Tom Brands: Iowa Wrestling | Lex Fridman Podcast #245

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Tom Brands, Olympic champion and world champion in freestyle

00:00:05.680 | wrestling, three-time NCAA wrestling champion at University of Iowa and one of the greatest coaches

00:00:12.560 | in the history of wrestling, leading the University of Iowa Hawkeyes for 15 years, including in 2021

00:00:20.800 | winning the national championships and getting a coach of the year award, his third. He's known

00:00:27.360 | for his intensity, focus, and mental toughness, embodying both as a wrestler and coach the culture

00:00:33.760 | and spirit of Iowa wrestling. We recorded this conversation almost exactly three years ago after

00:00:39.760 | I attended the University of Iowa versus Iowa State wrestling meet in the historic Carver Hawkeye

00:00:47.360 | Arena. Tom graciously invited me to his home where his family, a couple of friends, and me spent

00:00:54.480 | several hours chatting about wrestling and life. We recorded this brief podcast conversation that

00:01:00.800 | evening and I wasn't sure where, how, or whether we'll publish it, but returning to it now three

00:01:07.840 | years later, I realized just how meaningful that evening was for me and even though I was nervous,

00:01:14.320 | didn't even put on my jacket, it's a moment I would love to share with others. The mix of intensity

00:01:20.640 | and heartfelt kindness from Tom and his family made me want to stay in Iowa forever. I think I

00:01:26.560 | will return there soon enough because of the amazing people there and because Iowa is still

00:01:32.960 | in many ways the heart of the indomitable spirit of American wrestling, a sport I love and to which

00:01:39.760 | I'm deeply grateful for humbling me early in life and helping me and many others build character

00:01:47.360 | through hard work. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our

00:01:53.680 | sponsors in the description and now here's my conversation with Tom Brantz. What's the

00:02:00.640 | best motivator for you or for your athletes? Hatred of losing or love of winning? For me

00:02:08.560 | personally, it was definitely the hatred of losing. I was not a guy that was about pageantry.

00:02:13.040 | I was not a guy that was about the parade. When I wrestled in Atlanta, I rented a three-cylinder

00:02:22.400 | GEO with my wife, drove home and mowed the lawn because it hadn't been mowed for a month.

00:02:25.920 | I remember one of our neighbors driving by and they were like, they did a double take.

00:02:30.240 | I thought he was in Atlanta. Well, I was in Atlanta yesterday. I just sat on the stand.

00:02:34.800 | I got a gold medal put around my neck. That's how I was. That doesn't mean that it was the right

00:02:39.920 | approach or the wrong approach. It's just what worked for me. When you were a kid, you and Terry,

00:02:45.200 | you dreamed about winning that Olympic gold. Yeah. That's about winning then. There is the lure of

00:02:51.520 | winning. What drives you is that as you move forward, there's just no reason that you have

00:03:00.480 | to settle for anything but being the best. It would get to you to the point where that's not

00:03:08.400 | going to happen to me again. The thing that keeps you up at night is the losses and that's not going

00:03:15.920 | to happen to me again. That's the thought that keeps you up at night. That's the thought that

00:03:20.320 | drives you in your training. That's why you do nine ropes when Gable says do three ropes and

00:03:26.800 | buddy pushups and you're out of here. You do nine or you do them until you can't do any more.

00:03:31.280 | It's a very rare ingredient. The older I get, the more rare I find it is.

00:03:37.680 | The ingredient of loss feeding the drive of hard training? Maybe that because everybody's so

00:03:45.920 | worried about the negative whatever and you're putting too much pressure on yourself. Maybe that.

00:03:51.760 | What I meant was it's when a coach says, "Okay, finish with four ropes and buddy pushups and

00:03:57.760 | four-way neck," I would do 12 or 10. That's rare. It's no longer about what the coach says. It's

00:04:05.600 | your own demons that you're trying to exercise out. What's the few losses you've had in your life?

00:04:12.720 | Are all of them just melt together or is there something that stands out in your mind?

00:04:18.240 | I'm a guy that remembers my career that well. I know that I am judged on a very small portion

00:04:29.120 | of my life and that's minutes of wrestling matches. A lot of winning but there's some

00:04:34.480 | losing in there too. People think they know you because of that. They think they know you because

00:04:40.720 | they see you in a press conference. To go back to the original question, I don't know how to answer

00:04:48.480 | that. There's no losses that eat at you still? There's opponents that I have learned a great

00:04:56.640 | deal from. My loss to John Smith in 1991 US Open was something that I learned a lot about.

00:05:07.360 | I learned a lot about positioning. I learned a lot about the importance of parterre.

