, wow. So it took a while, took four, five, six months to heal to get back going. So then they had to wait a little while and then they did the other one. So I, you know, it was made me think a lot. And you know, I don't think that's what got me out of wrestling. I think what got me out of wrestling is what I kind of referred to earlier. The mind. But by that, I mean meant that there was a certain way of life that you have lived. And if it wasn't, if it didn't happen, Like second place was just not acceptable. And so, you know, to me, it was like, I got to get that other. I got to get my life back. And you know what I would back to my mom, not that I'm thinking, because my mom is what got me out of the sport as a wrestler. because she saw me coming home from I was in Iowa City and I came home for and I went to the high school for a workout and when I walked in the house just to have dinner because I was visiting Waterloo, Iowa. I walked in and I sprayed my ankle and practiced over there. at West High in my high school. And so I was limping and my mom looked at me and she said, my kind of you're limping. He said, you know what, you gotta get out of this. We gotta get on with your life. And I was already on with my life a little bit, but I was still contemplating whether I should wrestle again. How old were you then? Well, I had 23 when I won the Olympics. So now it's probably 24. Because wrestling season October 25th, my birthday. So wrestling season probably is the December.

Well, yeah, she was just tired of seeing me being blamed up for 24.

Yeah, but I worked pretty hard.

Yeah, I was the only, you know, high school back in the high school days when I first came there as a sophomore. I loved across the street from the high school. My coach knew that I was a little bit of a fanatic. And so he says, Dan, I live five miles away from West High School. And I'd like to have the doors open into locker room for the for the team, if they want to come early, even during football or even during wrestling, especially. I said, I'm going to give you a key to the locker room. to where you can just come right in from the outside because you can come right across this because I know you want to come right goes I go yeah I want to come in mornings he says not a required practice and I'll get there but I'll probably not come right till towards the end and because it's just on your own running lifting that type stuff and he says I'm going to give you a key to this and this again the good old days you can't do it now but And if you do, you get fired. So he gave me a key school. I walked across the street. I only had to walk a block. And I'd open up the gym door, go in there, and anybody that wanted to come with me. Well, nobody came with me to, when I had first, because it was, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, A bear of a wrestling practice. I'm going to take a drink of this bear, even though I'm probably going to work out yet today. But anyway, so he gave me a key to the school. I opened it up. Nobody there was me. So I for the first maybe 10 days, two weeks of the wrestling season. I was the only guy there. We had a good team, but they were already doing good with one practice. So they didn't want to come into two. So all of a sudden and they didn't know much about me the old timers on the team and they didn't really give me any credit credit because I had nothing I was I was zero on zero in high school But the coach told me that you know that I was gonna make the team he could just tell And that he was gonna give me this key so all of a sudden I had the first dual mate and I win I'm one or no I would excuse me I win the second second one. I win the third one. I win the fourth one. I win the fifth one. I'm going into the, I'm going into my gym. I'm about to six or seven. And all of a sudden, I opened the door and I kind of closed, I'll tell you the key. I can't get the key out a little bit and somebody bumps into my back. I turn around. There's another, there's a, there's a wrestler. And I go, what are you doing? He goes, Well, you know, you've been coming all coach tells us you're here every morning. I didn't think it was worth it, but you haven't lost a match. I think I'm going to join you. That's a good. So then it was all of a sudden three, three, four, five, six. So by the middle season and the season, we had just bought everybody coming in the mornings. not the day of the match or the day before, but like three days money to see Wednesday usually when you could not get ready for the big matches, but it just that's the way people are. You know, it shouldn't take that way, but, but it from a coaching point of view of me, it taught me a lesson. You know, you always have to have a leader in there. Because you got to go for help again. Here my goal for help is. So I have somebody in there besides myself. And that's kind of the way we built the University of Iowa up. We went for help right away because they weren't that good. Iowa State was good. But I thought Iowa was going to be automatically good because they were good. but they didn't know they were good and they never had done good and they'd so they weren't good in their mind and that's what got me out of wrestling my mind so the mind is such a big thing my mind was really hurt more than my body and I didn't really realize it and that's where my mom I think understood it and my wife and people like that they could see that I was kind of going crazy but from too much competition just too much grind and apparently Apparently because here's the thing I get sick towards the end of the season I would get sick For about two weeks straight. I mean kind of sick that you did oh my god, what's wrong with me? There's guy I got to be having cancer or something, you know, but never they can not be beaten yourself up just the mental strain So we go to the net, we go to the big tens, we go to the NASA's and we all of a sudden we're winning and it's a day before the finals and we win the championship the day before or we don't but whenever we won the championship that night when I went to bed on Saturday night or even a Friday night if we won the championship we still had a bunch of guys in the finals. I would wake up the next day healthy. So I've been sick for two weeks. And I can wake up healthy as soon as we won. So it's just a pressure. Well, it's probably, I mean, if you ever, you should watch me How I coached matches sometimes. I went crazy. I never did that as an athlete. You know, I just, I didn't even hardly let the referee raise my hand. I was real just humble and didn't do, I didn't jump for joy, didn't anything. But as a coach, I went crazy. Why do you think that is? Because I couldn't control it. It was somebody else. I knew about me. I knew I was good. And so, but it's somebody else and you just don't. And so when they come through for you, it's just better. It's better than you know you're going to win. Even though you really don't.

coach yeah definitely because of of of of exactly what I've been talking about but let me tell you why I I didn't even like my athletes I loved them but we got into conflicts because I pushed him hard probably and they were going along with it because they had a lot of success too. But there was times there was moments when they looked at me and they put their fist up. There was times when they pushed me and I fell over a bike or something like that. There was times when it wasn't always pretty

No, depending on the guy individually, each guy was different. And depending on how he was doing, depending on how he's living and if he really wanted to be good. But let me go one step further. I could handle them guys. I could handle them because It was my job. I was in a room, a pad of room. And I could do that. And they would go along with me mostly because of the success that people were having. But I know what my mom and dad went through when I wrestled. My mom often didn't stand inside the gym. She often stood outside the gym and looked through the window. I mean, it's a tough as sport that takes the heart out of you sometimes. And it's really tough for a mom or even a dad. And so to me, when I would get into these altercations with my athletes, I could handle it only one reason because I knew they had a mom and dad. And I knew what the mom and dad, how much they meant. Because I knew I'd see, I've seen him, how they yelled in the stands. I saw him, how they went, like, their kid got their hand raised. What it meant to them, the proudness. I saw what it did to my mom and dad. Kept my mom and dad alive and well to the both died. But they were never going to make it, I thought, as in marriage. But once they married, they were married for over 50 years. So, but I never thought there was a kid I thought there for sure. My biggest fear was they're going to get a divorce. Now that was a kid who was junior high in grade school. But so anyway, so these kids, every once in a while when I really get upset with a kid because He had missed three days of practice or something.

