The Joe Rogan Experience - #1627 - Dan Gable

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

Dan Gable is a retired wrestler, coach, Olympic gold medalist, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day is that you were so you're telling me that this mask is this is a wrestling does this have anything to do with your your museum yes it's'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 Museum in Waterloo, my hometown. But they own it. See, Oklahoma and Iowa are big rivalries in wrestling over history.

And these museums kind of help bring us together. Ah. So it's pretty interesting. So these actually masks are just the ones out of Stillwater. I don't know if we have ones in Waterloo or not. Lex Friedman told me that you have a hard time even walking around in iowa that uh people will swarm you you know 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 and i love that sport and it's been my life and i and i can

i want it to continue to be and it's a little bit difficult sport so, and it's been my life, and 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 promote it out there. And as long as people, I'm okay with it. It might irritate my family a little bit once in a while, but they love the sport too. So they got to expect some of this stuff. Well, coming from a guy that has accomplished what you've accomplished and has become this legendary feature in the sport, it comes with the territory. There's no way around it. I mean, you're a beloved character in the sport of wrestling to the point where I told people that you were going to be on my podcast and their eyebrows raise up. People get very excited. Well, I'm glad you said that because every time I tell somebody,

their eyebrows do the same when I'm going on this show. And so, of course, I knew about this show, but I had to do a lot of homework just to see, wow, it's pretty big. So I'm excited to be here because I know the effect it can have, not just on me, but on the sport. And 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 it's my hometown of Waterloo was that's why I got started in 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

you know 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 we're always in conflict it seems like with them 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 uh good wrestling and that that has helped I think the country uh be better off I had Jordan Burrows on and he was describing to me what it's like to wrestle in Iran and how massive the sport is over there and he's a giant star over there and he's like to wrestle in Iran and how massive the sport is over there. And he's a giant star over there.

And he's like, and people are so friendly and so inviting and so accepting and just so happy to see great wrestling. And just wrestling is just an enormous sport over there and immensely popular. Well, when I won the Olympics in 1972, their most popular athlete was the guy in my weight class, the Iranian. And 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 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 he had lost the year before because I was there and I won the weight class we didn't get to Russell but he was there and representing Iran in 72 and he won his first match by about 15 points, but he pulled out of the Olympics, and he ended up going to the United States because of his being so popular that he was scared

that they might do something to him at the government level. I'm sure you're aware of what happened recently with the wrestler who was killed, the Iranian wrestler who was killed because he was involved in a peaceful protest. And they made an example out of him. Yeah, and they claimed that he killed somebody. But, you know, you can claim whatever you want to satisfy the people, but chances are he didn't. Chances are he didn't.

It seemed like what they were doing was just making sure that people were scared yeah and that if they can kill a man who's so beloved and you know a national hero they can kill anybody yeah and the Iranian that came here lives still here in the United States yeah it's uh wrestling to me is uh it's one of the most important sports because it's one of the very few sports that doesn't have a real— I mean, there's obviously WWE wrestling and a lot of guys go from wrestling into MMA, but there's not a real professional venue. I mean, Jordan Burroughs does some legit wrestling, actual amateur-style wrestling, and gets paid for matches and stuff now and has sponsorships and the like and i'm very happy that he gets recognized and some other wrestlers get recognized but it's not like basketball it's not like any other sport where you have olympic champions go on boxing and become huge stars at a professional level. With wrestling, it's one of the few sports where

the people that participate in it, they take pride in the fact that they work in silence. They take pride in the fact that they grind. They take pride in the fact that they are miserable, that their training is unbelievably intense, and that it's so much more intense than most sports. If you had to compare what an elite baseball player does, you're smiling, right, versus an elite wrestler, I mean, it's not even comparable. 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. 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 from my local, where I live in Iowa City, he's got a son named Gable, actually, and he's first team all-state in baseball. 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 little less than quarter mile runs, and I'd give him a little time in between, of course, but he just wanted to try what we were doing to see how it compared to how he trained that way.

They train different ways, but he made one really good lap, and he stayed right with the group, right in there. I think he claims 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 or 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. I don't think there's any sport like it in terms of the amount of effort that's required and also the margin of fitness and of technique required for victory. Like at the elite level, there's so many great wrestlers, both on the national level and the international level, that it really requires this insane level of dedication to rise to the top. Well, you mentioned Jordan Burroughs. And, you know, Jordan Burroughs was a good wrestler in high school, and he was a good wrestler in college. He became a great wrestler at the end of college but I shouldn't

even say great because you have another level and that's that world and an Olympic level and 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 a somewhat of a grind and and everything that you do but but if you stick with it long enough the mind can develop as well and it's when the when Jordan Burrell's mind developed to where he felt he was a great wrestler instead of just he's a good wrestler but this other guy's good and it's going to be a tough match. But he stayed in it long enough, worked at it hard enough, where he was able to develop beyond the tools that you need for being on the mat just technically or strategically.

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 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 in baseball. They don't do it in football. People weigh 100 pounds. People weigh 200 pounds.

They're on the same team, and you're competing against them. 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. If you understand physics pretty well and positioning, then you can probably be a better wrestler, just because of the amount of weight and skill that you have within your own positions. And so for me, it was like I could wrestle anybody. I wrestled 150 pounds at the World and Olympic Games, and I could wrestle the heavyweight who weighed 450. And they go, why could you wrestle him? I said, because I knew the leverage and I knew the skills and the strategy.

And because of that, it gave me the opportunity to feel heavier than him. And I think that's what a lot of people said. They say, you don't look that heavy, but when I wrestled you, 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 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 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 usually wrestled the bigger guys in the room, even though I was a lightweight, just because I could. And because of that, it gave me a lot of confidence. And so people, you know, always ask you, how do you think you're going to do? Well, you know, I think I'm going to win, you know, and I think, I don't

really think, I pretty much know I'm going to win. So it's one of these things that when you have that much success, it works. And that's where I feel Jordan Burroughs has developed to. But like I said, he's got only six weight classes as compared to eight or nine or ten but we normally used to have he's got a world champion coming down named dake that will challenge him at that at that his weight so they're both highly credentialed and so that's going to be a big match coming up here probably pretty soon mental toughness is one of the most important aspects of wrestling obviously technique and fitness are huge but mental toughness is what defines wrestlers in my opinion because when you see wrestlers successful wrestlers in my in you know the ufc in particular there's no one like

them when when they come over to mma you you recognize, you recognize there's something special about them as athletes. And I think that it comes from the fact that wrestling is so difficult. The practices are so hard. But in the world of mental toughness, where mental toughness is one of the cornerstones, you're known as a guy that stands out. You stand out amongst, like david goggins likes to say you're uncommon amongst uncommon men like what what is that like what what what made you stand out from these other wrestlers well i'm going to jump forth to my high school coach even though i

got a lot before that but i just remember what he said in the room. And he was like 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, it's, it, it, that was my first major coach

that really taught me a lot of those types of principles. But before that, I was, 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 an outdoors guy and you want to be around water and you want to make sure you know how your kids swim. So my mom and dad got me into the YMCA. But what they got me into the YMCA really for was they needed help. I mean, they just, my dad was a full-time worker, and my mom,

she stayed at home a lot, but she also helped my dad at an office at home. But I was a little hellion, 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 backstroke, which, you know, in wrestling,

you know, I know in fighting, you can go to your back and there's lots of tools that you can do there. 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 there's skills there you have to learn. But I, um, I really, um, I really liked, uh, uh, the YMCA because it gave me a chance to learn something away from home. I was home with my mom, I was home with my dad, home with my sister who was four years older than me. But, you know, it's just something, I call it going for help. And I think my mom and dad realized at that time that they needed some 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 giving them what you need to give them, why not go for help? And there's organizations out there. Now, you got to be careful who you're putting them into or even if you're giving them to a babysitter or whatever like that. But if you're pretty confident that you have a good place to get some help, you get some help. And same way with me as a coach, same way with me as a husband. I mean, I got my wife, I got my family, I had my assistant coaches, and I got my fans.

I mean, I always had them looking out for me. I built that kind of trust with them, or more than even trust, just they want to help, and that was the 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.

And 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 the sport, my first wrestling room was at the YMCA there, even though I had been in a wrestling room because these older guys had drug me around to the wrestling rooms in Waterloo. But I can remember wrestling a kid, and I handled him pretty good because I had already been wrestling on my carpet at home,

wrestling outside in the grass, and these people had a little experience with me. But the kid kind of got mad, so I was waiting for my mom and dad to pick me up after the Wise couple hours where you spend there. And this kid came out, and he goes, you know, maybe you beat me in wrestling up there. But he goes, how about a street fight? And I said, whoa. I was probably eight, nine, eight years old at the time. And, you know, it was 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 than me, but I wasn't wasn't gonna really i wasn't gonna fight him i was waiting for my dad picked me up and all of a sudden he punches me and so you know what do you do you gotta fight i mean either that or run you know and i i, and I did all right. I mean, just like in the wrestling room, I did all right. And so I had some of that in me too. But when I had the guy 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 you know that's part of an experience that you kind of grow 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 right and that was kind of one of my first experiences uh with understanding a little bit about uh competition outside and organized sports. Yeah, raw competition. Right, yeah. Primal.

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 liked to drink a lot of beer and smoke a lot of cigarettes. 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 the 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 they just I think they just threw one on and kind of took him out the door. I didn't really see from there. So he came home that night later on. He got, he was, 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 that had, the policeman that had come and picked him up was actually a neighbor down the street,

just lived about a block 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. It probably wouldn't go on. at that time. And this is different today. It 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 pulled out of my pocket a wire and I took this kid down on the ground and I wired his wrist together and not real hard but like like there were handcuffs and I grabbed the wire and I said this is what your dad did to my dad last night and I'm gonna do it to you and I'm gonna take you and I'm gonna take you home this way and I took him home because they lived about a block away and I untook the things off and let him go in but it's like probably fourth grade but

the my dad found out about that and wow, 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. 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 they 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 uh and you did that to his son I said dad I I was just protecting

you I thought you know but and everybody understood but it's kind of funny how things are and I don't think that's the old days good old days uh compared to i don't you know they'd probably do a lot more you know they'd lock you up probably but i don't give you too many breaks but it's kind of funny how that's the kind of house you know difference between 40 years ago 50 years ago 60 years ago what do you think is better though like the good are the good old days the good old days or is it better today i think i like the good old days i mean i got picked up one other time and it was my uh former um i was back home and from college and and he was my gym teacher in eighth grade, Mr. Blue. And he ended up being a policeman when I came home from college,

so that was about in seventh grade, so we're talking six, seven, and eight years later when I was home for the weekend, and I was driving, and he picked me up, and I probably had a beer in the car or something. He actually let me go. But he picked me up again the same night. So he took me down a second time. And he put me in his office in the police station. We talked for quite a while.

