Robin Reed … He Liked It Rough
Some time in the 1920s, Reed traveled to Ames, Iowa, to seek a spot on the Iowa State College squad, which was coached by Hugo Otopalik. Reed was impressed by the quality of wrestlers, both amateur and professional, that were being produced in the Midwest and wanted to test the waters for himself. He hitchhiked all the way to Ames to face the fine college men of Iowa.
According to sources, Reed showed up at the Iowa State practice room unannounced, and in scraggly attire. He sought out the coach and asked if he could try out for the team. Otopalik sized him up and expressed doubt that he could make the squad.
Angered by the coach’s statement, Reed said he would like to wrestle the members of the team when they arrived for practice. Otopalik agreed – and Reed reportedly defeated every member of the varsity squad, and all by pin! When the stunned coach saw what Reed was capable of, he tried to make amends and offer him a spot on the team. But Reed was no longer interested, and stalked out of the room.
Returning to the West Coast, Reed went on a tear. There was no official organized college national tournament at the time, but while attending Oregon Agricultural College (now known as Oregon State University), he was undefeated in all sorts of local and national competition. He won national AAU freestyle titles in 1921, 1922 and 1924. Entering the Pacific Northwest Olympic trials in 1924, he ripped through the field, winning championships in four different weight classes – 135, 147, 160 and 174 pounds!
He made the U.S. Olympic team, in the 134-pound class with no difficulty. On the long ocean voyage en route to the Olympic Games in Paris, he worked out with every member of the United States team, except Russell Vis, the 145-pounder. Vis was also a fierce competitor with a long string of victories and titles, and the two mat warriors avoided each other, for whatever reason. But Reed punished the other members of the team with his feared wristlock maneuver. It is accepted as a matter of fact that he could pin both the 191-pounder and the heavyweight, and yet both of those men won gold medals in Paris!
“Robin Reed had a real mean streak. There was never any doubt that he would just as soon break your elbow as put you on your back,” said lightweight champion Earl Conrad in 1990. “He was really something, just a fierce, fierce wrestler who enjoyed beating up and pinning his foes.”

Bill Koll … Master of The Mental Game
After the 1948 college season, Koll sailed through the final Olympic Trials, made the team at 145, and was voted the O.W.. His physical, punishing style of wrestling was known far and wide, and he was the most feared wrestlers of his generation. His swooping double-leg takedown was nearly impossible to stop, and he would elevate his foe and slam him hard to the mat, often dazing his opponent, and some times knocking him senseless.
“Bill’s philosophy was simple,” said Bill Nelson, also a three-time NCAA champion at ISTC and a 1948 Olympian. “If you were willing to go out on the mat with him then you were going to have to pay the price. He prepared himself better mentally than any wrestler. I don’t think he was ever satisfied with himself unless he pinned his opponent.”
“He had very powerful hips, and hip action is the key to the whole thing,” said teammate Bob Siddens. “But he also had a fierce attitude. He could be nasty on the mat, though he was a really sweet guy off the mat. I can still remember he wore saddle shoes in those days, and I would actually see him skipping from class to class. Honestly!”
But Bill Koll transformed himself when it came time to wrestle.
“He was a gentleman off the mat, but it was a different story on the mat,” said Siddens. “Slamming was allowed in his era, and they put a rule in that if your knee touched at the same time as your foe came down, you could slam. Well, I can remember clear as a bell this one time Bill slammed a foe to the mat so hard the fellow was nearly unconscious. Bill shook him when he was on top, so it looked like the guy was trying to escape, and the referee called a pin. The referee raised Bill’s hand, but the poor guy just laid on the mat. They had to carry him off.
“They changed the slam rule after that; they changed it because of Bill Koll.”