Yeah, like Rico went back to him did, but he had a good reason. Yeah, the girlfriend. But anyway, you know, I'm one of these coaches that a little bit, I give a little bit, but but I always the first people I looked at. After a match when the kid won or lost, I looked at, I know what their parents were. If they were there, I'd look at them and the look on their face when their kid won a big match or was just a win. As compared to when they looked on when they lost, Oh my gosh, and it went right back to my mom and dad, too. He just how it how it how it kind of appeared to me, but I coached more for motivational point of view from the parents point of view than I did to kid. Because I knew the kid was going to be a parent someday. He's going to be the same thing. So with the heck, it's pretty amazing. Pretty amazing.

It's still a factor. It hasn't led up. It's hard to I mean when you when you're dead when you know who killed your sister within 30 minutes of finding out that she's murdered and you don't know anything else does just know she was murdered in her house they found her found her dead and You within 30 minutes tell your dad who it was and it comes to be true There's some guilt there But it's the kind of guilt that not gonna hold me back. And anger and anger. But mostly from my dad's, my dad's point of view is anger. Probably more than me. But you felt guilt. I felt more guilt probably. Yeah. My dad had hurt my dad. But, and my mom. But unbelievably.

And he had been a lot of trouble, but mostly just not that kind of trouble.

Yeah, he said he knew he was going to kill somebody. He just didn't know who.

And then he repented at the end, you know, sometime towards the end of his jail time.

I know it, it haunted my mom and dad. I guarantee it. I mean, they just, I'm hoping that they somehow saw some peace there, but for me, I don't think the piece really came to me until he repented. And he said that. But he's saying that meant a lot to me. My mom had never already gone and hopefully they know that and that they can feel it.

You know, I never have. And I don't think that's something that I look at the good only on that kind of stuff. It's kind of like, you know, talking about people that are just being ridiculous. You know, the way I feel, I feel like being ridiculous. And somehow I have to set back and say, how can I get through this without saying that they're ridiculous? And they are. But at the same time, I try to feel, well, I try to have a little feeling, try to have, even though it's difficult. It's difficult, but it's with my sister, it makes a difference today in my life.

not knowing it. I didn't nobody told me that I had six matches at the Olympics and they were nine minutes each unless you're pinned them and I pinned half of them so I pinned three and I decision three and I ended up winning this final score on the three that I didn't pin I beat him 29 and nothing told scores but but it was one of these things that had I known it would have got into my head and I probably would have lost a pointer to or something like that, you know, it's just it's just one of these things that you stay focused and a good coach, well, I had a great coach, Bill Ferrell, Bill Wick, these are all great coaches and as around good people, I had some rustlers. We had three rustlers that were on the Iowa State team and had another rustler that trained with us. So we had 40% of the freestyle rustling team, the Peterson brothers. You know, so, you know, just nobody said, hey, Gabel, you know, realize going into your final match that you run scored up on? Nobody ever said that to me. You know, and some coaches actually point stuff out like that, but you know what? Maybe it's good in some situations depending upon the athlete. Yeah, and you know, it's like you asked a question earlier. Somebody come in late to practice. You know, I had to look and see who did. If I felt a certain way about this guy, I'm just maybe I was just happy he showed up. You know, and you know what, it's to me it's like Once you got there at practice, it's what you did during the time of practice, not whether you were here on time, or left early, or all that kind of stuff. What you got accomplished. And if you got accomplished, an unbelievable, a lot that I felt good about. Well, and again, it's bad to save that. You have different standards. But you know, sometimes isn't that part of being a coach though? I think it is because I look at another kid. This is blows people's minds here about part of being a coach. So I these banic brothers who were really good. Some of my first early recruits. They were twins. And all of a sudden, one of them just you could tell he couldn't take a two-hour practice and by that I mean not physically but he got bored he was bored at a practice and almost to the point where he was getting nothing it was going backwards once He only could do a certain style of practice. He could most like, if you play pickup basketball, throw the basketball out there, play pickup, just go, go, go, no time period, no referees, no nothing. So if he come to practice, if you roll the basketball out there, roll the head gear out there, put his roll the mouthpiece, put it in and say, Russell, he could go. He'd go and he'd go. But if you stopped and had an instruction, And if you stopped and had verbal talk, and if you stopped and had other things, he just couldn't get that. So how does a coach figure out how to get the most out of this guy? But without hurting the team, because that's kind of like an wrestling. It's a bear and practice. And how do you let one guy have another like do something different in the rest? Well, if you're smart, you get the 29 other guys to agree that this is what should be done. So me, I'm the 30th guy. I had coaches. I talked to you. I had coach named Jay Robinson, who was from a different local mistake. He was on our team. You had a lot of different philosophies. We talked about it and we decided to do this. Let's talk to the team without Lou there and make sure that they understand where we're thinking they understand how we think and then we'll see what the responses can we maybe holding back a little bit from a standpoint I'm not maybe letting them come to all the practice you know because every practice is broke down most of them or broke down in a certain things. Hard wrestling, conditioning, talk, fire up, stuff you have to work on. And he wasn't good on that listening. He wasn't good on on the drilling. He was good on live wrestling. That's Brussels. And so that was what the last hour. So I talked to the team, talked to coaches and I talked to the team and the team listened to what we said. We're not trying to cut corners here guys. We want to be better as a team. Do you think this wrestler Lou would benefit more by not coming to the first part of practice because you know I'm as better than I do because your his friends more than I am even. I said you think he could just come for that second hour and that he would be good or if not better. they voted 29 to all that he should only come for the second hour practice because because he could that first hour was a waste of time for him and noticed when he would had to come to the first hour his second hour wasn't as good we had noticed that and so they voted easy decision and he two time national champ third place finish here Olympic champ 1984 the team made a good decision.

That's how you make decisions. Sometimes you get the team on your side.

Well, I already had a lot of good as a leader. Yeah, I already had that from the YMCA from Wildman Coaches from all my even on academics. I wasn't a good student to took a wrestling coach to, you know, algebra class. That was the eligible teacher to get me to become a good student. But, you know, it was one of these things.