But he let me in his office in the police station, and we talked for quite a while. But he let me go, too. But, you know, you just can't get away with it. I mean, there's just more rules, regulations. If people find out, it's like, whoa, whoa. You know, 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, you know, 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 the way it is. And so it's not as much fun. You're almost scared to talk. You know, what did I, I came here in an airplane and out of the airplane magazine, I picked up something

because I thought it was interesting. It'll probably help me because I don't want to get in trouble, you know? I don't want to get in trouble. And it said, curious about using, this article was in there said curious about using gender neutral language in your everyday life and so i start curious about using gender neutral language in your everyday life

i well i just caught a you know some guy just texted me the other day after a speech and gave me really a lot of hell. A guy you knew? He texted you? Yeah. A friend of yours? Well, I haven't seen him for about 30 years. What did he give you hell about? He said I used the words she and he and all this kind of stuff.

You can't use she and he? I don't know. You can. Tell that guy to fuck off. You know what? Unbelievable what you said. to fuck off you know what unbelievable what you said because listen one of my former wrestlers who's a school teacher right at the campus at the university of iowa and he's pretty strong in his beliefs because he grew up in a family that didn't have a dad and he you know government

took pretty good care of him also and he was he um he just sent me a note i told him that story and he because 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 here's this is great this is great here's the thing i think the reason why that guy gave you hell for something as simple as saying he and she that that highlights what's wrong here what people are doing with not just gender neutral language but with the whole woke movement politically correct movement is they have an opportunity to yell at people and tell people what to do it gives assholes and low status individuals power over other people by enforcing

this ideology and it doesn't make any sense like you could say she and he it doesn't make you a bad person and if by the way if you change genders and you say she and he and it switches back and forth that's fine too that's not what. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is the intent behind what you said was entirely innocent. And the reason why that guy gave you shit about it is because he's got an opportunity to force you to comply with what he thinks are new rules. So he thinks he can force them on you and he has a position to have the moral high ground and he has a position to make you feel bad or to make you listen to him.

That guy can eat shit because people like him are the real problem with this fucking country. It's not that people aren't kind. It's not that people aren't friendly. Most people are kind, and most people are friendly. The problem is whenever this new thing, a new movement comes along, and this one is particularly divisive because there's so many dipshits that have adopted it and people that are low status, unsuccessful, non-disciplined individuals, and they want to force it on other people. And it becomes a big part of their life is enforcing this kind of language

and this kind of ideology on other people. That's what's going on today. Well, I like you saying it because you can say it a lot better than me but i feel it yeah we all feel people feel pressure but we more of us need to stand up against that and highlight who the humans are that are pointing it out these are piss poor humans these are most of these humans have very little discipline most of these people that are doing that they're weak of character the people that are pointing it out and yelling at people for things like not using don't use gendered language those people are dipshits that's the problem and it happens so quick it happens so quick because they recognize

that through social media they could form these little bully gangs and all of them together because a lot of them are losers and they spend a lot of time online and they don't spend a lot of time socializing the real world they they live in these fucking are losers and they spend a lot of time online and they don't spend a lot of time socializing the real world. They live in these fucking Twitter groups and they go attack people for shit that's not that big of a deal. But they want you to comply. They want to use this power of the group, of having a bunch of people who also believe what they believe

and attack folks and think that it's right. And they get together and reinforce each other constantly online. And if you pay attention to them, there's a few people like that that I follow just to see how crazy folks have gotten. They're online 12 hours a day just doing that. You can't get shit done if you're on Twitter 12 hours a day arguing with people. You can't. So these are the type of people that are involved in this sort of behavior.

They're not people that you should aspire to be they're losers you know what i like when you're saying that but i like you're saying it not me because you know i have a coach at a university well not anymore but yeah i was i were mean, for a long time. But I like to somehow get 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 know, full of 23 of us.

But one family wasn't there. This one here, the 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 at a restaurant. And so I'm going to go pay the bill. And the bill was, you know, it's not bad.

It was $135. But that's $135 for breakfast for, you know, a nice little restaurant, so, and I, and so I went up there, and, you know, you have to wear your mask until you get in and sit down and 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 and the girl that was there said to me, she goes, and I didn't even look at her. I was looking down reading the bill and she said, put that mask on. And I'm looking down and I'm not looking up. 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 going to put it on anyway, but I just hadn't put it on yet.

So I put it on, and I said, you really pissed me off. And she just didn't know what to say. She didn't say a word. Well, she, you know, 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 lady. So then I finally looked up, and I said, the right tip because it was a different lady. 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. Probably scared the shit out of her. Yeah, I know.

Especially because the owner is probably pretty decent friends of my family. There's. Well, there's a way to say it that's nice. Yeah, exactly. If you were a search, please put your mask on, then you would say, oh, I'm sorry. I would have. Because you forget sometimes. It's not a normal thing. I mean, it's become normal over the last year, but it's not a normal thing to remember to put a mask on. No, it's not, especially when you're working out every day, too.

Yeah. Because you don't really want to wear a mask when you're working out. day too. Yeah. Because you don't really want to wear a mask when you're working out. That's ridiculous. Yeah. A lot of people have to at gyms. Like, oh, you know, I can't wait for this fucking thing to be over.

You know, but that's the thing with the mask thing. I'm not saying that in this case. I mean, this lady was at work and she probably does feel nervous about people not wearing masks. But there's a thing where people like to yell at people, put your mask on, because they know that you have have to and they also know that it's an opportunity for them to tell you what to do people enjoy telling people what to do that's why that dipshit that

texted you about uh gendered language he's just telling you what to do he enjoys telling you what to do and you know i don't find any of those people to be of impressive character. You know, here's another thing. Because it's kind of 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 won a state championship. And my first state championship in wrestling. first year as a high school sophomore because that high school started then and i uh anyway long story short this neighbor kid ended up murdering my sister and uh he had walked to school with me a couple weeks before that and said something to me who I

if I would have communicated it might have saved her life you know just because she probably would have never let the guy into the her house what did he say 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 she had a boyfriend and she was living at home yet. And 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 just boy talk.

And it was mostly about, he just thought my sister was really hot and that he would like to do something with her, you know. But he never really said it outright. I mean, I just figured something, you know, the 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 you didn't have cell phones so we had a we had a phone uh that was outside a cabin that we rented not you know and i'll you know i can date you because the date the cabin we rented for four bucks a night so you know it's just unheard of and that was you know it would have you know been uh of 1964 so so we were at a payphone about a half a block from from the cabin that we were renting and we roll the window down and you put the dime or nickel in the phone and you call my dad called the uh i was in the front back seat my mom and dad were in the front my dad was driving and he called the neighbor and and he asked if um if my sister's car was still in the driveway and he said yes so and she was supposed to be with us 90 miles away that morning she didn't show up so so my dad and my mom get really nervous and and they tell them to go break into that house. You can't get in, break into it, or if she doesn't answer the door, get into that house and call us back.

So you can see the tension in the front seat of the car. I can see my mom and dad worrying. The phone rings finally about 15 minutes later, and all of a sudden, my dad drops the phone. and all of a sudden my dad drops the phone, and my mom was going, she was kind of starting to go hysterical, wanting to know what was wrong, and he looked over, and I'll never forget this, you know, being a 15-year-old kid, and I looked, 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 and ran after her. And 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 her head hitting the wooden floor and she looked up and she had blood all over her forehead and um uh so my dad then followed in and we packed up real quick about 10 minutes we left half the stuff then we took off from my hometown 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 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 in the car. And we stopped at the next town, which is about 15 miles later, and went into the police station. And we told the police what had happened as far as my 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 ahead to the Waterloo Police Department. The Waterloo Police located he was at work sacking groceries the next day in a grocery store.

And he'd actually admitted right there that he did it after they got him. But the thing is, what's amazing is this guy, then he escaped from prison after about 20. He was only 16. He got life in penitentiary. And he escaped, and that pretty much doomed him to 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 Gable family on the way out, and he said he was going to kill us all. 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 just about, oh, I don't know, say it's seven, eight years ago when he passed away. But we got another cabin now. It's about 30 miles north of the cabin that 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, me and my wife had been at our cabin that my mom and dad owned and I inherited when they passed on. But we were at that cabin, and we were coming home, and we were going right by the spot where that payphone was and where we had learned about her death and there's a cell phone call it's the warden

of the prison he's in i think it was indiana he was in indiana the. 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 115 miles from, well, it's actually a lot further than that. So it's like spooky. It's like real spooky and then what what's really amazing is what he said to me the warden he said before he died he was seeing a counselor and the 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 rehabbed somewhat.

And he goes, and the reason why, he said, I knew I was going to kill somebody. But he said, because she was such a nice girl. You know, oh, my God. He said he knew he was going to kill somebody? He said he knew he was going to kill somebody. Just who he was? Yeah. And they told me that.

And, you know, I cried for an hour. And it got a lot out of me. But, you know, as bad as my dad felt my mom felt and you know i felt probably it kind of got rid of a lot of hatred when 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 for he probably did it on his deathbed or something, but he probably had all this guilt. But it helped me too.

It helped me because even though I cried for an hour, and I think the stuff you build up inside you sometimes, you don't know what it's going to take to get it out of you. And I think that really helped me with my situation because you always feel a little guilty because of maybe you could have saved her life but but more than that it's been something that i based my whole life on too uh just communication i mean this is your business communication i mean there's and sometimes my wife tells me I'm telling her too much. You know, you don't need to tell me.

We don't need to talk about this. I say, yeah, I do. I do. You know, I need to talk about it. It's not just that. It's just anything that 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 get the 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 stand in public. But I'm probably trying to help some people too and heal some people or even maybe get them to change or not feel like. Because I've been through so many kids. And I've just seen some of the things that you've done with these kids and how you've made big differences. Just like Rico Ciparelli, which you're talking about. Just like Brad Penrith, who had a twin,

and he was not going to make it in life very far. But by changing him, like, for example, Brad was, he needed to stop drinking, you for good he you know he couldn't drink i mean like 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 a um got in trouble it was was alcohol related and i and i didn't even know it What's funny about this kid, Brad Penrith, he won a national championship for me as a sophomore, and he got in trouble within a week or two

after he won the national championship. 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 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'd have known he'd been getting in trouble, I probably wouldn't have been working on him before. But it's one of these things that it's like who you are. It's who you are sometimes. But he did well. He ended up being a three-time All-American. He got in the national finals three times. And he won. He got beat both times, the other ones.