Dan Hodge … Terrifying Power
With the Olympic Games behind him and a silver medal in his pocket, Hodge entered his senior year at the University of Oklahoma. He soon made history by being placed on the cover of Sports Illustrated on April 1, 1957. To this day, he is the only amateur wrestler to ever make the cover of the nation’s most respected sports journal. On the mat, he resumed right where he left off as a junior, pinning foe after foe. At one point, he had 22 straight pins, setting an NCAA record that stood for 14 years, until Dan Gable pinned 25 in a row for Iowa State University.
Hodge had pinned his way through the NCAA tournament as a junior and was determined to do it again as a senior. But he had to settle for an 8-0 win in the semifinals over Oregon State’s John Dustin. Several times, Hodge had legal pinning holds on Dustin, but the referee made him break the hold when Dustin screamed in agony. Hodge ended the season with his third NCAA title and closed out at 16-0, with 15 pins. Dustin went on to become a high-ranking official with the AAU and ran the wrestling venue at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. Decades later, Dustin recalled the match with Hodge.
“I didn’t want to complain,” he said with a faint smile, “but Hodge was breaking me up. He was so strong that every time he grabbed you, he hurt you. I was a pretty strong fellow too, but Hodge was simply in a different class from everyone else when it came to strength.”
His legendary strength was the subject of stories from coast to coast. Dan claimed he was born with double tendons in his fingers, giving him a raw snapping power that normal men can only dream of. “It’s a gift from God,” declared the Sooner legend, on a number of occasions.
“Dan Hodge was as strong as nine acres of garlic,” said Grady Peninger, a fellow Oklahoma matman who coached Michigan State University to the NCAA team title in 1967. “The tales about him crushing apples with his hands and bending the handles of a pair of pliers are certainly not over-exaggerated. Pound for pound, he is the strongest wrestler I have ever witnessed.”
After completing his collegiate career with a 46-0 record and 36 pins (for a pinning percentage of .736), Hodge decided to try the other popular combative sport, boxing. He entered the Kansas Golden Gloves tournament in the heavyweight division and scored three quick wins, two by knockout. Suddenly, he was on his way to boxing fame, as well. After a long string of victories, he entered the National Golden Gloves tournament, the nation’s pre-eminent amateur boxing event in New York City. He powered his way to the finals. There, in Madison Square Garden, he ran into the defending national champion, Fred Hood, a seasoned boxer who was twenty pounds heavier than Hodge.
Fighting before a huge crowd in the storied arena, Hodge was knocked down in the first round. Leaping to his feet, Hodge tore after the champion. He knocked Hood down near the end of the first round and twice more in the second. Hood gained his feet the second time, but was wobbly and hurt. The referee stopped the fight and Dan Hodge was suddenly a national champion in both boxing and wrestling.

Terry McCann … Small Body, Huge Heart
The 1960 Olympic wrestling competition was held on mats beneath the vaults of the Basilica of Maxentius, who was Emperor of Rome from 303 to 313 A.D. There, in the shadows of the Roman Coliseum, 336 freestyle wrestlers from 54 nations fought for medals. America came away with its best showing in 28 years by winning three gold medals!
Shelby Wilson and Doug Blubaugh made their hometown of Ponca City, Oklahoma, very proud by winning at 147.5 and 160.5, respectively. And McCann claimed the gold medal at 125.5 pounds…but not without some very anxious moments. He started off with two decisions (Sweden and Panama) and a pin (Switzerland). In the fourth round, he lost to Tauno Jaskari of Finland in a huge surprise.
“We were wrestling outdoors and it rained in Rome the day of that match,” said McCann. “They cancelled all the outdoor matches and I went up to my room to sleep. About 8 p.m., someone was shaking me, saying to wake up, I had to go wrestle. By the time I got to the arena, the Finn was already up on the mat ready to go. I always needed a good 30 minutes to warm up and get myself prepared but I had no time at all. I went out there ice cold.”
The scores weren’t shown back then during the match itself, but McCann felt he had won. When the referee raised the Finn’s hand, the American was devastated. With three more matches left to go, against the toughest part of the draw, his gold-medal dream was in serious jeopardy. Blubaugh was extremely concerned about McCann’s mental state after the loss. When McCann left the arena, Blubaugh decided to follow him.
“I just hung in the shadows and trailed him,” said Blubaugh 44 years later. “I knew he didn’t want to talk to anyone. He was really depressed. He was considered our best hope for a gold medal and he felt like he had let everyone down…his family, friends and teammates, and himself. I thought he was almost suicidal. He finally stopped on a bridge over the Tiber River, looking down into the water. I just came up and put a hand on his shoulder and said, ‘We have a tough day tomorrow, Terry, we should go back.’ ”
The teammates returned to the Olympic Village that night and a rejuvenated McCann took the mat the next day, September 6, with a vengeance. A tough Russian named Michail Shakhov was first on the agenda. The two had tied in 1958 but this time McCann overwhelmed Shakhov, pinning him in the first period! That evening, he scored back-to-back decisions over the only two remaining competitors, Tadeusz Trojanowski of Poland and Najdet Zalev of Bulgaria to secure the gold medal. Zalev took the silver medal and Trojanowski the bronze.