I tell you what, I wasn't going to be as good as I turned out to be because unless it went the way it did. I spent four years as an assistant. Two years that I was state as a grad assistant and didn't really do anything but train there for the world's analytics. But then once I got to University of Iowa, The head coach wasn't Gary Kurtlemeyer, and he was his first year as a head coach as the head coach had been assisted, but he hired me as the assistant. But he had been a head coach before in high school. And he had been running Iowa's program even though he wasn't the head coach. It was the old timer. Dave McCusky was there and he was kind of just, just kind of settling out his years. And so Gary had actually acted as the head coach. So he had a lot of, uh, clout, he had a lot of knowledge and he'd been a head coach. And so he brought me in and he taught me unbelievable stuff. But here's what's unbelievable about what he taught me right away and that we started practices. And he'd let me run a couple practices. So he'd run a couple, then I'd run a couple, then he'd run a couple, I'd run two weeks after we'd been in the season and started. He calls me, because we lived, we had the same office. He comes over and he said, down he goes, you know, Gabel, been watching you at practice. You're better in practice than I am with the kids. You're going to run all the practices. You're going to do all the training of the athletes. You're going to do the conversation. You're going to do what you want to do to prepare them because you're better than that than I am. Persia ever has a head coach and a college and he gave me within two weeks. I just got there back from the Olympics and he gave me full-time coaching in the wrestling room. But guess what? And then he goes, but you know what? I've already noticed outside the practice room. Not quite as good as you are in the practice room. You know, you got to learn to talk a little more. I'm going to send you to the clubs in town. You know, the little places that people meet for lunch. I'm going to send you to all the fraternities and all the sororities and all the dorms. We're going to have speeches. You're going to give speeches to all those kids on campus. He says, and then he says, I'm going to teach you how to recruit. You're going to go with me when we go, we crewed. I'm going to teach you all these different things. I'm going to teach you how to fundraise. I'm going to teach you how to talk outside the wrestling room. What all these things that are important. And he says, you know, I don't probably going to coach too long. I can't want to move up in administration. So if things go well here for the next three or four years, you'll probably move up and you can move in. If things go well. Well, exactly four years. And we went from a team that was top 20, maybe 15 to 20. We went to probably maybe 7th or 8th the first year that we went to 4th or 5th. Then we won the Big Tens. You know, for first time a long time. Third year, we won the Nationals, too. And then fourth year, we won the Nationals, and he got out, he turned it over to me. So, you know, he stayed true to his form, but he was unbelievable. Here's the story. I'm an Iowa State. I'm trading for the Olympics. And it's December. Olympics are going to be in the summer. And I'm defending World Champion and I'm predicted, you know, I'm one of the top seven favorite of when the gold medal in the Olympics for the America. And he knows he's moving up to be a head coach and he put his eyesight on me. So he had this guy that lived in Iowa City, but he had been away from Iowa City and working out in New York and he had been working with my Olympic coach. My Olympic coach that I was going to have in a, because the Olympic coach had a company that was a wrestling company, mats and products and shoes and all this kind of stuff. And he said, He happens to be an Iowa City guy. He's out there in New York, Oregon, and I'm working with him a little bit about you getting a job over an in the Ames Iowa. So he went to work for Dr. Harold Nichols Business, who was the head coach of Ames, who's my coach, and he went to work there because he had a good reputation, and he did a good job on that type of business. But University of Iowa, Gary Kurtlemeyer, same over as a spy. to follow me to see how good I was, but mostly to see how they could land me over at the University of Iowa. So he was over there the whole time. And there's all these things that were going on. they were telling me don't you know you can come over and they talk to me and I said really didn't want to make a decision now because I want to win the Olympics and all this kind of stuff I don't want to be bothered by coaching right now so so this is fine take your time so all of a sudden he's getting reports though because this guy comes in and watches practice and so on and so forth And I don't know this, though. And nobody knows it. And it aims. So it's kind of interesting. So they get me to, he's got to report back home. So all of a sudden he says he calls me, he says, you know, what do you think? I said, what? You said I didn't have to know until after the Olympics. And he goes, well, just give me an inclin. I really don't know. And so he says, okay. I want to call you back to old but you know go ahead just whatever you're doing he waited like three days called me back and told me to take it or leave it and I had no idea I didn't thought about it well little did I know and he was getting reports every day about me and so I was getting good reports but little did I know that this guy was also and the guy was the head coach was working with my mom and dad oh no not from their point of view, but visits, visits, visits, and guess what? All my friends were getting visits from these guys. Phone calls, visits. They were doing their homework. Because when they called me and said, take it or leave it, I said, I can't tell you. They said, well, you're going to take it or leave it. You got to know about a moral. So guess what? I do. I call my mom a dad. And I call my dad my dad I said that he put this pressure on me so I have to take it by tomorrow What what should I do dad he kind of has a taste and he goes take it I said take it put mom on the phone I Said mom in this position and she goes yeah, I know what it is I go you know she goes take it I said No, I'm I'll call you later. So I call my friends and I call my friends and they all said take it. He got a hole in my head. I had no idea what was going on. So the next day I called and took and the next day I I had no choice. I need to talk about it. And so I thought I was being an idiot. Not taking it because everybody told me to take it. So I took it. And then coach Nichols found out about it. He got upset and he came up because I was visiting home that weekend in Wanderley, Iowa. And so he said, had you sign anything? I said no. He said, well, I think I'm a sign of thing. Just turn it down. Well, I had already committed verbally. So I took it. But once I didn't what I didn't realize is, and I said, I'll be back. I'll be back next year. You know, there's no way I'm going to stay over there. But what I forgot, and I didn't understand, it's just like me with my teams that I was the kind of the leaders on the teams, really like the kids on the teams. And I had an effect on them. They had effect on me. They helped me, I don't know, drink beer, maybe. But you know, it's one of these things that that once you once you realize something and you don't really know what to do you just kind of go for help again and when I went for help I told them because I was getting ready for the Olympics I told them okay I'll take it but yet I didn't really think so anyway so I go to the first day of practice that I will and I actually liked it I mean I liked the kids I liked them And that's what you don't really realize. You don't really realize how you're going to fit in to get there. And, and I said after like three or four practices, I said, you guys are great. You guys are good. Here's good. I've been around state championship high school teams. I've been around college team. I've been around in the summer. I go to these Olympic training camps. And I said, you guys are really good. But they didn't know it. They didn't know it. They just were good, but didn't know it whereas all these other guys were good and knew it. So the head coach, Colonel Meyer, he goes to me. He goes, what do you think? What kind of plan should we be on? This is after I committed and I came over and we were coaching for about a month and we were in the same office and he goes, what kind of plan should we be on? I said, I think we I think he actually said this to me. He goes, I think we should make a four year plan. And by the end of the fourth year that we should be winning a big tenon national titles. I looked at him. I said, are you nuts? We're going to win this year. I said, I've been around good wrestling. These guys are good. He goes, well, there's more to it than just being a good wrestler.