But, you know, it was controversial. There's calls. It could have went his way. And he went to become a world silver medalist in the world championships. 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 ever since. And he's in his 50s now. 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, some people can't drink. Yeah.

That's just the way it is. It is just the way it is. Yeah. And so this guy just figured it out. Well, let me tell you. Going into his senior year, he got in trouble. And my AD called me in his name was bump elliot we just passed away a couple years ago he's a great great ad and he said gable you're winning

all these titles you don't you know you don't need this kid on your team he's been in trouble too many times and i i want you to kick him off. I don't know if he said kick. I want you to take him off the roster. And right there, I just froze because I knew this was his only thing. And if this is his only thing that's holding him together, we've got to figure something out. And I told my athletic director about his history, where he come from. He's got a twin brother. His twin brother's not getting any wrestling. He's all kinds of, you know,

this and that. And I, you know, I, 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 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 never drank since and that was 1988 1987 or 88 and he here it is 2021 he's got a nice wife nice kids and he's doing well in his life and some good decisions by a coach and an athletic director that's awesome yeah I love hearing stories like that.

Some people really can't drink. Yeah, and Brad was right with Rico, you know, and Roy Seldra, that's another name that's crazy. And these guys were hellions, but they could kick butt on the wrestling mat, but they liked to go downtown. And in those days, that was the hard days on me because I had to go downtown and kick them out of the bars. Well, they actually warned the bar people that owned the bars that I would be coming in at 12, so they would be hiding out the back, so let us know and we'll run out the back door.

So those days, they should have probably had, but I shouldn't have let it go that far. But when you're winning seven, eight, nine straight national titles, sometimes you give a kid a break or two and uh it comes back to haunt you so uh you know so um it became a kind of a ritual for me to go leave home about 11 30 every night to go downtown to Iowa City to walk into bars to see where some of the guys were and try to get them home and you know that was probably not the right way to go about things i should have had him to where i didn't have to do that but you know you just you have you're winning the big tens every year you're winning the nassos every year sometimes you just you lose control and uh it's kind of like how i lost my last match in college and that's another whole story but you

you win a you win a lot and sometimes you think you can cut corners. Well, you had gone undefeated your entire college career until your last match. 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 in college but that's the international style but and I did lose there but but

for scholastic wrestling high school is undefeated and then I was undefeated in in college until my last match but you know my coaches and here I was going to become a coach. I didn't really know it for sure, but I didn't know anything else, 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 sports pages. It was in Evanston, Illinois. And every place I'd go, people, you know, it's come up to me and all this kind of stuff. And so I, you know, from a coaching point of view, if my coaches had to do it over again, and they actually apologized to me years later, but it was like, nobody thought I was going to lose except for one guy. One guy actually said I can beat him, but he didn't tell me. He forgot

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 focus focus rest focus focus i was doing interviews with wide world 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 mat, I couldn't talk to anybody. And so when they put a mic in front of me and they wanted to know about,

hey, just say this. Say, hey, I'm Dan Gable. Come watch me next week on Wide World of Sport as I finish my career 182-0. And I hadn't wrestled the match yet. And so 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 wrote 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 118 the 118 126 134 and I was 142 at that time so 134 is just uh 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 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 in 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 wrestling 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 you take on everything so you take on way more than just your opponent and so i talked myself into wrestling after minute one i kept saying, I got to keep going. I got to keep working hard.

And so I got an early lead, just a quick first takedown. But I kept feeling how tired I 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 match. Concentration. No warm-up had that much was not focusing on my match. Concentration. Just no warm-up had that much of an effect on your conditioning.

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 exhausted. It'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 you don't get real tired. But then after that, you'd probably have a little drink and get ready to go.

What would you do for a warm-up? You had a very specific routine? Pretty much. Pretty much, you know, stretching and jogging and then actually wrestling, actually wrestling pretty hard to where you were 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 another shower.

But usually when you're 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 in a wrestling match it's probably going up to 170, 180, you know, stuff like that. But you wanted to have your heart rate up to that match-based heart rate for not seven or eight minutes because you're not going to recover

quick enough. You'd still be tired. You'd want to be tired. So you'd get it up there and spike it up and down for two or three minutes and hitting some really good execution of wrestling holds. We do hand fighting, a lot of hand fighting, and that hand fighting can really get that heart rate up and pushing and shoving and hitting some live techniques

where the guy was letting you do it, but you're doing it at live pace. And you do some sprints and do some tumbling, gymnastics tumbling. But in this match, no warm-up at all? mismatch, no warm-up at all. When I got done with the 20-second take of the, I had that match to warm up. So I probably had 10 minutes instead of my normal 45 minutes or so. But I thought I was still ready.

But it was something out of my control, actually. And it took me over. But I did talk my way into, because I got ahead, but then I got real far behind. I mean, I was behind by six points. And then I got ahead by two or three points. And that was right towards the end of the match. And then there was a flurry. Could have went either way, but the referee of the match. And then there was a flurry. Could have went 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 know, you're not supposed to be.

It's kind of like with me when going downtown that night, you know, I probably shouldn't have been, but my wife was behind us and everything, but I probably shouldn't have stayed. Sometimes I didn't tell you this. Sometimes I stayed at the bar for a little while and then came home. But, you know, I 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 and a wife and they had dinner and they probably got tired of waiting for me that they did get tired of waiting for me they would go have dinner and then time I'd get home I'd probably have to walk in the bedroom kiss the kids good night because they were already in bed and that was a tough time in my life too because the next year we end up losing the 10th championship, going for the all-time record again, going for the all-time record once. You think a guy learned, but of course then you got 10 years later,

you kind of forget and you do the same damn thing. But you do it not as an athlete, you do it as a coach. And I think about ending 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'd think you'd learn,

but sometimes you forget. And that loss was... Well, I don't forget. And that loss was... Well, I don't forget. Yeah, I'd love to have won that match. I would have loved to have won that match, but not how I won it, because I could have got the call at the end, too, and maybe still won the match.

Could have went overtime. But you think the loss was very important. That's what almost everybody always says about moments, real low moments in their life, when they thought everything was untouchable, and they thought that they were just... Well, look at my sister. Low moment in my life of all time.

And pretty much dedicated my life to that moment as far as how I was going to make her proud. You know, that type of stuff. And, you know, it's pretty amazing that those low points can bring you out and get you back on track, even though, you know, it's hard to say that there was good in it. Right. You know, it's hard to say that there was good in it. But, you know, another thing that I really was scared of in my life, that my mom and dad wouldn't make it together.

And it started at a pretty young age. And it went all through high school. Because even after my sister was murdered as 10th grader it didn't let up in my household a lot of late night drinking and yelling and before that before that 10th 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 uh we did move back into the same house because they never found they never found the murder weapon was a knife it could have been one of our knives and uh and there was a lot of blood all over our house and and uh they didn't want to move back in,

but I convinced them that we should move back in. And one of the ways I convinced them was about a month after the murder, when we did move back in so it was probably second month they were up arguing and I was in bed and I 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 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 had been a house. We moved back in it, but it hadn't gone. Her bedroom was like just there. It was just there, and the door was always closed. And so I looked at him, and I said, you know what? I'm tired of this fighting and I just heard the conversation that was going on I am moving out of my bedroom 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 opened 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 and about 10 minutes later I seen I heard the door uh 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 Gable 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 you know they could go to all these events and hell my dad when I won the world championship and he didn't 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 sofia bulgaria and when i won the world championship he was down at the waterloo courier 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 see how I did in that event. It wasn't that easy to find out. So all of a sudden it comes over, it's typed, and it was a headline across the paper. It said, Dan Gable wins world championship. My old man ripped that paper right off that teletype machine

and he ran outside and it was early morning and there were people coming to work and he was running down the street swinging that little newspaper yelling, Hey, my kid's a world champion. My kid's a world champion. And that kind of stuff is just, you can't make that kind of stuff up. It's just amazing. 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 they wrote me every day. So 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 when I was gone, only 90 miles. And in those letters, we used to drink a lot of high C. And when you take the labels off, you could send seven or eight of them in, and they'd give you money back. So my mom would send me in, in little, she'd have a little letter and she'd say, here's your, here's some money from the high seat 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. Uh, and she 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 uh whatever we 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 well he did more than that because he bought me a car, a nice little car, to send me off to college and that type of stuff. But it's pretty amazing 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. When I was in high school, I was a state champ as a sophomore,

which is the first year of high school. Then I won state champion as a junior. But I was wrestling. My weight was 95 as a sophomore and 103 as a junior. In college, the first weights were 118. And my dad thought I should be getting bigger. Plus, 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 know 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 pound bags of 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 all this hard work carrying

buckets of mud and by that they call it cement. And so on and so forth. You're going to swing in a sledgehammer because you're going to be dealing with a lot of basements because my dad would deal in the house business. And so he got me a job. When I was 16 years old, I 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 good about the old days? little did I know, again, it's the old days. What's good about the old days? They had to be 18 to get the job. It was one of those, you know, where you had to be 18. And I was 16, but he,

it 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 he 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 cash under the table. But my dad says, you don't even have to pay him. I'll pay you.

You don't even have to pay him. I'll pay you. So after about three days of work, because my dad had scared the daylights out of me, telling me how hard I'd have to work. 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, running. And the people kind of looked at me funny for a while but then they realized i was on a mission but finally my uh the owner of the cement company martinson construction jerry martinson was his name called my dad after three days and said mr gable you're not gonna pay your son we're gonna pay your son we'll just do it under the table as well

we're gonna pay him we're not gonna let you pay him you're not gonna have 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, before we eat 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. He's wrestling 103, so he's probably up to 125 right now. And he's 125 pounds, and these 250-pound guys are wanting to, they can't beat him. He said he's kicking the shit out of every one of them.

And they love him. And they're having a great time with him. In fact, all the hard work, they're giving him all the hard work. In fact, when he moves those 94-pound 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 them move those bags again to the other side of the house so it's just crazy and they're all loving it and they and uh 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 the good old days

the police were looking out for my dad you know it's uh you just some i don't know if we're looking out for many people today uh and if we are it's probably of the like and you know what we all need to be of the like so you used that job as a workout eight hours a day did you gain any weight from that? I couldn't, but I gained strength. You know what? I wasn't carrying 94-pound bags. I put three of them on there. So you take 94 times three, and that's what I was carrying as a 125-pound kid.