00:05:11.520 | In a certain crazy way, I learned that I could go with the best guy in the world even though it was

00:05:18.720 | 14 to 4. This is when tech falls were 15 or 12 points. I didn't get tech fall. That wasn't a

00:05:24.400 | badge of honor for me. I knew I could go with him because it was one point takedowns. I scored four

00:05:29.120 | takedowns on him. I learned that I had to move my feet. I learned what it meant to move your feet

00:05:36.400 | constantly. John Smith is a very, very intense competitor that people know that now,

00:05:45.360 | six-time world Olympic champion. I felt that firsthand. I did not go in there

00:05:52.560 | taking a backseat even though the score was very lopsided.

00:05:57.440 | But you knew you could stand with the best of the world.

00:05:59.600 | I knew that this is what this is about. You know what? You move your feet and you don't give up a

00:06:06.720 | lace that's so damn tight that you can't feel your calf muscle. I had to get ready for the

00:06:13.040 | consolation side of the bracket because I believe that was in the semis. You just learn from that.

00:06:20.160 | It was better than learning from a win over a second-ranked senior level guy when you're a

00:06:27.360 | junior in college. You're wrestling the best on a stage. So if you look back, you probably spent

00:06:35.040 | tens of thousands of hours on the mat, spilled sweat, blood, even tears maybe, maybe a few times.

00:06:43.120 | So technically or philosophically, how would you do any of those hours differently? Just looking

00:06:48.240 | back at the tens of thousands of hours. I would be more probably in my older age,

00:06:55.360 | I probably would have been more relaxed in my training and probably would have went another

00:07:00.400 | cycle if I could do it over again. In '96, I really thought that when Gable retired that I

00:07:08.080 | would be the next guy in line and I was wrong and that was immature of me. In terms of the coach.

00:07:12.720 | In terms of the coach, yes. And I knew that Gable was close. I mean, I didn't know when,

00:07:17.520 | but it just so happens '97 was his record-breaking year and then he retired.

00:07:21.440 | But I didn't know how close he was, but I knew that he went down with a bad hip injury.

00:07:27.680 | You're not going to-- So what does a relaxed Tom Brands look like? You're saying you would have

00:07:36.640 | been a little more relaxed. More like where, you know what, I was pretty dang good and I was

00:07:41.600 | getting better every day, but maybe doing a little bit different, a little bit smarter.

00:07:46.160 | Terry actually did that going through 2000. He had to do it and he would have been in the funny

00:07:55.920 | farm, let alone the physical farm, whatever you want to say, he'd been mentally and physically

00:08:03.520 | beat up, but he had to learn to less is more type approach. And how it came around was,

00:08:14.320 | you work hard at feeling good. You work hard in your recovery. So even when you're not

00:08:20.160 | wrestling hard in that wrestling room and looking for the toughest partner to go, you're still

00:08:28.320 | working hard in your recovery. And massage could be that. Stretching could be that.

00:08:34.320 | Things like that that are more fluffy. And that's something you weren't as good at?

00:08:42.720 | Never, never. There's not a place for it with young people because in my opinion,

00:08:49.040 | there's so much development to have happen. I mean, when you need to learn wrestling,

00:08:55.360 | you need to be wrestling. And as you get older, your body won't do it anymore.

00:09:02.240 | And so to learn wrestling, it's more of a probably a relaxed approach.

00:09:08.320 | So if you had to choose between two athletes who would dominate competition, one who drills

00:09:15.440 | a hundred thousand reps of a specific takedown, specific technique,

00:09:18.800 | or one that spends that time live wrestling?

00:09:22.240 | Both. It's the same. And I liked the live wrestling. I was always wanting to live

00:09:27.200 | wrestle, bring the warmup into the live wrestle, let's go. But where I got really,

00:09:32.160 | really good was the repetition. And I was disciplined enough to know that the things

00:09:37.200 | that you hate to do in this sport are the things that make you the very best. And that is a rare

00:09:43.760 | ingredient as I've gotten older. And you spend a lot of time communicating that to younger athletes.

00:09:49.200 | So the thing, if you feel yourself hating something, that's probably the thing you

00:09:54.240 | should be doing. Yes. As a matter of fact, I had a strength coach when I was really young.

00:09:57.760 | He was just a fricking guy that would, he wore white, like he was almost like a nurse,

00:10:04.480 | nurses clothes. He wore all white from head to toe. And he was in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

00:10:09.680 | And his first name was Walt. And he taught Terry and I to hate the bar away from you

00:10:15.840 | on that last rep when you're dead. And whether it's a curl, you hate it up. And then you do the

00:10:21.040 | negative and you hate it down and you hate that bench up and you hate it. You look at the bar

00:10:25.120 | and you hate it away from you. So I learned and that, I was young. I was young. And I remember

00:10:33.360 | being born, my mom's sister lived out there and we were dropped off to stay out there with our

00:10:36.960 | cousins. And I was born a little bit and they always treated us really good. But this was like

00:10:41.040 | the single most bright spot in a weightlifting, like enlightenment, even though I lifted weights.