Yeah, but not then not the coach. People didn't know it's going to be a good coach. Yeah, but still you understand. People tell me today that when I came over as an athlete, they said, we never thought you could be a good coach. People tell me that today. And they said, we sure found out wrong, didn't we? So you got to remember that's a beginning of my coaching.

You know, I agree totally. But you remember when I talked about the key to the door and then all of a sudden, I had to be successful before others, even though I didn't really have any credentials at that time. So as an athlete, even that sophomore year, I had one of things. So I couldn't see why they didn't jump on board. I did have credentials as an athlete coming into coaching. But what'd you write down? I'm going to take the store here. So the story is, so we're now at practice. I'm running practice. Kurtle Myers in there with me. He's running practice with me, but he's the head, but he's being my assistant in the room. And we're only there for a couple. We've only been there for a week or two. And a security guy comes in a practice. And when he comes in a practice, he called me over or he called Kurtle my over and then they called me over and they talked to us. And he said that though there's been a gas leak in the pipe in the building and we are going around telling everybody this that's here working out that they have the right to know this and that they can leave or should leave if they want to. And I said, well, I look at Gary and I said, we better get the heck out of here because we don't want to get blown up or anything. You know, Gas Lake, he said, I said, is it really dangerous? He goes, no danger. We've already fixed the problem. It was just a leak. We had a valve. We shot it off. It's okay, but they're making us do this. So you got to choice. Stay or go. And I looked at Kirby. We're not going. We're not going. We're staying. But you still got to ask, you got to tell your athletes they can go if they want. I said, no, they won't leave. Could have might have looked at me like funny because he'd been around. He'd know that you guys. But we had recruited eight new athletes. But they were recruited with me as the assistant and me in the conversation. So we went pull the team apart and said guys, here's the situation. Now we've been only in two or three weeks into practice. Gassley, we don't have the right to keep you here if you want to leave. No danger. Security guy. No danger, right? No danger. Coaches. But we can tell you that if they want to leave, they can leave. I said okay. Okay guys nobody's gonna leave right? The only eight athletes left were the freshmen that we had recruited. The other 24 got up walked and I yelled guys where are you going? Coach we get a chance to get out of practice. See, that's what I was dealing with that I didn't understand as a coach. Never in my life had I been around not non-championship teams. Whether it be high school or college or the Olympic type states. So this was new to me. And Colonel Meyer looked at me like he was a teaching moment for me. He was a teaching moment. And it was kind of like those guys that didn't show up until I proved that I won. So once we started winning a little bit more, once some of these freshmen started making varsity and all that kind of stuff, these guys, they would have stayed. Some of them, not all of them. and uh... you know it's it's a process and the curdlemire goes to me coach he says you know gable we're on a like i said we're on a four-year plan to win the nation and i looked at him and i said we'll win it this year and he said think you better you know that's a great goal but it's gonna take a while so first year we had one champ and we hadn't had a champ for a while but we didn't win we got fifth I think do you think the issue is the fact that these athletes that had already been there had been accustomed to a lower level absolutely absolutely yeah and they really hadn't had this success and you know in wrestling practice is hard

Well said, actually, because, you know, I'm an everyday guy. Every day. I don't miss a day. Seven days or seven days a week. The only time I've ever missed my, as if I was in the hospital on my back and it couldn't move and then I was probably trying to crawl out and do pushups or something. If I had my hips getting replaced or something, or I'd have a rope or I'd pull myself up. And this day to this day, you still do that? I have seven days a week. But here's a thing. I'm the master in recovery. So what you mentioned is what I'm good at. I'm obviously I work extremely hard on I have and do and will and I won't let up on that but I also know how to adjust a little bit. Now when science didn't tell me and I just went with what science was and now it's different and I'm sorry because I messed up but I went with the rules at that time but There's something that changes, and that's better. I'll go with that. And so, to me, it's like, I'm... I know if I'm really sore, I know I can warm up long enough, where I will not be sore. Might take an extra hour. So, I'm unbelievably sore. I'm gonna warm up for an extra hour. Two hours of warm up. Well, whatever it is, whatever it takes to where I feel good. I'm gonna get rid of my soreness. I also know that when practices over, Mentally thinking about the practice and physically recovering has a lot to do with what you do and I spend at least with my athletes and myself at least an hour at least after practice is over recovering before leaving the building what do you do for covering mostly heat mostly ice mostly massage you're a big sonic on a guy is well I love it I do it every day I do it every day in them lately I haven't been able to do it for about a week because I'm the place I'm adding florida right now they're putting a new one in so that it's kind of being constructed what temperature do you want to do with that whatever it is as long as it's hot but I really like I like some water over the rocks and and I like probably a minimum 170 but I could go to 20 I could do I mean I can do whatever you know I've been in son is it I accidentally walk in one at three thirty one time three hundred thirty well accidentally but because it was it was one of these What burners and I didn't then have a and I didn't look at the thing and I jumped in her it almost caught me on fire, but I turn around and got out and I let it go down to 260 before I got into it two six, but I but I what I don't that's roast beef no, I know so I don't Where are your relax? Where you like it? It depends on how much time I have but I'm I'm comfortable with 170. I'm comfortable 180 190 I'm comfortable if it's really, you know, if I put more water on it, I could go in 165 or something, but I do not want to walk in the sun and have to work to sweat.

weren't I learned it from a guy that I trained with from my hometown named Bob buzzer who was about six or seven years older than me, who was a great wrestler at Iowa State. He was on the Olympic team too. He was a local kid, but you know, at that time he probably, you know, he showed me, he brought, he took me into one of them and showed me how, you know, I think we've already used it for a lot, losing weight then, but, but over time, eventually, we learned how to use it for recovery. You know, because once you go down with practice and you go to heat right away, if you want to, you don't have to do anything. You're just sweating. You don't have to do anything. And it actually takes out the lactic acid in your muscles from a hard workout and makes you recover quicker. But you don't just combine that with heat alone. Now you've got to go to cold. So you go to cold shower. You go to cold shower and then probably go back into the heat again and you go back into cold and I'm telling you all you know after we get down practice and Olympic training a lot of times I would come back I'd be the last guy to leave practice and I'd get there after everybody been done eating and everything and I'd go eat and I'd be about an hour after I'd eat and I'd say guys I feel pretty good I'm gonna go off for hard running but I want to go with me cable we're exhausted And even the guys that won the gold medals with me and stuff like that, they just couldn't figure out how I could recover so quick. But none of them were there setting with me that hour and recovery in the hot in the cold back in the hot back in the cold, getting a massage, you know, they might have been getting a massage, but they were, you know, they probably skipped some of that suffering, you know, well, Actually, the suffering was probably whoever's getting beat up on the mat. You know, but then it seems to me like if you have that temperature right in that humidity right, you know, it's just unbelievable relaxing. And it's pro. It's proven the pudding right now that you there's you can look it up and they got all these studies before it was all anecdotal. There's no anecdotal anymore. Right. It's proof. They do studies. So.