Jesus. Yeah, so I would unload them because they would load them up on my arms, and I'd carry them over to where they're 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 to work sometimes and it was a couple miles away then run home but guess what I always had a fight so we'd get home about 5 30 my high school had an

open practice for wrestling from 5 30 to 6 30 every night after that work so I'd go to work all day weightlifting all day then I'd go to wrestling practice for an hour's independent wrestling practice just open the mat and there's somebody would always show up i would always show up and somebody would 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 get the bags run between things and then i'd go to wrestling practice for an hour so then i go home and eat i go to bed so i was sleeping by eight o'clock, 8.30 every night because you had to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning and go to work.

But I'll tell you, it made you tough. It made you tough. There's a lot of things that you did back in those days that you now know that maybe you can't. You should use easier ways to, not easier way, smarter ways to do things that probably wouldn't take, give you some more longevity. Because, you know, I've worn out my hips.

I mean, I've got six hips, you know. I've got my own two, and I've got four others. You've had how many hip replacements? Let's have some of your beer. You've got some Gable beer. Yeah, hey, you know what? That's some of the rewards you get. People name... Cheers.

Yeah, people name beer after you. I got a nutrition drink. This Gable beer comes out. It's a brewery one half a block from the Gable Museum in Waterloo, Iowa. What's the name of the brewery? Single Speed. Single Speed Brewery. Guess who owns it, though?

Dave Morgan. Guess who Dave Morgan is? State champion wrestler out of New Hampton. There you go. About 30 miles north of Waterloo. That's a good beer. It better be. I sampled it.

It's good. You don't think I want a bad beer? No, it's a good beer. No, it's a good beer. It's solid. Yeah, it's a good beer. You know what? Here's the thing.

It's been in two contests. It's the biggest contest, two out in Denver somewhere. And the first year, I didn't get an award. So I said, you know, like, what are we going to do about that? Because I don't like a beer out there without an award. You know, I won 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 placing or something. But they went, they survived the cut and went a long ways. And they felt pretty good to me.

And I said, it's not gold. So somebody heard that, and they liked it. So they come up with a Gable Gold Nutrition Drink. And it's up in New Lisbon, Wisconsin. There's a former wrestler again, Brian Slater, who 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. Olympic silver medalist, Olympic bronze, Olympic silver medalist as well. But he works up there, and they made a nutrition drink in the last year.

It's called Gable Gold. So I got a Gable beer. It's a Munich-style Helles. That's where I won the Munics. And if you read Gable beer. It's a Munich-style Helles, and that's where I won the Munics. And if you read it on there, what's it say? It says, Gable, one word can say so much. In our city, few words, if any, resonate with the name Gable. I can't even read it. I've got to get my glasses here a little bit better. He says, but in commemoration of his Olympic triumph in Munich in 1972, we've crafted a beer much more appropriate, approachable,

than adversaries found Dan to be on the mat. He says, it's crisp and gold. than adversaries found Dan to be on the mat. He says, it's crisp and gold. 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've got it here. We're in Texas. We snuck it to the border. Now, I've snuck it across the border a few times. We've got it here. We're in Texas. We snuck it across the border. We hid it in a package. It's kind of a shame that you can't sell this out. It's very good. Well, it'd probably go to another level if we-

Yes, it would. I'd buy this, 100%. I'd keep it stocked here in the studio. Well, we're talking about me, but all my friends, when they found out I'm coming down here, they all have got a hold of me, and they all want to tell me to tell them hi and tell them this, tell them that, and tell them I'm their number one fan. And so you're a big deal.

I just want you to know that. You're a big deal, and you know that, but it's not like you care as much as like me. I want to be successful and I want to win. I want to do all this great stuff, but that's just part of what I want to do. 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 I got a book here too. And it says, Know Your Limits. There's a chapter in that book. What's the limit? Well, too, and it says, Know Your Limits. There's a chapter in that book. What's the limit? Well, for me, it's a little different than most. Whatever you think

you can limit. For me, it's 32 ounces. And I usually just say two beers, but these are 12 ounces. So I could have two and a half of these, but that was back in a few 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 of beer in me, whether it be with the police or whether it be with my wife or whatever. So you've got to be smart. You've got to know your limits. Yeah, you've got to know your limits. How many hip replacements have you had? Well, I own two because i was you know had two pretty good ones but when i was uh let's see when i was 48 well actually i went out to run when i was 38

and all of a sudden my hips start hurting so i ran through the my hip for 10 years if you run far enough you didn't have a hip pain the pain of the arthritis right right yeah well the pain of running just the hurtness of your can't breathe you know you're running hard so for 10 years i i did was stupid because i didn't really know what it was and i didn't really pay attention so so 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 me my last year coaching but so i went to the doctor and the doctor Dr. Marsh a great doctor orthopedic surgeon actually

he was a surgeon actually he was a when you get in an accident I can't remember the term they they Christ not a crisis but a certain doctor where they're where you bring him in when there's a 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 just splintered. It splintered when you jumped out of bed this morning. It has been so fragile, it just splintered.

And I had been kind of working through the pain for 10 years. So I had to get it fixed during my 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 overtaking the other one even though the other one was bad. So he says, we've got to do that other one. I said, wow. So it took a while. It 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, you know, it 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. By that I mean, it meant that there was a certain way of life that you have lived. And 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. You know, and I went back to my mom, now 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 sprained my ankle in practice over there at West High at my high school and so I was limping and

my mom looked at me and she said my, my God, you're limping. He said, you know what? You've got to get out of this. You've got to 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 was 23 when I won the Olympics,

so now I was probably 24 because wrestling season, October 25th is my birthday, so wrestling season probably is in December. So she was just concerned from injuries? Well, yeah, she was just tired of seeing me being lamed up. At 24, you're not even in your prime yet. Yeah, but I worked pretty hard. Yeah.

Yeah, I was the only guy, you know, high school, back in the high school days, when I first came there as a sophomore, I lived across the street from the high school, back in the high school days, when I first came there as a sophomore, I lived 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 in the locker room for the team if they want to come early, even during football or even during wrestling, especially. He says, 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? He goes, I go, yeah, I want to come in the mornings. He says, not a required practice. And I'll get there, but I'll probably not come right towards the end because it's just on your own, running, lifting, that type of stuff. And he says, I'm going to give you a key to this. And this, again, good old days. You can't do it now. And if you do, you get fired.

So he gave me a key to 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 at first because it was wrestling season was just starting, just off of football. And some of them took a break.

And even the wrestlers that didn't wrestle or didn't play football, they weren't about to go in the mornings yet because wrestling practice at 3.30 was a bear. We had a bear. A bear of a wrestling practice. I'm going to take a drink of this beer 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 the one practice so they didn't weren't coming to 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 yet because I hadn't done anything. I was zero and zero in high school. But the coach told me that I was going to make the team. He could just tell and that he was going to give me this key.

So all of a sudden, we had the first dual meet, and I win. I'm one and oh. I win. I'm 1-0. I win the second one. I win the third one. I win the fourth one. I win the fifth one. I'm going into my gym. I'm about to sixth or seventh.

And all of a sudden, I open the door, and I kind of close. Oh, I'm taking the key out. I can't get the key out a little bit. And somebody bumps into my back. And I turn around. There's a wrestler. And I go, what are you doing? He goes, well, you know, you've been coming.

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 i said good so then it was all of a sudden three three four five six so by the by the middle season the end of the season we had just about everybody coming in the in the mornings not the day of the match or the day before but like three days monday tuesday wednesday usually when you could uh not get ready for the big matches. But that's the way people are. You know, it shouldn't take that way. But from a coaching point of view, it taught me a lesson.

You know, you always have to have a leader in there because you've 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 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 hurting 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.

From too much competition. Just. Too much grinding. Apparently. Apparently. Because here's the grinding. Apparently. Apparently. Because here's the thing. I would get sick. Towards the end of the season, I would get sick for about two weeks straight.

I mean, kind of sick that, oh, my God, what's wrong with me? I've got to be having cancer or something, you know. Just you're beating yourself up. Just the mental strain. So we go to the Big Tens, we go to the Nationals, and all of a sudden we're winning the 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 and 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 was just the pressure.

Well, it's probably, I mean, if you ever, you should watch me how I coach 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 to 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.

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. Do you feel more joy out of winning as a coach than you did over winning as an athlete? Coach. Yeah?

Definitely. Because of exactly what I've been talking about. But let me tell you why. I didn't even like my athletes. I loved them, but we got into conflicts because I pushed them 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. Do you think it was because the way you pushed yourself, they couldn't tolerate it? So when you wanted to do that to them and you wanted them to work as hard as you worked? No, depending on the guy individually. Each guy was different. And depending on how he was doing. Depending on how he's living. 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 padded 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-ass 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've seen them how they yelled in the stands. I saw them how they, when 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 till they both died. But they were never going to make it, I thought, in marriage. But once they married, they were married for over 50 years. So, but I never thought that. As was a kid i thought that for sure my biggest fear was they're gonna get a divorce now that was a kid when i was in junior high and in grade school but so anyway so these kids every once in a while when i'd really get upset with a kid because he'd miss three days of practice or something. Like Rico? Yeah, like Rico one time did.

But he had a good reason. He had a girlfriend. You've told us about that before. But anyway, you know, I'm one of these coaches that a little bit, I give a little bit, but I always, the first people I looked at after a match when the kid won or lost, I knew where 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 just how how it how it how it kind of appeared to me but i coached more from motivational point of view from the parents point of view than i did the kid because i knew the kid was going to be a parent someday he's going to be the same thing so what the heck it's pretty amazing pretty amazing so when you look back on your drive the drive that you had as a competitor how much did it change after your sister was killed how much of a factor was that it never it's still a factor it hasn't't let up. I mean, it's hard to... I mean, when your dad... When you know who killed your sister

within 30 minutes of finding out that she's murdered, and you don't know anything else, did you just know she was murdered in her house? They found her dead. And you,'t know anything else. Did you just know she was murdered in her house? They 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's not going to hold me back. And anger.

And anger. But mostly from my dad's point of view, it view is anger probably more than me but you felt guilt i felt more guilt probably yeah my dad it hurt my dad but and my mom but uh unbelievably it's just so strange that a 16 year old can do that and not only that he could do that but that he knew he was going to kill somebody he was an adopted kid and he had been in a lot of trouble but mostly just

not that kind of trouble but he knew eventually he was going to do that yeah he said he knew he was going to kill somebody he just didn't know who yeah that's so crazy and then he repented at the end He just didn't know who. Yeah. That's so crazy. So crazy to hear.