Bobby Douglas … Champion at All Levels
Bobby’s father worked in the mines and did some boxing on the side. Severely injured in a car accident, his mother used alcohol to subdue the pain. It was a tough ghetto life and when he was just three years old Bobby suffered the horrifying experience of seeing his mother beaten and raped. A few years later, he was sent to live with his grandparents in Blaine, Ohio, just across the river from West Virginia. His grandfather, a huge man at six foot five inches and 240 pounds, also was a mine worker… and a part-time wrestler.
His grandfather filled Bobby’s head with stories of a mythical ancestor named Ash who wrestled in an African tribe named the Nuba. His grandfather also taught the young Douglas how to wrestle, and how to exercise in order to make himself strong and tough. They were lessons for a lifetime.
“There is kind of a cosmic connection between wrestling and life,” Douglas is quoted as saying by writer David W. Zang. “You wrestle out of the womb, you struggle when you’re dying. Every day is somewhat of a wrestling match, in one way or another.”
Douglas selected West Liberty State, a small college located in West Liberty, Virginia, as the place where he would continue his education, both on and off the mat. In 1962, he won the national NAIA title at 130 pounds. He took second the next year, thereby qualifying for the NCAA championships at Kent State. There, he lost a close match in the finals to Oklahoma’s two-time NCAA champion, senior Mickey Martin. But he caught the eye of Myron Roderick, head coach at Oklahoma State, and soon after transferred to the Stillwater campus with the long tradition of championships on the mat. There was no redshirt rule in the 1960s and he was forced to skip an entire season for transferring schools.
In his senior year, 1965, Douglas was cruising along undefeated and ranked No. 1 in the nation. He captured the Big Eight championship at 147 pounds with an easy win over Veryl Long of Iowa State, and was a huge favorite to win his first NCAA title, in the tournament at Laramie, Wyoming.
But while wrestling Dan Divito of Southern Illinois-Carbondale in the semifinals, Douglas slammed his head hard onto the floor off the mat and was knocked out. He was revived and managed to win the match but suffered a concussion and had to withdraw from the tournament. Iowa State’s Long wound up as the nation’s 147-pound NCAA champion, with Douglas sitting on the sidelines.
Douglas won a silver medal at the 1966 World Championships at 138.5 and was considered a top candidate for a gold medal in the 1968 Olympics. His teammates thought so much of him that he was voted captain of the team. But he was hit by a variety of distractions — ranging from an infant son who got deathly sick and was fighting for his life, to a possible boycott of the Games by black Americans, to an intense case of food poisoning. Then, Douglas suffered two injures in his opening match with Iran, and was forced to withdraw. It was a devastating blow to the Ohio native who many thought was on track to a gold or silver medal.
“The loss of Bobby Douglas was a real tragedy,” said Tommy Evans, freestyle coach. “He was our captain, our leader, hardest worker, most respected man, a heck of a fine gentleman and a real help to me.”

Rick Sanders … A Maverick Who Excelled
Sanders’ trademark was his ability to shock everyone, from coaches to foes to the fans, with unorthodox training and unorthodox moves on the mat. He loved to find himself in a predicament and then work his way out of it.
“Surprise delighted Sanders,” wrote David W. Zang. “He learned not to just squirm out of trouble, but to turn it into stunning reversals of fortune. He concocted imaginative, unprovable theories. Don Behm, later one of Sanders’s fiercest rivals but closest friends, remembers in particular Sanders’ “contraction and expansion theory,” a belief that his hips worked in tandem through a countervailing tendency to shrink and enlarge.”
Sanders won a bronze medal in the World Championships in 1966 at 114.5, and moved up to a silver medal in 1967, the highest placing for the American team. In 1969, competing in Mar del Plata, Spain, he became the first American wrestler to ever win a gold medal in the World Championships. Competing at 114.5 pounds, he pinned his first four foes and scored a 7-4 triumph over Mohammad Ghrbani of Iran in the finals. Fred Fozzard, also of Oregon, earned the second gold medal later in the same tournament, at 180.5.
He also made two Olympic teams, winning silver medals in both 1968 and 1972. He posted records of 5-1 in Mexico City (1968) and 6-1 in Munich (1972), losing close matches to a Japanese wrestler both times. Of his combined eleven Olympic wins, nine of them came by fall. He won a gold medal at the Pan-American Games of 1967.
Through all his success, Sanders was considered a maverick of the first order… an athlete who always seemed on or near the edge. He wore his hair long before it was fashionable, and sported a beard. He liked to pose for photos with beads around his neck. Stories of his escapades are legendary. He was accused of smoking marijuana, hitchhiking naked down an interstate highway and various other stunts. He once boarded a 747 jet and proceeded to run up and down the aisle in his sweat clothes, trying to cut weight.
But there was also another side to Sanders. He loved to talk wrestling and often gave free clinics for youth, anywhere he could find them assembled. Wrestling was his life. It was, his older sister explained once, “in his soul.” He recognized that he was marching to the beat of a different drummer than the rest, and reveled in it.
“Sure, our lifestyles are different, and so are our wrestling styles,” he said about comparisons between himself and Dan Gable at the Munich Olympics. “Most Americans don’t have style. Me, I’m a cosmopolite. I can wrestle like a Japanese, a Rumanian or a Russian. I used to work hard all the time. But as you get
older, you don’t work as hard.”