Yes, yes. I do those. I love doom and lakes. I have a minute. I have a minute. All every place I go in my life except right now at the Florida condo, they don't have a son. They got one there. It's just not put together yet, but it's going to be put together. They, every place I go, I have an airline. That's a bike that's good and I have, because my joints, it's too hard to run. I do more damage. Just, you gotta be smart. You know, as you get an older, and I gotta work out room, and I usually always have asanas. I got a fishing cabin up in Northeast Iowa. I got a sauna, a wood burning sauna, right on the river. And I got an air dine there and I got weights and I got a chin and bar So I go to my other minutes I go to Minnesota cabin I got a little garage by the lake. That's got a it's got an air dine. It's got a set of weights I got a big lake there to jump in I got a hot sauna right on the lake wood burner I Don't go anywhere without it I do a lot of homework before I travel, you know I do have a swim pool here. This one I'm this morning. I'm gonna work out when I leave here. I'd love to jump in a hot sauna or steam, but they don't have it because it's shut down right now. I'm just these two days, but I already checked it out. But I can handle it. I'll just, you know, do a little more working. But every day. Every day. Seven days a week. Seven days a week.

Well, I do it to where I don't overdo it anymore. I may have overdone it at times when I didn't know better, or that was my philosophy, and sometimes you got overdue things, but you really don't want to do something that's going to hurt you. So, you know, if I had to do it all over again, I'd have that same attitude, but I'd be more educated. And I would do things differently. In fact, I coached differently at the end of my career as I did the beginning of my career. Some of these days that I took these kids up on on Carverhawk, Irina, and we had some about a quarter mile long at the top of the Irina, and it's concrete, and I ran the hell out of them. And I ran the stairs, 44 steps, concrete, Then I did it again the next day. I wouldn't do it the next day anymore. If I worked you really hard in something, I would give you more recovery time to make sure that in the long run you're going to be healthier. I wouldn't cut the learning time. I wouldn't cut down the actual effort when I do it. But I would give you the more science to make sure you can last. Look, longevity. But you only go with what you know. And you know what you know what, right now, if you stay educated, things change a lot. I'd be a lot healthier now with my knees. If the doctors didn't take all the cartilage out of my knees because one year, they said there was no function in cartilage. And I said, but what's the recovery time? Well, if we take the cartilage out, It won't be very long. You think about six weeks. But if we tie it back down, this was in 1973. If you took the cartilage out of your knees, well, yeah.

Back in 1973. There was no function at the University of Iowa hospitals. There was no function yet. So the next year. That's what they thought. Yeah, so they didn't they while they just didn't know. Yeah. So in 1974 I go back with the other knee and I go away. He's going to take this and out to because it hadn't affected me yet. And this was why you're still competing. No, I'm done. I'm done. So I quit and I stopped after 72. Oh, basically.

Well, I don't know. They weren't too bad because I just got, you know, taking your cartilage out. Well, they took them out one side, but, but not Monusk is just a cartilage. Well, that's what I meant, meniscus. That's what I meant. Okay, the meniscus. They took the meniscus out, but they can also tie it down. When it's a tear, if you tie it down, it repairs itself, but it takes instead of six weeks or four weeks, it takes three months to four months to heal. And I asked them and they told me that it was no difference. They didn't know. So I said, we'll give me the simplest. Well, let's take it out. So the next year. I had no man's kiss at all on the right side on my outside of my knee. So, so then they said, okay, I came in the next year and I go, I'll just take it out like because I want to get out of here and I want to get healthy quick. They go well. We can tie that down in the long run. Be a lot better. I go, wait a minute. I was here a year ago. Well, we just discovered that was a new discovery this year. Oh, boy. I said, whoa. Okay. I'll do that. But, but it's so, so, you know, it's just a matter of when you do it to the tie-down work. Yeah. My left knee is pretty good. My right knee's hurt me right now. I got a baker's sister behind her right now. And, but it's not that bad, but it causes me to have you ever thought about getting the resurfaced? You know, I don't know yet. I'm not, it's not that bad.

I haven't jumped. You know, when when I jumped out of bed and I couldn't walk anymore, well, I'm not there yet with my knees. And even a doctor told me that about a year ago. The same doctor did my hips. I went in to because I was a little concerned and he goes, you know, I remember when you came in, you're not there yet. He said you can wait a little longer. I think there might be science every year is a little better. Yeah. Little shapes. So yeah, a longer you can wait to better. Especially model science as long as long as you don't aren't in extreme pain. Right. And I can handle it.

I think so. You think so? I think I got those on my shoulders before. The shoulders bad too. Didn't I tell you I had 22 surgeries?

No, I had six hips and that for so I had four new hips. Yeah, but Dr. said last year my hips have been in for eight ten years now. The second set. Yeah, and he said they look really good. Oh, that's nice. But you know, but I kept wrestling and pounding on the first set and I did I adjusted smarter. So even after the hips you're running and doing everything else you were I did yeah for the first for the next eight years and then you had to get them replaced yeah again yeah well they're better with those two right y'all yeah different product yeah definitely different products all that

No, no. I mean, if you add them up, you know, you got, I got five, six cuts on my knees. I, you know, I have six hip, four hips. I have two or three lip surgeries. You know what was I didn't wear a mouthpiece. All I had to wear is mouthpiece that would never had a mouth. But that was you know, and I finally after about five years of coaching they said when I think you should wear a mouthpiece. You know, and so then nobody gets hurt anymore. Yeah. You know, especially when when it really came out was when the blood was being bad or something. I can't remember what that was, but they because you get you bite your tongue a lot. Right. So the mouthpiece is really prevent a lot of that stuff. So in wrestling, head gear and mouthpiece are really critical.