And then he repented at the end, you know, sometime towards the end of his jail time. What was it like knowing that that guy is just rotting away in a jail cell somewhere? Your whole life, your whole life as a competitor, your whole life as a coach, your whole life as a man. I know 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, you know, I don't think the peace really came to me until he repented and he said that.

You know, by saying that meant a lot to me my mom and dad were already gone and hopefully they they know that and that they can feel it so how much of a factor was that though for for you as a competitor i mean have you ever thought obviously you would have much preferred your sister to be alive but have you ever thought about what you if how much different you were because of that anger and because of that guilt 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's kind of like, you know, talking about people that are just being ridiculous. You know, the way I feel.

I feel they're being ridiculous. And somehow I have to sit back and say, how can I get through this without saying that they're ridiculous? And they are, you know. But at the same time, They're ridiculous, and they are. But at the same time, I try to feel.

I try to have a little feeling. Try to have, even though it's difficult. It's difficult. But with my sister, it makes a difference today in my life. For people that don't understand, like maybe people that don't follow wrestling i just want to let them know like in a world of extreme athletes like the world of wrestling you were very unusual and that you stood out you were one of the few people ever in the history of the olympics to not have a single point scored upon you i I mean, that's just phenomenal when you're dealing with world-class wrestlers from all these different countries

that are also training the same way you are, just knowing the Olympics is the pinnacle of the sport. And for you to go there and not just win, but not get a single point scored on you, is just extraordinary. That kind of intensity you know what really helped me not knowing it i didn't nobody told me that i had six matches at the olympics and there were nine minutes each unless you pinned them and i pinned half of them so i pinned three and i decision three and i end up winning this final score on the three that I didn't pin I beat him 29 to nothing total scores but but it was one

of these things that had I known it would have got into my head right and I probably would have lost a point or two 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 Farrell, Bill Wick. These are all great coaches. And as around good people, I had some wrestlers. We had three wrestlers that were on the Iowa State team and had another wrestler that trained with us. So we had 40% of the freestyle wrestling team, the Peterson brothers.

You know, so, you know, we just, nobody said, hey, Gable, you realize going into your final match that you're unscored upon? 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, you know, it's maybe, so, 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 if i felt a certain way about this guy i'm just maybe i was just happy he showed up you know i maybe or 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 lot that I felt good about, well, and again, it's bad to say that that you have different standards but you know sometimes isn't that part of being a coach though it's also part of being a dad right 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 had these bannock 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 blow like if you play pickup basketball throw the basketball out there play pickup just, 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 headgear out there, 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 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 in wrestling, it's a bear at practice. And how do you let one guy have another, like do something different than the rest? at practice. And how do you let one guy have another, like,

do something different than 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. I had a coach named Jay Robinson who was from Oklahoma State. He was on our team. He had a lot of different philosophies we talked about, 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 response is can we maybe hold him back a little bit from a standpoint i'm not maybe let him come to all the practices you know because every practice is broke down most of them are broke down into 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 the drilling. He was good on live wrestling. Let's wrestle.

And so that was about 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 him better than I do because you're 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 0 that he should only come for the second hour of practice because that first hour was a waste of time for him. And notice when he had to come to the first hour, his second hour wasn't as good. We had noticed that. And so they voted.

Easy decision. Two-time national champ. Third place finisher. Olympic champ. 1984. The team made a good decision. Wow. That's how you make decisions sometimes.

You get the team on your side. What was it like for you making that transition from being a competitor to being a coach? Was it difficult or was it natural? Well, I already had a lot of good. As a leader. Yeah, I already had that from the YMCA, from all my coaches, from all my, even on academics. I wasn't a lot of good as a leader yeah I already had that from the YMCA from all my coaches from all my even on academics I wasn't a good student it took a wrestling coach to you know algebra class that was the algebra

teacher to get me to become a good student but you know it it was one of these things what was the question again so what was it like transitioning from being a competitor to being a coach and whether or not it was easy or difficult i'll tell you what i wasn't going to be as good as i turned out to be because unless it went the way it did you know i i spent four years as an assistant two years at iowa state as a grad assistant and didn't really do anything but train there for the Worlds and Olympics. But then once I got to the University of Iowa, the head coach was Gary Kirtlemyer. And it was his first year as a head coach. He'd been the assistant. 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 McCuskey, who was there, and he was kind of just settling out his years. And so Gary had actually acted as the head coach. So he had a lot of clout. He had a lot of knowledge, and he'd been a head coach. So he brought me in, and he taught me unbelievable stuff. But here's what's unbelievable about what he taught 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 let me run a couple practices so he'd run a couple then i'd run a couple then he'd run a couple two weeks after we'd been in the season started he calls me and we because we lived we had the same office and he comes over and he sat down he goes you know gable i've 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 uh the the training of the athletes you're going to do the conversation you're going to do what 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. First year ever as a head coach in college. And he gave me within two weeks, and I just got there back from the Olympics, and he gave me full-time coaching in the wrestling room. But guess what? And then he goes, but you know what? I've already noticed 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.

And then he says, I'm going to teach you how to recruit. You're going to go with me when we go recruit. 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 these different things i'm going to teach you how to fundraise i'm going to i'm going to teach you how to talk outside the wrestling room what all these things that are important and he said he says you know i don't probably not going to coach too long i kind of want to move up in administration so if things go well here for the next three or four years you know i'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 got maybe seventh or eighth the first year. Then we went to fourth or fifth. Then we won the Big Tens for the first time in a long time. Third year, we won the Nationals too. Then. Third year, we won the Nationals, too. Then the 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 at Iowa State. I'm training for the Olympics, and it's 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 favored to win the gold medal in the olympics for 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'd 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, but he's out there in New York working, and I'm working with him a little bit about you getting a job over in Ames, Iowa. So he went to work for Dr. Harold Nichols' business, who was the head coach of Ames, who was my coach. And he went to work there because he had a good reputation and he did a good job on that type of business.

But University of Iowa, Gary Kirtlemeyer, sent him over as a spy. To follow me, to see what I not just to see how good I was but mostly to see how they could land me over at the University of Iowa as his assistant

so he was over there the whole time and you know there's all these things that were going on uh they were telling me don't you know you can he come over and he talked to me and i said i really didn't want to make a decision now because i want to win the olympics and all this kind of stuff i don't want to be bothered by coaching right now so so they said 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 i in at ames so it's kind of interesting so they they get me to he's got a report back home so all of a sudden he says he calls says, you know, what do you think? I said, well, you said I didn't have to know until after the Olympics. And he goes, well, just give me an inkling. I said, I really don't know. And so he says, okay. I want to call you back, though, but, you know, go ahead, just whatever you're doing. And he waited like three days, called me back, and told me to take it or leave it. And I had no idea.

I hadn't even 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 have to know by tomorrow. So guess what I do? I call my mom and dad. And I called my dad.

My dad, I said, Dad, he put this pressure on me. He said, I have to take it by tomorrow. What should I do, Dad? He kind of hesitates. He goes, take it. I said, take it? Put mom on the phone. I said, Mom, I'm in this position. And she goes, yeah, I know what it is. I go, you know? She goes, take it. I said, no, I'll call you later. So I call my friends, and I call my friends, and they all said, take it. You got to hold everybody. But I had no idea what was going on.

So the next day, I called and took. The next day, I had no choice. I hadn't even thought about it. And so I thought I was being an idiot and I had not taken 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 Waterloo, Iowa.

And so he said, had you signed anything? I said, no. He said, well, if you haven't signed anything, 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 kind of the leaders on the teams, really liked the kids on the teams. And I had an effect on them. They had an effect on me. They helped me out. They helped me learn how to drink beer maybe. But, you know, it was one of these things that 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 at Iowa, 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 you're as good as I've been around state championship high school teams I've been around college teams I've been around state championship high school teams. I've been around college teams. 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, Kurtlmeyer, 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 Big Ten and 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. He's saying that to you? Oh, this is the head guy. I know, but still, you're Dan Gable.

Yeah, but not Dan, not the coach. People didn't know I was going to be a good coach. Yeah, but still, you understand wrestling. People tell me today that when I came over as an athlete, they said, we never thought you could be a good coach. People didn't know I was going to be a good coach. Yeah, but still you understand wrestling. 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've got to remember, that's the beginning of my coaching.

I understand that, but don't you think part of what being a coach is is inspiring the athletes, and there's no one that's going to be more inspirational to an athlete than someone who is literally one of the greatest of all time at the sport. There's a thing about athletes when they're in the presence of greatness. It inspires them to raise their own level. When you're in the presence of someone who has done what you aspire to do, and they're one of those people that's achieved what you aspire to achieve,

and they're one of the legends of the sport, that alone is very valuable. It's incredibly valuable because for athletes, they live and die in their own mind. You know, there's, there's physical ability, which is a huge component, but a lot of guys have physical ability. There's a lot of good genetics when you get to a top team or a top, when you, when you get to, whether it's mixed martial arts fighters or boxers or whatever, there's a lot of really good athletes. But when someone can be inspirational when someone is like you know if you're getting coached if you're a boxer and getting coached by Marvin Hagler that means something you know it's it there's more to it than just the technical aspects of them showing you

how to how to succeed there's something about having a guy like you as a coach, it's insanely valuable to an athlete. I mean, you, you can't, you can't put a value on it because it's, it's inspirational. It's fuel. You know, I, 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 they, well, I didn't really have any credentials at that time. As a coach? No, as an athlete even, that sophomore year. I hadn't won anything.

So I can see why they didn't jump on board. I did have credentials as an athlete coming into coaching. But what did you write down? I'm going to tell you the story here. as an athlete coming into coaching. What'd you write down? I'm going to tell you the story here. So the story is, so we're now at practice. I'm running practice. Gertlmeyer's 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 into practice and when he comes into practice he he called me over or he called colonel my over and then they called me over and they talked to us and he said that there's been a gas leak in a pipe in the building and uh 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. Gas leak. 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 shut it off. It's okay, but they're making us do this. So you got your choice, stay or go. And I looked at Kurt Amari.