Dan Gable … Obsession and Domination
Even his old foes from the Soviet Union were amazed by Gable, according to a very popular Soviet training book, “Wrestling Is A Man’s Game.”
“Gable astounded us with his inexhaustible energy and at the same time with his perfect technique. We were used to recognizing a great master by his filigree technique, precision and expediency of action. Gable refuted all these notions. Out on the mat he cascaded on an opponent, a mass of pushes and pulls. Beginning one element, he would drop it unfinished and launch another one, then a third and so on….then a tirednesss would envelop his opponent as if a shroud. That’s when Gable would get up steam. Without giving his opponent a minute’s respite, he would wear him out and finally win.”
Gable was a driven athlete — to the point of obsession, say those how knew him best. He was already highly-motivated when his older sister, Diane, was brutally murdered in 1963, after Dan’s sophomore year in high school. Rather than allow his parents to sell the house to escape the trauma, he moved into his sister’s room. He began training with a fanatical edge, often working out late at night, and two or three times a day. He pushed training companions to the breaking point, then left them gasping in exhaustion as he searched for a fresh partner. His workouts became legendary in sports circles across the nation, transcending the sport itself.
“I think courage has many faces,” wrote famous sportscaster Frank Gifford in his book Courage. “Dan Gable’s single-minded assault on a dream set as a teenager is, to me, heroic. To dedicate one’s mind, body and heart to an almost unreachable goal every day of every year from adolescence through high school, college and two years further requires an extraordinary intensity of purpose and discipline.”
It was a combination of the Gable work ethic, dedication and determination that astounded people.
“Anyone who has never been on the mat with Dan just doesn’t know what he was like,” said Jim Duschen, a very powerful 220-pounder who was captain of the Iowa State team when Gable was a sophomore and made the 1971 World team. “You could not tire him out. I saw him go through three or four men in a workout, good wrestlers, and simply just wear them to a frazzle.
“He was in a class by himself, both mentally and physically. He could probably get himself up mentally better than anyone ever has. It’s the same ability that he passed on to his Iowa teams for about 25 years.”

Wade Schalles … Mr. Excitement
Two words that became synonymous with the name Schalles were “pinning” and “excitement.” Many wrestling buffs consider him the most exciting wrestler ever, and the most dangerous wrestler to ever step on a mat
“There are three men who epitomize Pennsylvania wrestling – Mike Caruso, Stan Dziedzic and Wade Schalles,” said John Purnell, owner of Brute wrestling products and a long-time observer of the Pennsylvania wrestling scene. “Wade’s style of wrestling and ability to pin no matter what the score was brought excitement to our state and the entire sport. He was captivating to watch. He is a true and enduring legend in the sport.”
“Wade developed a gutsy, unorthodox, no-one-can-coach style that was fun to watch,” said Norm Pavlovcsik, one of the nation’s leading wrestling historians. “He was a showman, and the mat was his stage. His legend continued to grow because he could talk the talk and walk the walk.”
But there was more to it, said Pavlovcsik.
“He also had the greatest hips you’re ever going to find,” he said. “In the down position, he could get away with no hand control, stand up and reach back, and then throw his opponent straight to his back. He was as close to a Rick Sanders as anyone you’re ever going to see.”
His Clarion State record was 156-5-2, with a stunning 106 pins — the most in Division I history. By the time he had wrapped up his collegiate career, he was recognized alongside Bill Koll, Dan Hodge and Dan Gable as one of the greatest pinners in college history.
Always eager to take on new challenges, Schalles tried his hand at various styles of wrestling and eventually won national titles in folkstyle, freestyle, sombo (Russian judo) and in judo. In 1975, he won the national sombo title at 180 pounds by defeating legendary judo star and fourth-degree black belt Hayward Nishioka via submission in a wild finals match.
Nishioka scored first with a dramatic body scissors and arm lock that had Wade in serious trouble. With the crowd shouting in excitement, Schalles reversed the situation and caught Nishioka in the same punishing move. Moments later, the judo star submitted!