I don't know if you may love it, but you know what it's. I don't have it.

Yeah, so I always wore head gear with the way you hear. It does. It does. Yeah, and a little bit they stick out once it went.

A lot of guys do. Well, they think it's your mark your trademark, but you know what some girls don't like them.

Yeah, my wife doesn't mind it.

No, you're right. You're right. No, I think a head gear for wrestling is pretty damn good. And you can't wear them. And you can't wear a head gear in the Olympic wrestling. Well, unless you get a doctor's order.

I was just a gore. I'm not the beginning, you know, I just tough guy, you know, just throw the ball out there and turn me loose. In fact, in college, that's kind of how we trained. We had enough good athletes, so we could just brush each other and we didn't have to have structure and all that kind of stuff. And I'll tell you, once you started watching, once you got a little bit and watched a practice from the Russians and the coaches, you realized they were technicals crazy. When did you first see that? I don't think I saw it until after I was done with college. Can you believe that? Yeah. I mean, I was around him a little bit. I went to the 1970 World Championships in Canada. They were in current in Canada. And I was like a spy again. I was the spy this time. because I was an alternate to Bobby Douglas. And so what I did was all these foreign countries that worked out I went to the practice as we watched. And they thought I was a person that was like a keeper there. They didn't know that there's a little guy spying on you. I kind of learned that from a guy spying on me, from hiring me at Iowa, you know, later on, I guess too. But you know, so I would follow this guy and I'd follow the teams around and watch him. And they were really, really technically oriented, strategically oriented. They didn't do a lot of as much conditioning as we did. And that type of stuff. So they were very, very much science, very much, a lot of science. And I don't think I really, again, I lost the wings That really helped me become more of a guy that pay attention to details, pay attention to details, coaching details, you know, don't get caught up on this. And I also kind of says, maybe I got to get better too. Maybe I got to get better. So when I went to these world championships that summer, in Canada, I really followed a lot of the top wrestlers. And sometimes I follow them right after matches, right into their locker rooms or right back where their team was staying and they just thought I was a guy that was there. They didn't really know that I was doing spying. And I was just surprised that how things were different a lot than how I was myself trained. I know that when I lost that match, I didn't know how to finish a match. Even though I didn't know how to start it on that one, because I wasn't ready. But I knew that I didn't know how to strategically finish a match. And so, what do you mean by that? Well, I was ahead, and I could have just kind of maybe stalled it out, but I didn't know how to stall. So there's actually an art installing and even though you even know you don't like the word When I when I when I was in the finals of the world and the Olympics I could have probably scored more But you're taking a risk because the only way you're gonna lose they had rules You could actually lose Are you you know, you could get beat, but you could actually lose and win and stuff like that. There's just it's not so much that way now, but back when then back when I wrestled there were so you know, I needed to not put myself in any danger at the end of a match to make sure I would win. So it's kind of like, okay, how do you tie a guy up where he can't move? You don't necessarily have to shoot underneath him. You don't have to do a holds on him. You don't have to risk for scoring, but you've got to tie him up. It's kind of like learn defense. I didn't really have much of a defense until I got beat by owings and then I realized that I got to learn how to finish and I got to have a better defense and how to score from a defense. because I was just offensive minded and I learned by watching these Russians that they have really good defenses and so that really shuts their area down for scoring on them and especially during the end of the match because if you're going to end and you're going to win a match pretty easily but if you take risk you could lose why do I do that you know so so I actually The last minute or two of the match in my world final match. It was in Bulgaria. It was outside in a soccer stadium. There was 12,000 Bulgarians rooting for the Bulgarian. And I just tied him up for a minute to win the match easily. I was a head eight to three. And so I didn't take any risk. And I won solid. So in the Olympic finals, the only way he could beat me, he could actually, he could take me down and still beat me. But only he could beat me. He had to pin me to beat me. And so when I'm up in the last minute or two, I just kind of tidy up and stayed with him and didn't worry about too much for me scoring. So there's strategy that I didn't really know at the beginning. And the technique part too. So, you know, in wrestling, you can shoot, you know, you don't know how to do moves from one side. But this is what's crazy about wrestling. You could have 10 moves. But if you did the same moves from the other side of the body, you got 20 moves. So you definitely need to know how to score from both sides of the body. And you could be better on one side. But if you're only on one side, what happens if a guy comes out and he's all a one side of rustler, just the side that you're not good at, you're in trouble. So, rustlers, you know, we have to be aware of that. And you have to, like I shoot a high cross really good to one side. I have a high cross. The other side, not quite as good. But I have a single lady on the other side that's really good. You know, that type of thing. I have a fireman carry to this side and I have a 21 foot sweep to this side. So I got a balance of how I wrestle to pet because you just don't know what you're coming up against and you never know what you're going to be in a fullerie to be able to score.

They were already good. They had their sports schools back in the day, and they had the right people in their sport. Anybody can wrestle in America and anybody could wrestle in Russia, but chances are you were actually hand-picked to be for that sport. That's how it was at the beginning. And it's not quite as much that way now, but I did see that everyone was pretty much, they looked like. You know, there was a few that kind of broke that wave and showed that they can also go the other way too. But what I noticed was they had a lot of the same moves, everybody. And they all had the same stance. And you could kind of prepare for them. Once you, if you prepare for a Russian, you hear what you do. Boom, boom, boom, boom. with prepare for America and you don't know what you're getting, which makes it a little harder to prepare, but you might not be as good. You might not be as good because they are damn good, because they have their best athletes in the right sports. And sometimes we don't have that. We sometimes I just chose to be honest with them, Rusty was my best sport. Even though I get other sports till 10th grade, I did swimming until 7th grade, did baseball, football, all through 7th, 8th and 9th grade, along with wrestling. Play basketball even at the Y, you know, in some events. They hand-picked people and put them in their best, what they can do best at. So that's why they're talented. They're talented.

They were technical as hell. And by that I mean, they hit They would hit solid repetitions of live action with one side and not the other. So they would do a lot of this. They might go up and they might perform a live action move 12 times in three minutes. Whereas if we were going one on one live, both guys going tough, Why not nobody might not hit a move because we're going tough. They, you know, had it's called it's called drilling, but it's called live drilling. They did a lot more live drilling and they knew how to do that better than we did. We have picked it up pretty damn well now though.

I think so.

You don't structure, they have more structure in their system. That's just the way it is. You walk in their house and if you talk, the government's listening. Back in the day, I'm talking about the Congress.