I said, we're not going. 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 Kurt Amari looked at me like funny because he'd been around he'd known the guys but we had recruited eight new athletes but were being recruited with me as the assistant and me in the conversation. So we went and pulled the team apart and said, guys, here's the situation. Now we've been only in two or three weeks into practice. Gas League, 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 going to 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. Oh, no. See, that's what I was dealing with that I didn't understand as a coach. Never in my life had I been around non-championship teams, whether it be high school or college

or the Olympic type state. So this was new to me. And Kurt 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, you know, it's a process. And the Kirtlemeyer goes to me,

the coach, he says, you know, Gable, we're on a, like I said, we're on a four-year plan to win the Nationals. And I looked at him and I said, we'll win it this year. And he said, I think you better, you know, that's a great goal, but it's going to 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 was the fact that these athletes that had already been there had been accustomed to a lower level of strength? Absolutely.

And they really hadn't had the success. And wrestling practice is hard. I'm going to tell you something about jiu-jitsu. There's one team, the Henzo Gracie team out of new york city that is uh they they dominate in particular the guys that are coached by this guy named john donahue and they were in town this past weekend for a jujitsu match there's a guy named gordon

ryan he's the pound for pound greatest of all time all time. He has a hard time finding matches because not only does he submit people, but he tells – he made a – let me show you something. He was competing against this guy named Wagner Rocha, Wagner Hocha, and Wagner is a top-level jiu-jitsu guy. He's a little smaller than Gordon, but he's still a top level guy. He's an elite Brazilian jujitsu black belt. And Gordon is competing against him and puts in an envelope how he's going to beat him. And he gives it to the commentators before the match.

And he says, open this after the commentators before the match and he says open this after the match and then he puts a triangle and he says who's next and he he taps him with a triangle in the match i was there it was amazing he just completely dominated him brutalized him waited for his time and then tapped him with a triangle. Afterwards, I take John Donaher and Craig Jones and Lex Friedman. You know Lex. We all go out to dinner, and we talk. And I said to John Donaher, we're talking about how they train and what they do. And he was telling me about athletes that come and train with them,

and they go through one brutal training session, and he says, I'll see you tomorrow. And he goes, you guys train like this two days in a row? And he goes, yeah, two days in a row. And he goes, so some of them come the next day and some of them don't. And the ones that come the next day, he goes, okay, I'll see you tomorrow. And he goes, you guys train like this three days in a row? And he goes, we train like this seven days in a row. I go, you train seven days in a row? And he goes, we train like this seven days in a row. I go, you train seven days in a row? And he goes, seven days in a row.

I go, you don't believe in rest days? And he goes, no. He goes, if you're really tired, train light. You'll have an active recovery. This team is dominating jiu-jitsu. When I say dominating, I mean, it's an understatement. Guys are living in Puerto Rico right now to train with these guys because they left New York City, Dan, because New York City has these draconian lockdown laws that are similar to Los Angeles,

where they shut down all the jujitsu gyms. They shut down everything. They shut down restaurants, comedy clubs. And so people are trying to scramble and figure out how to survive. So these guys out of the Donaher Death Squad at a Henzo Gracie school, they moved to Puerto Rico. They moved to a fucking island in the middle of the ocean so they could train jujitsu and compete. And people are flying and moving to Puerto Rico to train with them. When they get there and they find out it's seven days a week, there's no rest days. The rest day is you train lighter.

Like if you just go there and just don't try as hard if you need a day off. But we'll see you tomorrow. And these guys are dominating. And there's a thing about that that you see in wrestling that just a lot of people don't want to accept the workload. They don't want to accept the workload that's required to be elite. You know that better than anybody. Well said, actually, because I'm an everyday guy.

Every day. I don't miss a day. Seven days a week. Seven days a week. The only time I've ever missed, as far as in the hospital, on my back and couldn't move, and then I was probably trying to crawl out and do push-ups or something. If I had my hips getting replaced or something. Or I'd have a rope where I'd pull myself up or something.

And to this day, you still do that? I have seven days a week. Seven days a week. But here's the thing. I'm the master in recovery. So what you mentioned is what I'm good at. Yeah, obviously, I work extremely hard, or 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. Well, I'm sorry because I messed up, but I went with the rules at that time. But if there's something that changes that's better, I'll go with that. And so to me, it's like I know if I'm really sore, I know I can warm up long enough where I will not be sore. It might take an extra hour. So if I'm unbelievably sore, I'm going to warm up for an extra hour. Two hours of warm up.

Whatever it is. Whatever it takes to where I feel good. I'm going to get rid of my soreness. I also know that when practice is 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 recovery? Mostly heat, mostly ice, mostly massage. You're a big sauna guy, right? Big sauna guy. Me as well. I love it. I do it every day. I do it every day. Lately, I haven't been able to do it for about a week because

the place I'm at in Florida right now, they're putting a new one in. It's kind of being constructed. What temperature do you like to do it at? Whatever it is, as long as it's hot. I really like some water over the rocks. And I like probably a minimum 170, but I could go 220. I could do, I mean, I can do whatever.

You know, I've been in saunas. I accidentally walked in one at 330 one time. 330? Well, accidentally. But because it was one of these wood burners. And I didn't have a, and I didn't look at the thing, and I jumped in there. It almost caught me on fire. But I turned around and got out, and I let it go down to 260 before I got into it.

260? But I don't. That's roast beef. No, I know. So I don't. Where you like it. It depends on how much time I have. But I'm comfortable with 170.

I'm comfortable with 170 i'm comfortable 180 190 i'm comfortable if it's really you know if i if i put more water on it i can go in 165 or something but but uh i do not want to walk in asana and have to uh work to sweat did you learn so i want to recover yeah did you learn this uh this from foreign athletes in other countries? I learned it from a guy that I trained with from my hometown named Bob Buzzard, who was about six or seven years older than me, who was a great wrestler at Iowa State. He was on the Olympic team too. He was a local kid. But at that time, he probably, he showed me, he took me into one of them and showed me how, I think we probably used it for losing weight then.

But over time, eventually, we learned how to use it for recovery. Because once you're done with practice and you go to heat right away if you want to, you don't have to do anything. 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 a cold shower. You go to a cold shower. And then probably go back into another heat again. And you go back into cold. And I'm telling you, after we get done practicing Olympic training, a lot of times I would come back. I'd be the last guy to leave practice, and I'd get there after everybody had been done eating

and everything, and I'd go eat, and I'd be about an hour after I'd been eating, and I'd say, guys, I feel pretty good. I'm going to go out for a hard run. Anybody want to go with me? Gable, 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 sitting with me that hour 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 but they would you know they probably skipped uh some of that suffering. The suffering. Well, actually, the suffering was probably whoever's getting beat up on the mat. But then it seems to me like if you have that temperature right and that humidity right, it's just unbelievable relaxing. And there's proof. There's proof in the pudding right now that 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. Yeah, it's legit. Yeah. So do you do ice baths as well? Yes. Yes.

I do those. I love doing them in lakes. I have a minute. Every place I go in my life, except right now at the Florida condo, they don't have a sauna. They got one there. It's just not put together yet, but it's going to be put together. But every place I go, I have an Airdyne.

That's a bike that's good. Because my joints, it's too hard to run. I do more damage. You've got to be know as you're getting older and and and i got i got a workout room and i usually always have uh uh saunas in my 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 airdyne there and i got got weights, and I got a chin-in bar. So I go to Minnesota Cabin.

I got a little garage by the lake that's got an airdyne. 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, a wood burner. I don't go anywhere without it. I do a lot of homework before I travel. You know, I do have a swimming pool here. Swam this morning.

I'm going to work out when I leave here. I'd love to jump in a hot sauna or steam, but they don't have one because it's shut down right now on just these two days. 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. What do you think about people that don't think you should do that?

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. Sometimes you got to overdo things, but you really don't want to do something that's going to hurt you. So 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 at the beginning of my career. Some of these days that I took these kids up on Carver Hawkeye Arena, and it's about a quarter mile along the top of the arena, It's concrete. I ran the hell out of them. 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 longevity. But you only go with what you know and you know 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? 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. They took the cartilage out of your knees? Well, yeah. You say that like it's normal. Well, yeah. Back in 1973, there was no function. At the University of Iowa hospitals, there was no function yet.

That's what they thought. Yeah. hospitals, there was no function yet. That's what they thought. Yeah, well, they just didn't know. Yeah, that's crazy. So 1974, I go back with the other knee, and I go, well, are you just going to take this one out too? Because it hadn't affected me yet. And this was while you're still competing.

No, I'm done. I'm done. I stopped after 72, basically. So your knees had been destroyed just from training? Well, I don't know. They weren't too bad because I kept, you know. Well, they're taking your cartilage out. Well, they took them out one side. But not meniscus, just the cartilage?

Well, that's what I meant, meniscus. Oh. That's what I meant. Okay. Okay, the meniscus. Okay. They took the meniscus out. But they can also tie it down. When there'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, well, give me the simplest well we'll just we'll just take it out so the next year you had no meniscus 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 well 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 and in the long run it'd 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 it's just a matter of when you do it. Does the tie down work? Yeah. My left knee is pretty good. My right knee is hurting me right now. I got a Baker cyst behind it right now.

But it's not that bad. But it causes me to. Have you ever thought about getting it resurfaced you know i don't know yet i'm not it's not that bad yeah i haven't jumped you know when i jumped out of bed and i couldn't walk anymore well i'm not there yet with my knees and even the doctor told me that about a year ago. Same doctor did my hips. I went in because I was a little concerned. And he goes, you know, I remember when you came in, you're not there yet. He said, you can wait a little longer.

I think there might be science every year is a little better, a little change. So the longer you can wait, the better. Especially medical science. So as long as you don't, aren't in extreme pain. Right. You know, I can handle it. I can handle it.

So have you ever gotten any stem cell shots or anything like that? I think so. You think so? I think I got those on my shoulders before. Your shoulder's bad too? Didn't I tell you I had 22 surgeries? No, you left that out. You told me you had six hips. No, I had six hips and I had four. So I had 22 surgeries. No, you left that out. You told me you had six hips.

Well, I had six hips, so I had four new hips. Yeah. The doctor said last year, my hips have been in for 10 years now, the second set. Yeah. And he said they look really good. Oh, that's nice. But I kept wrestling and pounding on the first set,

and I adjusted. Smarter. So even after the hips, you're running and doing everything else? You were at the time? I did for the next eight years. And then you had to get them replaced? Yeah, again, yeah. Well, they're better with those too, right? Yeah, they are a different product.