00:10:49.840 | But I never knew the psychology behind lifting weights. It's just to look good. And so you can

00:10:54.960 | flex and look in the mirror or is it for performance? And this guy was about performance.

00:11:00.960 | And you said repetition. Do you mean technique?

00:11:03.840 | I'm talking repetition, technique, technique, technique, drill, drill, drill, hit, hit,

00:11:07.360 | hit, drive, finish, hit, hit, hit, drive, finish.

00:11:09.440 | So you believe in that? You believe in that?

00:11:10.640 | I believe in that wholeheartedly.

00:11:12.000 | But I believe that you have to do it on your own.

00:11:16.080 | I don't believe in the coach taking you to the promised land.

00:11:20.640 | So in the guys today or in yourself, how often do you see people that

00:11:28.480 | grow the belief of doing 10,000, 20,000 reps?

00:11:32.400 | I think it's rare. I think it's very rare. And I think it's especially rare. I mean,

00:11:36.320 | you can talk about that as a coach, but it's especially rare to bring a guy to that

00:11:41.760 | understanding, but you never stop trying. You're always trying to reach him. I mean,

00:11:46.320 | we didn't have a good performance out there tonight, but you know what? You don't stop

00:11:51.360 | communicating. And there's a lot of programs out there that put their head down when things

00:11:58.400 | aren't going their way. And then as things start going their way, then they rise with the tide.

00:12:01.920 | There was no difference in the demeanor of our corner. And we talk about that. That's a

00:12:06.960 | philosophy. And so you're reaching your guys that way. So go back to your point or your question.

00:12:13.600 | You know, do you believe in the 10,000 reps? And yes, I do.

00:12:17.680 | And how do you inspire people to do that?

00:12:20.560 | Well, you communicate.

00:12:21.520 | By example, but communication. But I mean, in my experience, what I've seen,

00:12:26.560 | communicating the value of repetition and drilling is a hard thing to communicate.

00:12:31.440 | It's hard. And it's very rare to have somebody that goes in there and will do it on their own.

00:12:37.040 | Do you have young guys that step up and do that?

00:12:39.200 | We do. And it's rare. And the guys that do it on their own and have done it on their own are the

00:12:44.320 | guys that are in that lineup and doing well. The other thing is, is that when you talk about

00:12:51.600 | getting to that next level, a lot of times it's, you know, what held you back was I did everything

00:12:59.200 | the coach asked of me and nothing more. I mean, you can be a great guy for a coach as an athlete,

00:13:08.320 | and you did everything that coach asked, but you did nothing more.

00:13:12.880 | So you're really looking for the guys that go way beyond what the coach says.

00:13:17.440 | We don't want guys that are looking at their watch running out of the room when practice is over.

00:13:21.920 | We want guys that know what they have to get done, and they might leave early,

00:13:26.240 | but they're not looking at their watch. They might be done early. They might be,

00:13:30.480 | we might be on a whole different path, and this guy just excuses himself. I'm all about that.

00:13:36.160 | We are not autocrats.

00:13:39.360 | There's an internal engine in there. Is that something you're born with?

00:13:42.720 | Or is that something you can develop?

00:13:44.400 | I think you are born with it. You develop it also, and I think that there has to be comfort,

00:13:49.440 | and I go back to the communication, that young people are comfortable enough to communicate that

00:13:56.720 | I need to take the day off.

00:13:57.920 | So what do you mean by communication?

00:14:01.040 | Or I need to do something different.

00:14:02.080 | Exactly. So letting athletes be part of their own development.

00:14:07.120 | Communication to me is letting them know what they need to do to get themselves in contention

00:14:15.040 | to be the starting quarterback, and then to give them boosts and compliments when they earn them.

00:14:23.760 | I don't have time to waste with lies and cheating. When I say cheating,

00:14:35.760 | I'm talking about when they cheat themselves, and so those become very direct conversations.

00:14:40.000 | And the conversation starts like this. I don't have time to waste, and neither do you,

00:14:44.160 | and so why are we wasting our time? And here's what I mean by that.

00:14:47.760 | We're having a conversation about your accountability.

00:14:52.320 | If you look in the mirror and you're accountable, then we aren't taking the time to go through this.

00:14:58.640 | We're already on our way to solving the problem.

00:15:01.520 | Problem can't be solved without that understanding,

00:15:05.040 | and that has to do with symptoms that you see in the wrestling room. There's something where the

00:15:09.520 | fire's not quite there.

