By Andy Hamilton, Special to W.I.N.

The tidal wave of elation took Mark Perry Jr. to his knees, swept him around the mat twice and carried him through two sections of high-fiving fans to the people he said made it all possible.

It wasn’t easy for his family nearly eight years ago to let Perry leave for a prep school almost 1,400 miles from home even though they all knew it was probably the best path to his top goal.

It certainly wasn’t painless for the first family of Oklahoma State wrestling two years later when Perry stunned followers of the sport by signing with arch-rival Iowa.

It definitely wasn’t possible for those closest to him to hold back tears of euphoria when Perry came wading through a sea of congratulatory fans to get to his mother, father, brother and sister after his stunning 4-3 victory against Oklahoma State’s Johny Hendricks in the 165-pound NCAA final.

“They were the first people I needed to see,” Perry said. “They’ve given up a lot. They let me go (to Blair Academy) when I was 15 years old so I could reach this goal and I could never give enough back in a lifetime to let them know how much this means to me.”

To Perry, a 22-year-old who never seems short for words, winning the national title meant more than he could explain. It had been prominent in his thoughts since he watched the 1991 NCAA meet in Iowa City and determined then and there that he would win a championship one day.

“Think about doing something every day since you were 6 years old and then finally doing it,” said Perry, who lost to Hendricks in the 2005 finals and placed third at 174 in 2006. “Then since you hit about 15 thinking about it for hours at a time, and then since you were in college thinking about it probably more than you should — pretty much the whole day. That’s all I think about — winning this tournament.”

The Iowa junior won the tournament with an ending fit for Hollywood.

Perry had been winless against Hendricks in his first seven tries dating back to the their meeting in the 2002 Junior National freestyle finals. He held leads in previous bouts, but hadn’t been able to hold off the two-time NCAA champ at the end.

“He is the best competitor I have ever faced … by far,” Perry said. “I’ve struggled with him more than anybody. I’ve wrestled other kids where I haven’t beaten them, but I wasn’t in the same mind frame in certain matches against him mentally and he’s taken me out of them. He is freakishly strong and he really wrestles the old Iowa style to a T. He goes hard and he goes hard for seven minutes.”

Perry had never been able to match that intensity for a full bout against Hendricks. Really, he had never been in a position of comfort. And for six minutes, it looked as if the Oklahoma State senior would end his career with a 57-match winning streak, a perfect record against Perry and become just the fourth Cowboy to reach the All-American stand four times with three NCAA titles.

Hendricks seemed to take control of the match with a third-period reversal to put the first points on the board after he rode Perry for the duration of the second period.

In the past, Perry said the match would’ve been over at that point. But something inside him “snapped” six weeks earlier after a loss to Michigan’s Eric Tannenbaum that forced Perry, Iowa coach Tom Brands and assistant Dan Gable to take inventory. They came to several conclusions — that Perry needed to stop altering his style against the top wrestlers in his weight class, that he needed extra morning workouts, that he needed to strengthen his body and mind so he could hold up for seven minutes against Hendricks.

Perry not only held up during the final minute, he owned it. He found an opening and capitalized, scoring a reversal with 59 seconds remaining that flipped the match in his favor and put him in a position of power with Hendricks flat on his stomach.

“I couldn’t have done it without Gable and Brands,” Perry said. “Something clicked where I knew I was going to have to wrestle seven minutes to beat him. And the big reason why is I could never ride him, but finally I got in a position where I had him broken down and he never gets broken down, so he’s not real familiar down there. When he was down there, I knew it. I told coach before that if I get him broken down I’m going to turn him over.”

True to his word, Perry pulled Hendricks into his lap off a restart and cranked him over with a half-nelson for a pair of one counts before he secured the go-ahead points with 27 seconds remaining on a two count that sparked a thunderous roar from the majority of the 17,780 in attendance.

“He’s got some skills that aren’t basic, so we tried to get him to be more basic,” Gable said. “If you saw his win in the end, it was really basic skills — on top of him with both legs in deep, not rolling around and he controlled the waist (and had) a half, and he kept (Hendricks) right in his lap instead of getting off to the side. In the end, he won on some real basic skills.”


In the end, Perry beat one of the most decorated wrestlers in the history of the program he grew up following, the program run by his uncle. To OSU coach John Smith, there was no immediate sense of family pride that his nephew defeated Hendricks.

“I think there will be later, not right now,” Smith said in a back hall of the arena as Iowa fans cheered Perry’s introduction on the medal stand as the NCAA champion. “I’m sure my family’s proud of him, but right now it’s about my kid and my kid is Johny Hendricks.”

Smith later gave his nephew congratulations and a hug. Truth be told, time has helped mend family fences that were damaged when Perry signed with the Hawkeyes; a decision he said was hardest on his mother and Smith’s sister, Cathy.

“She knew at the time that it was going to cause a lot of problems,” Perry said. “But they all got worked out years down the road. It was extremely hard for her and it was really hard on my whole family, but they let me make my decision on where I felt I could become the best I could.”

There were other factors, too. Perry has always been the type who wanted to blaze his own trail rather than follow someone else’s. He thought Iowa had a roster that was set up for title runs throughout his career before several of the top talents left the program. He looked at an Oklahoma State line-up and wondered where he would fit in before he made a decision that sent shockwaves through Stillwater.

“The Oklahoma State fans are probably my favorite group outside of Iowa,” Perry said. “In all reality, some of them downright don’t like me. But a lot of them, when I’m not wrestling Johny, they’re behind me. I grew up there and it’s just common sense.

“What did they want us to do? Have me and Johny wrestle off for three years? Did they want me, Johny and Chris Pendleton to wrestle off (as) national finalists? I’m a competitor. I wanted to be in a spotlight where I could have a shot at winning, and at the time I wasn’t at a stage where I could beat those guys.”

Under the brightest spotlight, on top of college wrestling’s biggest stage, in his final chance against Hendricks, Perry finally attained his life-long goal by beating his long-time nemesis.

“It’s a huge relief, and I’m going to be a lot better because of this,” he said. “Trust me, I’ll be relaxed next year being the defending national champ. I will not wrestle like some defending national champs have in the past just because I accomplished what I wanted to. My biggest goal in life, I accomplished it.”

(Andy Hamilton is the University of Iowa wrestling beat writer for the Iowa City Press-Citizen.)

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