Definitely different products, all that. 22 shoulder surgeries? No, no. I mean, if you add them up you know you got i got five five six cuts on my knees i um uh you know i have six hip four hips i i have uh two or three uh lip surgeries you know you know what what was i didn't wear a mouthpiece right all i had to wear is mouthpiece i would never had my hip on my mouth but but that was you know and i finally after about five years of coaching they said when you 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 you bite your tongue a lot right so the mouthpieces really prevent a lot of that stuff so in wrestling headgear and mouthpiece are really critical. They really are. They really are. I have a lot of friends in jiu-jitsu that they love having cauliflower ear. I don't know if – you may love it, but you know what, it's – I don't have it.

I've always worn headgear. Yeah. So I always wore headgear. It messes with the way you hear. It does. It does. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And a little bit, they stick out once in a while, too. You know, they like it because it looks cool. A lot of guys do. Well, they think it's your trademark. Yes. But you know what? Some girls don't like them. Those girls are useless.

Okay, okay. My wife doesn't mind it. I'm sure she doesn't But I mean there's a There's a function to the shape of your ear It's like it helps you hear better I don't want to have problems hearing No you don't

I have a little bit of cauliflower Like in little spots and stuff But I just think it's There's a reason why your ear is designed that way Yeah No you're right You're right No I think a headgear for wrestling is pretty damn good.

And you can't wear them. Mouthpiece is important too. Yeah, and you can't wear a headgear in Olympic wrestling. Well. Unless you get a doctor's order. That's just competing. That makes sense to me. I understand that.

I want to talk to you about the difference between the way the Russians approached wrestling versus the way the Americans approached wrestling because I know that you are a big fan of the Russians and their technique. When did you realize that they had a different approach? How do you feel about that? I was just a goer. At the beginning, I i just a tough guy you know just throw him 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 wrestle each other 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 it a little bit and watched a practice from the Russians and the coaches, you realize they were technical 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? Really? Yeah.

I mean, I was around them a little bit. I went to the 1970 World Championships in Canada. They were 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 practices and watched them. 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 later on, I guess, too. I would follow this guy. I'd follow the teams around and watch them. 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 to Owings. Again, I lost to Owings.

That really helped me become more of a guy that pay attention to details, pay attention to details, coaching details. Don't get caught up on this. And I also kind of said, maybe I've got to get better too. Maybe I've 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. Sometimes I followed them right after matches,

right into their locker rooms or right back where their team was staying, and they just thought I was the guy that was there. They didn't really know that I was doing spying. I was just surprised that you know that how things were different a lot than how I was myself trained but I know that I knew that when I lost that match to Owings I didn't know how to finish a match even though I didn't know how to start it on that one because I wasn't ready but I knew that I didn't know how to strategically finish a match. How 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 in stalling,

even though you don't like the word. But in order to win. When I was in the finals of the Worlds and the Olympics, I could have probably scored more. But you're taking a risk. Because the only way you're going to lose, they had rules. You could actually lose. You could get beat, but you could actually lose and win

and stuff like that. It's not so much that way now, but back when I wrestled, there were. 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 holds on him. You don't have to risk for scoring, but you've got to tie him up. It's kind of like you learn defense.

I didn't really have much of a defense until I got beat by Owings, and then I realized that I've got to learn how to finish, and I've got to have a better defense and how to score from a defense because I was just offense-minded. 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 that? 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 about a minute to win the match easily. I was ahead 8-3, and so I didn't take any risk, and I won solid. So in the Olympic finals, the only way he could beat me,

actually he could take me down and still beat me, but the only way he could beat me is he had to pin me to beat me. So when I'm up in the last minute or two, I just kind of tied him up and stayed with him and didn't um uh 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 at one side, but if you only are one-sided, you are, what happens if a guy comes out and he's all a one-sided wrestler, just the side that you're not good at? You're in trouble. So wrestlers, you know, we have to be aware of that. And you have to, like I shoot a high crotch really good to one side. I have a high crotch to the other side, not quite as good. But I have a single leg to the other side that's really good. You know, that type of thing.

Or I have a fireman carry to this side. And I have a two-on-one foot sweep to this side. So I've got to balance of how I wrestle because you just don't know what you're coming up against, and you never know where you're going to be in a flurry to be able to score. What did you see about the way the Russians trained? What was different? 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

you were actually handpicked 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 alike you know there was a few that kind of broke that wave and and showed that they can also go the other way too uh 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 here's what you do boom boom boom boom we prepare for american you don't know what you get right 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 didn't we don't have that we sometimes just chose to to be honest with you wrestling was my best sport even though i i did other sports until 10th grade i did swimming until seventh grade did uh baseball football all through seventh eighth and ninth grade ninth grade, along with wrestling. Played basketball, even at the Y, in some events. And it's just they handpicked people and put them in their best, what they can do best at. So that's why they're talented. They're talented.

They had some talent. So they were good to begin with. Exactly. They were people that were designed for They're talented. They're talented. They had some talent. So they were good to begin with. Exactly. They were people that were designed for wrestling. Exactly. Built for wrestling. But what was the difference in the technical aspect of their training as opposed to the way the Americans trained? They were technical as hell.

And by that I mean they would hit solid repetitions of live action with one side and not the other. So they would do a lot. They might go out 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, nobody might not hit a move because we're going tough. 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. Because we learned from them. I think so. Yeah. I think so, yeah. And how did they figure it out? You know, 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 communism it goes back to the communism i think still today yeah they might be listening here well they're definitely listening well we're trying it is that what we're trying to do in america we're trying to listen to us in america yes i mean well they want to listen to us yeah but yeah, but not surveillance. Right. So we don't want that. We don't want that, do we? No, we don't.

No. I'm very nervous about that. I'm pretty outspoken about that. 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 for me. No, I don't either. And that's how it goes.

As soon as you start listening to people, then it becomes an incentive not to talk or you get punished for saying the wrong things. And then next thing you know, we're living in fucking China. It's a slippery slope. It's real. And the government is supposed to work for the people.

We're not supposed to work for them. They're not supposed to be our dominators. 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 Israelis. And so they killed a bunch of people. And they had no security at the Olympics. But then they 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. In 1980 Olympics, we're in Moscow. And the 1980 US team did not go to the Olympics, none of us, because 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 over there and rush and win. But in 1984, they didn't come, and 12 other countries didn't come,

mostly all communists. And so, you know what? What good did that do? And this week, I just did an editorial. I did a column and told them it really didn't do any good because we're thinking about boycotting China. Now, everybody's got their opinion, but I think it showed from 80 and 84 what good did it do.

I think we can do good. And so even though, and the only sentence that I said that really said that I wasn't just sports crazy was I said, if safety is of concern, then 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. Can you believe it? So why'd they do that? Because it's scary. That was the most important word, the sentence I had.

I kind of hid it in there, and I figured so it wouldn't be a big deal, but they took that sentence out. do you have a social media account um my my daughter's do it for me I don't pay attention to it well that's a the beautiful thing about social media is that you could put something like that on Instagram and they couldn't take it down you know they wouldn't have any say in it yeah I'll probably have to do that because it's I haven't had the reaction yet I haven't had the reaction yet yeah you'll have to do that because I haven't had the reaction yet. I haven't had the reaction yet. Yeah, you'll have to do that. You can't trust those people. You have to be able to express yourself 100% on filter.

They can disagree with you or agree with you. That's fine. But they can't change your words. If they change your words, we've got a real problem. So anyway, that's fine. Did you ever see the documentary Icarus? No, I haven't. It's a really interesting documentary by this guy named Brian Fogle,

and it's all about what happened was it was a very fortunate documentary in that he was making a documentary about one thing, and it became about a different thing. He was making a documentary about a bike race. He was doing a bicycle race, and he was going to do it clean one year, and then he was going to get doped up on performance-enhancing drugs and do it the second year and see what the difference is. And he hired Gregory Rechenkov, who was the head of Russian anti-doping at the time.

And he was explaining to him what he was going to have to take and how to take it, this and that, along the way while they were doing this. So he filmed the first race. And then in the year leading up to the second race, the Sochi Olympic scandal happened. And Gregory Cherenkov was a part of that, where he explained he had to leave the country. He escaped and came to America because he was being implicated in this whole scandal, where they were taking the urine from the athletes. They were opening up the supposedly, there was some container that couldn't be opened, but the Russians had figured out how to open it.

They would take out the dirty urine and replace it with clean urine. So they doped up their entire team, and Gregory was explaining how they doped up the entire team, everyone except the figure skaters. They found that the figure skaters, when they doped up them, the fine motor skills, there was no benefit, and the females became too manly. But it's a fascinating documentary where it shows you the lengths

that some countries will go to cheat. It's crazy. No, it's unbelievable. And I think it goes back to that government control a lot too, I think. For sure. Because they're a tool. The athletes are a tool. They felt that sport

shows your power. Yes. And that's the power of the country. Yes. Just how dominant you are. It's crazy. So in fact,

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 Withrow. Is it a film or a documentary? No, it's a film. It's an actual film, and it just got kind of, but it went, it's been on Google.

It's been around, but it's a little bit, it's got a little bit of a, But it's a little bit, it's got a little bit of a, it's about a guy that was a champion wrestler. And they brought me in at the end just because somebody looked at the wrestling and said it wasn't very good. And so they just said, can you come in and look and see what we can do to help the wrestling part of it. So I flew out to, I don't remember where I flew out to, but I think it was Vegas. 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.

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 got kicked out of the Olympics after he won them because of steroids in America, and why don't we make him one of your kids? And you're doing the announcing, and you guys will meet again. So it's a redemption story, and it's really good, actually. And it's been out for a lot of people have really liked it.

And he's in negotiation now to have overseas rights and all this kind of stuff glenn withrow is i think has i got the last champion up there yes yeah that's the name of the movie but but um it's um it's about exactly that uh and how a guy comes home small a small little town in the United States, and I'm not sure if it's on the Pacific Coast somewhere, like maybe Washington I think it was, where he came home. And the town hadn't seen him for years because his mom died. So he comes back to sell her house. And when he comes back to sell her house, believe it or not,

the wrestling coach dies and they some they want him to stay and to be the coach so he actually stays and beats the coach and there's it gets into conflicts and all of a sudden he comes through with this conflict you know and makes makes him makes it right but it's it it right. But it's a really good movie, and it's about exactly that. You know, it's just because, you know, in our sport, or any sport, there's this book out, and I couldn't, I don't know what the name of the book was, but it said, like, overseas in these places 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 where you actually took the poll at. It was, again, it was this poll in this area of the world that probably needs help. Deeply impoverished.