Yeah. I mean, while they're wanting to listen to us.

I don't. I don't like to say much because I don't want to get people. I like everybody. But I certainly don't want to have that kind of scare tactics.

You know, I just did a thing on this this week. with the government. Because in 1972, we had the Munich attack. The Arabs and the Israelis. And so he killed a bunch of people. And they had no security at the Olympics. But then they had opened the door for security. And we continued the Olympics though. I was already done. But we continued the Olympics and it finished them off. But then in 1980, we boycotted to go into Russia. even 1980 Olympics were in Moscow and the 1980 US team did not go to the Olympics none of us and because we we wanted them to get the hell out of Afghanistan. So the government used us sporting people as pawns a little bit. So then in 1984 we hosted the Olympics. I was the coach I was the coach in 82, but I didn't get to go. And I had a hell of a team that we were going to go with that Russian win. But in 1984, they didn't come and 12 other countries didn't come up most of them all communist. And so you know what? What good did that do? And this week, I just did an editorial, I did a column and told him it really didn't do any good because we're thinking about boycott and China. Now, everybody's got their opinion, but I think it's showed from 1884 what good did to do? I think we can do good. And so even though, and the only sentence that I said, that that really said that I wasn't just sports crazy was I said if safety is of concern that we don't go. But I mean, I said, real safety, that's the word I used, real safety, not just presumed, because we've already shown it before. It was more of a pawn that you could use it as a tool, you know, try to get your way in the government. And so I said that, well, it came out about a week ago and it made some pretty good news, but they took that sentence out about safety. you believe it so it's why they do that that was the most important word that I that sentence I had I kind of hidden in there and I figured so it wouldn't be a big deal but they took that sentence.

My my daughter's doing for me I don't pay attention to it.

Yeah, I'll probably have to do that because I haven't had the reaction yet.

It's crazy. No, it's unbelievable. And I think it had, you know, it goes back to that government control, like, you know, a lot too, I think, you know, just for sure. The coming, you know, you know, it's just, because there are tools, shathletes are a tool. They felt that sport shows your power. Yes. You know, and that's the power of the country, you know, just how dominant you are. You know, so that, you know, it's crazy. So in fact, I, there was a movie that I was just in by chance, about a little over a year ago, it's called the last champion. And it's by Glenn Whithrell.

No, it's a film. It's actual film and it just got kind of, but it went, it's been on Google. It's been, it's been around, but it's a little bit, it's got a little bit of a, it's about a guy that that was a champion wrestler. And they brought me in at the end just because somebody looked at the rustling and said it wasn't very good. And so they said, can you come in and look and see what we can do to help the rustling part of it? So I went, I flew out to, I don't remember where I flew out to, but I think it was very, no Dallas, actually. Actually, I flew into Dallas and they shot it there. at a high school or an auditorium, and I watched the wrestling, and yeah, it needed cleaned up. And so we cleaned up the wrestling. But then the guy, when I was there, he said, why don't we make this guy, because he's, he got kicked out of the Olympics after him, one of my, because steroids in America, and why don't we make him, you're, when are your kids? And you're doing the announcing, and you guys will meet again, and So it's a redemption story, and it's really good actually. And it's been out for a lot of people who really liked it. And he's in negotiation now, to have overseas rights and all this kind of stuff. Glenn, with Rollis. I think he's got the last champion up there. Yes, yeah, that's the name of the movie, but it's about exactly that and how a guy comes home small little town in the United States and I'm not sure it's on the Pacific coast somewhere like maybe Washington I think it was where he came home and he The town hadn't seen him for years because his mom died so he come back to seller house and we comes back to seller house believe it or not, the wrestling coach dies and they want him to stay to be the coach. So he actually stays and beats the coach and gets in a conflicts and all of a sudden he comes through with his conflict and makes it right. But it's a really good movie and it's about exactly that. It's just because in our sport or any sport. There's just book out and I couldn't, but I don't know what the name of the book was, but it said like overseas in these places like because it takes you out of poverty, it takes you out of being nothing to somebody they say that like give me whatever and the statistics were like unbelievable that how many people would say they would take a pill that would win them the right to win a gold medal in the Olympics. But yet a year within a year after you won those gold medal, you died. And they had a statistical thing on it. And it was like, most people still take the damn pill. Wow. But I think it's the where you actually took the poll. It was again, it was this poll in this area of the world that probably needs help.

Well, it didn't go to me at all. Like I said, I had to pay my dad at a pay 500 bucks or meet a Russell in the Olympics. But you know, like, I'm a kind of guy again. A little bit different to me, man. You're a pretty hard core on this stuff. But for me, it's like, I do what I look over time how I can do well. And so, you know, it's like, it's like, I've been hired with Asics for how many years. I said, 1978, so, 22 and 21 and 43 years. And I've been having shoes with him for 35 years and still selling shoes. I just signed another four-year contract with him. And I'm hoping to go another four years after that. And so, but at the beginning I didn't get anything you know and so and I and I started and I signed my first my coach job as 13,000 a year you know and so what's funny about that is That wasn't going to make it for me because I got married. I don't handle any money. I don't like to get caught in that metal. It drives me crazy. Got enough of your shoes. So my wife said, well, I don't know if we can pay these bills on this new house that we're living in. And so I remember my dad when I said my went to the YMCA, I remember I got a job down there and my dad said, I'm going to start you some kind of a plan when you get your first job. And I was 10 years old. And so I went to my dad, and when I was 29, and I said, Dad, I said, we're hurting for money a little bit, but didn't you tell me that you started to be some kind of a plan in my life? When I was young, he goes, yeah, I did. I go, I was earning money in that plan. Dad, I'm 29, I've been, I actually have 20, 28, 27, 28, first year head coach. I went to the bottom of the house. I married, probably got maybe one kid, and I said, And he said, I'll call you back. So he calls me back in about 15 minutes. He said, yeah, I just pulled out the latest, what they sent me. He said, I, I shouldn't have this sent to you anyway. No, I'm because I, you know, I just never turned, it's in your name and I just get it to me. because when you made it up, you were 10 years old. All they did was start taking money out of your paper, pay my checks on the YMCA, then you went to work for me, and then you went to work for Martin's in construction, and then went to work for Wheeler Lumber Company, and all those years, and then you went to work for the University of Iowa. Or Iowa State as a graduate assistant, then you went to work for the University of Iowa. And so I said, well, is there any money in it? And so it's been, it was about 19 years of accumulating what they could take out of that to put in a retirement plan. And this is 1977. That's a long time ago. And so the figure he gave me was a lot of money to me. It was $250,000. That's a lot of money. And I just looked at my, I said, thanks dad, that's all I need to know. I mean, I don't know, I'm good. Don't even worry about it. Just needed that. I could get by with what was going to happen. But I knew I had this money. But again, my dad, he took, you know, he helped me, you know, and that's what is so important and so valuable for me is that I had so many good things that that happened to me even though you can't say a murder is a good thing but you turn them into somehow not good things but for betterment you turn that guilt in that anger into something amazing. So, you know, it's just like, it's just like right now, you know, it's over all these years. I've been working for A6 for, you know, I got a bear. We're drinking beer called Gabel. You know, it's, I got an nutrition gold.