Dave and Mark Schultz … Iron Sharpens Iron
It was on the campus in Norman that Dave met a woman destined to play a huge role in his development off the mat. His affection for Nancy caused him to reassess his life and to settle down. But first she would need to correct her first impression of him.
In a Sports Illustrated article entitled “Brothers and Brawlers,” by Craig Neff, she related that she first saw “her future husband in a physical ed class in the spring of their junior year, 1981.
“‘It was hot out, but he’d show up wearing a parka and his Russian fur hat and sunglasses,’ she said. ‘He’d just stand at the back of the class and never say anything. I thought he was weird.’”
If not weird, he was certainly different, in many respects, from the average Sooner student. All the while Dave was wrestling in college, his true love was the international style. He simply could not get enough, or learn quickly enough. He entered just about any freestyle tournament that was available. The tougher the competition, the more interested Dave Schultz became.
He had found a great workout partner at home. Mark Schultz (right) began his athletic career as a gymnast, and was top ranked in the state for a period of time. But he always had a warrior’s spirit locked inside him. When he and Dave got into an argument once, they decided to go out in back to settle the issue. Mark, bigger and stronger, was confident of a quick victory. Instead, Dave took him down and controlled him easily, providing a painful lesson in the value of wrestling as a means of self-defense. Mark said he was so humiliated that he slept in the car overnight, but he was hooked on wrestling as a form of martial art.
The youngest Schultz got off to a slow start in wrestling, losing his first six matches in a row. But then he caught on. He won the California state title as a senior, and signed up at UCLA with Dave. And, like Dave, he transferred to Oklahoma when the Bruins cut the sport. He was more attuned to the collegiate style than Dave, and met with tremendous success. His power and pure athletic ability, coupled with a warrior’s heart, were simply too much to be denied.
He won the NCAA championship at 167 pounds in 1981 with a stunning revenge victory over Iowa star Mike DeAnna, a brilliant wrestler. DeAnna had defeated Schultz in the dual meet by a 14-8 score several weeks before the NCAA meet, but in the Nationals, Schultz was simply too powerful and too determined for the talented Hawkeye and posted an upset 10-4 triumph.
Mark moved up a weight the following season, forcing a showdown with two-time 177-pound NCAA champion Ed Banach, also of Iowa. What transpired is one of the greatest three-match series in college history. Both men would eventually become three-time NCAA champions and Olympic champions.

John Smith … Six Times King of the World
John made the OSU line-up as a freshman, but didn’t place in the NCAAs. However, he was second as a sophomore in 1985 at 134 pounds, losing in the finals 7-4 to Wisconsin’s Jim Jordan. Disappointed with his performance, John decided to red-shirt the next year and change his style of wrestling. He adopted Jordan’s style of constant motion, and then developed his own unique low style of shooting. The transformation was almost immediate. He captured his first U.S. national freestyle title in 1986 and then won a gold medal at the Goodwill Games.
Returning to college competition after a year off, the “new” John Smith was nearly unbeatable. He won his second Big Eight crown in 1987 and his first NCAA championship. He breezed through the 134-pound field and blistered Gil Sanchez in the finals, 18-4.
He then turned his attention to world competition. He claimed a gold medal at the Pan-American Games championships in Indianapolis, then made the 1987 World team.
Journeying to Clermont-Ferrand, France, Smith shocked the unsuspecting global wrestling community by winning the gold medal at 136.5 pounds in the World Championships! He won his first six matches by scores of 9-1, a pin in 3:51, 6-2, 16-3, 10-2 and 15-2. His only close match came in the finals, where he defeated Khazer Isaev of the Soviet Union, the defending world champion, 5-4. At 22 years and 20 days of age, he was the second youngest American to ever win a world title, just four months shy of Lee Kemp’s record.
The next season was even more amazing. John won his second NCAA title at 134, beating Iowa’s tough Joe Melchiore in the finals, 9-2, and closing out his college career with a 90-match win streak, at that time the second longest streak in collegiate history.
In 1988, Smith came back with his first Olympic title, winning the gold medal at 136.5 pounds. He won all seven matches, including a 4-0 finals victory over Stephan Sarkisian of Armenia.
“Right now, I’m still kind of stunned,” he admitted afterwards. “It’s better than the world championship. A gold medal has been a dream of mine since I started wrestling in the first or second grade.”