Yeah. Yeah. That is a thing about the Olympics in other countries is that it's a way out of poverty for some people. Whereas in our world, in our country, it's almost in some ways a way into poverty. Because these athletes, they're dedicating their whole life in many ways. You've got your guys like Michael Phelps who go on and wins gold medals

and has all these endorsements and becomes wealthy because of that. But how many athletes don't? I mean, they dedicate this enormous amount of time to a sport, and it doesn't pay off for them financially at all. But yet the Olympics reaps incredible rewards for it. They make billions of dollars every time the Olympics rolls around. The networks, these different countries, the windfall is incredible, but not for the athletes. It's a weird scam in a lot of ways because it's

an amateur sport and it is an amateur sport but only for the people that are the most important for the athletes it's not amateur for the networks it's professional there's a lot of money involved a lot of money and that money does not get distributed to the athletes for the most part well it didn't go to me at all like Like I said, my dad had to pay 500 bucks for me to wrestle in the Olympics. But, you know, I'm the kind of guy, again, a little bit different between me and you. Again, you know, you're pretty hardcore on this stuff.

But for me, it's like I do it, I look over time how I can do well. And so, you know, it's like, it's like, uh, uh, like I'm, I've been hired with ASICS for how many years? I said 1978. So 22 and 21, 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 start, and I signed my first, my coaching job was $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. And I don't handle any money. I don't like to get caught in that mental. It drives me crazy. I've got enough issues. So my wife's saying, well, I don't know if we can pay these bills on this new house that we're living in. And so I remember my dad, when I 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 when I was 29, and I 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 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 me some kind of a plan in my life when I was young? He goes, yeah, I did. I go, is there any money in that plan, Dad?

I'm 29. Actually, I'm 28, 27 or 28, first-year head coach. Bought a new house. I'm married. Probably got maybe one kid. And I said, 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 should have out the latest what they send me and he said I should have this sent to you anyway no I'm because I you know I just never turn 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 your payment checks on the YMCA then then you went to work for me and then you went to work for Martins and Construction then went to work for Martins and Construction, then went to work for Wheeler Lumber Company, you know, 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 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 yeah and i just looked at my i said thanks dad that's all i need to know i mean i don't 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 and that's what is so important and so valuable for me is that I had so many good things 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 and that anger into something amazing. You turn that guilt and that anger into something amazing. So, you know, it's just like right now. You know, it's over all these years I've been working for ASICS. You know, I got a beer. We're drinking beer called Gable. You know, I got a nutrition gold. But you're Dan Gable.

There's so many other athletes. I understand. I didn't get the money from the, you know. I get it. But I had to go out. I get it. You got the endorsements. But after 35 years of winning, you can do some of these things. Yes, you can.

You got the shoes. Yeah, you can. Yeah, exactly. What drives me crazy is that the networks are making so much money. No, I agree totally. It drives me nuts because I think it's a wild scam that the athletes aren't compensated and insane amounts of money are being generated by them competing. And I get there's a purity.

It's heading more that way because of people like you, though. I hope so. No, I'm honest because you're talking one way and a lot of people are listening and a lot of people are listening. And a lot of people hear. And some people aren't educated on this stuff. It's just not fair. That's the problem. It's not just that the athletes don't deserve the endorsements.

They do deserve the endorsements and more. They deserve the endorsements if they win. They deserve the endorsements if they become someone like dan gable but the problem is the networks are making all the fucking money while these people are giving their life to compete and the networks are treating it like a professional sport where they don't have to pay the athletes that's what it is it's not just a regular professional sport either. It's the biggest professional sport because it's international. It's a gigantic world event every two years. Every two years where they have the Olympic Games, it's a gigantic world event. And the people that make the most money, the people that broadcast it on television,

not the actual athletes. You're not broadcasting. You're not producing anything. The athletes are producing the entertainment. The entire reason why people are tuning in is to see exceptional athletes perform. They know they've dedicated their life to this. They know that there's years and years and years of toil and sweat and grind. And here they are. And you're going to put a camera on it. And because you put a camera on it, you're making all the money? Fuck you.

That's crazy. That's crazy to me. That's crazy to me, and it's disgusting. It doesn't make any sense. So you obviously have answers for that, right? Well, they should distribute some of the money to the athletes. A lot of it. Okay, well.

Same way they do with the NBA. Same way they do with the athletes. A lot of it. Okay, well. Same way they do with the NBA. Same way they do with the NFL. There should be money distributed to those athletes. And I guarantee you we'll have better athletes. Because you know in other countries they compensate their athletes. You know they compensate their athletes in Russia. They compensate their athletes in China. Not as well as they should, but they do.

And a lot of these countries when you're talking about high-level athletes they pay them to train and they take care of all their expenses and they make sure that they're properly prepared because they're representing their country in our country they rely on corporations like great corporations like ASICS or whatever the corporation is that that can you know to compensate these athletes after they're done competing. And I think we both are actually on the same page. I think the difference is, 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 i take this one and and instead of really getting compensated up front by what you're talking about i'm able to because i've stayed in front of the public yes yeah and and it's hard to do that sometimes i mean it's hard to go from an olympic athlete to automatically being a great coach or being a you go to work in some other business i mean you just don't see where it shines but i've been able to do that and so it's a little easier in fact right now um uh a feature film possibly i just got a contract all these things are great dan yeah the problem is money is being generated and it's not being distributed to

the athletes and the only reason it's being generated at all is because the athletes and their performances but they don't get any of it that to me is criminal they're working on it i think a little bit they should and the ncaa too right they should yeah that's a lot the amount of money those those teams those those colleges earn those universities earn from because of the fact their sports teams are successful their programs are successful it's crazy it's just crazy to me it's crazy it's just one of those legacy institutions that's been around for so long that we just accepted the fact the athletes get ripped off that's what it is there's no olympics without the athletes if they all all said, you know what?

I want money. How much do you guys make? You're making billions of dollars? And we get how much? We get zero? The fuck out of here. You know, I love your saying that, even though I don't say it. I know.

That's why I'm saying it so loud. Right. So what I want to say to the athletes is let's make our own breaks. Don't depend on luck. Let's work extra hard. Let's do this. Because you've got to do both. Yes. You've 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 an Olympic gold medal, you're pretty young usually. An athlete's not going to win an Olympic gold medal unless you've got a different kind of the ancient Olympics or something, the old timers. And then that's not the valuable

one. What's the oldest athlete that ever won the Olympics? I don't know. I think we've had some in the 40s that wrestled but wow barely and one I think 41 or two or something that's incredible yeah it's just 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 so but uh no no that's good that um you know so that's why's why it's like me here. I'm selling Asics shoes.

I've got a Gable beer. I'm glad that you're doing all these things and you deserve that and more. I know, but what I'm saying is I have to do it. Yeah. I've got to keep doing it. This still happens. I don't mind working. I got to keep doing it. Right. This still happens. I don't mind working. I like it.

And it helps our sport, you know, maybe not the beer 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. And this guy making a movie right now, you know, they sell at championship video you know all these places and this guy's like making a movie right now you know i i just they sent me a a contract and i looked at the contract and i'm gonna tell you oh 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 but so uh you know maybe you're enhancing me a little bit here. You can maybe get my price up a little bit better. I hope so. I can only hope so. We just did three hours, Dan Gable. We've done three hours already? Yeah. Well, we're just starting.

No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Because these guys over here, they don't want to work overtime. So like I said, I'm the first to arrive, last to leave. That's how you've become who you are. And the hardest working guy there. But that doesn't mean everybody is. That doesn't mean everybody is.

And I already told you that I'm probably the only coach in the country to let a guy come half a practice. But the team made it the team made it i think you understood the unique psychology of that one individual well you need to know your subjects yeah you need to know your subject that's wrestling and then you need to know your subjects and that's your wrestlers and uh obviously you do a good job and a great job with your with your with your experience here i don't know if you call it a podcast or not. Yeah, that's what we call it.

But you do a lot of work, and you've worked your way here. And so that's how people are. I'm amazed that all these people that are just listening, will listen to this. I'm amazed, too. It's confusing. Well, I don't know if it's confusing. It is to me because I just live, too. Yeah. It's confusing. Well, I don't know if it's confusing. It is to me.

Yeah. Because I just live my life like no one's listening. I mean, I know they are, so I do my best, but I just sort of show up and just keep living like a normal person. But you're good at it. You know? You didn't have notes. I had notes.

I had notes. I don't see a note over there. No, I don't have any notes, but I've been thinking about you for a long time, my friend. I really have. I've been looking forward to this day and it meant a lot to me that you came here. And I appreciate you as a human being and I appreciate you as an athlete and as a representative of what I believe is one of the greatest sports ever. Well, 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 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 pretty tough. It's pretty tough. But, I mean, it goes back to, I mean, it's like my high school coach. You know, it's like he had a drink for us. It was called Burley Juice because his name was Bob Siddons, but we called him Burley Bob, not to his face. We called him Coach Siddons. But he mixed. 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 Mountain Dew just came out in 1964, the 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 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 in it when he wasn't looking, so it 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 wouldn't drink that I mean I wouldn't drink a pop. I wouldn't drink a soda. I would only eat perfect at the beginning of my career. But as I got older and as I got better at what I did, I started – I can drink a Mountain Dew. I can – even the time I got to before the Olympic Games,

I might drink a beer after a hard workout. I might drink a beer, that type of stuff. And I might drink a nutrition drink before. I did. I used to drink Nutramund, it was called. But now it's Gable Gold. But, you know, it's like you adjust, but your mind is going to tell you what you can do and how good you are.

And the mind also tells you when the hell to get out, you know, or your mom tells you when the hell to get out. But she's looking at my mind, and I would not be here, you know, if I hadn't stepped down in 1997. I was on the road for, I'd be dead but i figured i'd make four more years but i 24 years now just too much of the road just just too much nervousness just nervous all the time you know you you know you're just too hyper i mean you know you got to settle down at a certain point if you want to live what you know want to live well because you cared so much because it was so important to you about living competing the competing was so important to you that's what the nervousness was coming from yeah i think i think it was a success you know just

getting used to it and when if 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 and it said actually no this was after i lost to Owings back in 1970 Nationals. After 181 wins and lost my... The Wayne Register had little comments. And one guy said in there, you just ain't got it anymore.

You'll never do anything in wrestling. That's what he was hoping. That's what a person like that, they're projecting. They're hoping you fall apart. 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 you're sick from my mom in the mail that week. That's how I've lived my life. Dan Gable, thank you very much for being here. I appreciate you, brother. Thank you. It was a pleasure and an honor. Bye, everybody. bye everybody