Yes, you can. Got the shoes. Yeah.

It's had no more that way. It goes to people like you, though. No, I'm honest because you're talking one way and a lot of people are listening. And a lot of people here. And some people aren't educated on this stuff.

Okay.

And I think we both are actually on the same page. I think the difference is like For me, it's like I've kind of had this opportunities over time. It's not like great opportunities, but I just take this one and I take this one and instead of really getting compensated upfront by what you're talking about, I'm able to, because I've stayed And it's hard to do that sometimes. I mean, it's hard to go from an Olympic athlete to automatically be in a great coach or be in a, you go to work in some other business. I mean, you just don't see what it shines, but I've been able to do that. And so it's little easier. In fact, right now,

They're working on it, I think, a little bit. They should. And the NCAA, too, right? They should.

even though I don't say it.

Right. So what I want to say to the athletes is, let's make our own breaks. Let's don't depend on luck. Let's work extra hard. Let's do this. Because you got to do both. Yes. It's got to do both. And otherwise you won't be. And they've already done both a lot. But it doesn't stop. Even though you get a little bit gold medal. You still got it. I mean, you're pretty young usually. I mean, it can athletes not get a win Olympic gold medal unless you got a different kind of the ancient Olympics or something, you know, with the old timers, but, uh, and then that's not the valuable one.

I don't know, I think we've had some in the 40s that wrestled, but barely. And one, I think a 41 or two or some. That's incredible. Yeah, it's just the average age when I was there was 27, you know, back in 72. So I don't know exactly. That makes sense. Yeah. But no, no, that's good. You know, so that's why, you know, it's like me here. I'm selling a shoes. I'm selling it. I got a cable beer. I got it. I'm glad that you're doing all these things.

I know, but, but what what I'm saying is I have to do it. Yeah. I've got to keep doing it. System happens. I don't mind working. I like it and it helps our sport, you know, maybe not the bear drinking, but the celebrate, maybe. But, you know, it's just like the videos, the cassettes, you know, they sell at human kinetic publishers, you know, they sell at championship video, you know, all these places in this guy. making a movie right now, you know, I just they sent me a contract and I looked at the contract and I'm out of tell you. Ooh, it's a little scary. You know, it's not much there for me, but you know, but you know, it's like maybe I don't know yet, because I didn't really know how to read a 30 page contract yet. So, you know, maybe you're enhancing me a little bit here. Maybe get my price up a little bit.

We've done three hours already. Yeah. Well, we're just starting. And I just get, I mean, these guys over here, they don't want to work overtime. I'm, you know, it's like I said, I'm the first, the first to arrive, last to leave. That's how, yeah, and the hardest working guy there. But that doesn't mean everybody is. That doesn't mean everybody else and I retell you that I didn't I let I'm probably the only coach in the country let the guy come half a practice But the team made it I think you understood the unique psychology that one individual Well, you need you need to know your subjects. Yeah need to know your subject That's wrestling and then you need to know your subjects and that's your wrestlers And obviously you do a good job and a great job with your experience here. I don't know if you call it a podcast or not. Yeah, that's what I call it. But you do a lot of work and you've worked your way here. And so you know, that's how people are, I'm just, I'm amazed that all these people that are just, are listening.

You didn't have notes. I had notes. I hadn't had a note. I don't see a note over there.

Well, I, you know, it's one of the hardest definitely. I mean, if you can go through one of my practices, you're going to be a pretty good person. I mean, it's dirty tough. It's pretty tough. But I mean, it goes back to, I mean, it's like my high school coach, you know, you know, it's like he had a drink for us. It was called Burley juice because his name was Bob says, but we called him Burley Bob, not to his face. But he had Gatorade. Gatorade just came out back in those years. And it was a powder form then. But it wasn't that good yet. And so we didn't really like drinking it. But he Mountain Dew just came out in 64, 1964, to that kind of mountain Dew that's kind of there today and he mixed it. He'd make his Gatorade and then he'd put a can of mountain Dew in there and wow did it taste good. Of course he didn't know we were slipping a couple other cans of mountain Dew and when he wasn't looking so was a little bit more mountain Dew but you know it's just one of these things that you learn over the years and you know I've been strict as hell at times by that I mean I I wouldn't drink a pop. I wouldn't drink a soda. I wouldn't I would only perfect at the beginning of my career. But as I got older and as I got better at what I did, I started, I couldn't drink a lot and do. I couldn't, even more time I got to them before they lent me games. Hey, I'm, I'd drink a beer after, you know, after a hard workout. You know, I might drink a beer. You know, that type of stuff. And I might drink an interest drink before I did. I used to drink new tremendous called, but you know, now it's a gable goal, but But you know, it's like you adjust, but your mind is going to tell you whether what you can do and how good you are. And the mind also tells you when to hell to get out, you know, or your mom tells you when to hell to get out. And, but she's looking at my mind and I would not be here. You know, if I hadn't stepped out in 1997, I was on the road for I'd be dead. But I figured I'd make four more years, but I'm 24 years now. Just too much of the road. Just too much nervousness. Just nervous all the time. You know, you know, you just too hyper. I mean, you know, you got to settle down at a certain point and if you want to live, you know, want to live well.

Yeah I think I think it was a success you know just getting used to it and when if you didn't have success people were like I can remember when I lost the 10th championship in a row. The article in the paper they were taking people's you know comments and it said Actually, no, this was after I lost to Owings in 1980, our 19 up back in 1970 Nationals. After 181 wins and lost my, the Wayne Register had, you know, had little comments. And one guy said in there, you just ain't guided anymore. You'll never do it. You'll never do anything in wrestling.

Guess what? And it had the guy's name on there. And guess what? The guy got a get well card. I'm sorry to hear your sick from my mom in the mail that week. That's how I've lived my life.

Thank you.