00:15:09.680 | That has to do with mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, everything. Everything that you know

00:15:15.040 | about. I had a boss, and our athletic director is a great athletic director, and he gives us

00:15:20.720 | everything we need to be successful, but I had a boss. His name was Fred Mims, and I didn't think

00:15:24.720 | anybody could be better than him. And then all of a sudden, this Gene Taylor guy came in, and then he

00:15:29.440 | was pretty doggone good too, and he actually was just like Fred and maybe even a little bit more

00:15:35.040 | current, and then he ended up taking a job at Kansas State where he's the athletic director now,

00:15:39.120 | and then this lady, Barbara Burke, comes in, and I didn't think anybody could be better than Gene

00:15:45.680 | Taylor or Fred Mims, and this Barbara Burke, she's better than both of them, and the reason why is

00:15:51.280 | because she's a problem solver. She doesn't waste time. She's direct, and she's a problem solver,

00:15:56.400 | and that's what we need. You need problem solvers. - So on the flip side of problems and technique

00:16:05.360 | and repetition, here's a thing called toughness, mental toughness, something that maybe you or

00:16:12.720 | maybe even Iowa in general is a little bit known for. So how do you train mental toughness as a

00:16:18.320 | coach? - You train mental toughness by putting them in situations that they're willing to go

00:16:27.120 | through but don't think they can make it, and then they go through it, and then all of a sudden,

00:16:30.000 | those barriers are down. - Does that have to do with physical, usually, exhaustion,

00:16:35.840 | the warmups on the ropes? - It has to do with that, and it has to do with understanding why

00:16:43.920 | we're doing it, and sometimes understanding why we're doing it might not come for months,

00:16:49.440 | but there's blind faith, and we have a heavyweight in the room right now, this young guy that

00:16:56.000 | he's like that. He doesn't necessarily understand it. He asks a lot of questions, but he does it,

00:17:02.480 | and he's been here four months now, four and a half months now, and he's getting better every day.

00:17:06.960 | - So mental toughness, too, is a matter of repetition. - Mental toughness is a matter

00:17:12.640 | of repetition and having an open mind and being extremely accountable, and not only accountable

00:17:18.160 | that when you maybe, when something doesn't go your way, that you look in the mirror and own it,

00:17:24.320 | but accountable to the point of view that, you know what, I gotta get tough in this situation

00:17:30.400 | right here, right now, and this is what's gonna make or break me, and I talked about my own career

00:17:35.440 | being defined by a couple of minutes on the mat, but that's when you're gonna be defined. That's

00:17:41.680 | how you're gonna be defined. That's okay. So people are gonna talk about you, so you might

00:17:47.040 | as well have them talking about how doggone tough you are. - What about, we live in a world now,

00:17:53.840 | I've often in my own work, I hear about this concept of work-life balance or overtraining,

00:17:59.840 | so you've been one of the hardest workers ever on the mat. You've coached some of the hardest

00:18:06.000 | workers ever. Do you think it's possible to overtrain, train too much? How big of a concern

00:18:11.440 | is it? - I think peaking and burnout are frames of mind, or burnout is a, like you let things

00:18:18.800 | probably get to the point where you could have arrested them with a good frame of mind, but

00:18:24.400 | peaking is a frame of mind, and you have to know, be able to read, and that's a lot of it,

00:18:30.480 | and the individual athlete also has to know that it's a frame of mind. And so when you have a coach

00:18:37.040 | that's reading that the right way, and you have an athlete that is knowing that when zero hour

00:18:43.680 | comes, that you're gonna be ready to go, and knowing that there's light at the end of the

00:18:48.640 | tunnel, if you feel like you're burning that candle at both ends, light's coming at the end

00:18:53.440 | of the tunnel. I mean, you're good to go. - So you think about Gable and that whole dream of

00:18:59.840 | being carried off the mat because you worked so hard, and again, do you think it's possible to

00:19:04.320 | overtrain? So you said it's mental. - I do think it's possible to overtrain if you have a lot of

00:19:09.520 | distractions. And if you're looking at your watch running out of the room, then yeah, you're gonna,

00:19:16.080 | that frame of mind isn't gonna lend itself to excellency. And the thing is, is we have to

00:19:21.440 | accomplish what we need to get accomplished to get better every day. You can't kind of accomplish

00:19:26.080 | what you need to accomplish, you have to accomplish it. And when you're in that mindset,

00:19:31.520 | then the clock is irrelevant. There's no place for a clock in the wrestling room. And maybe a

00:19:36.560 | clock that times a match, but it may be a clock if, we're student athletes here, but that's why

00:19:43.440 | we encourage our, when you schedule your classes, that you don't have a class that comes right up to

00:19:52.560 | practice time or starts as a night class and it starts at 5.30. Go to get the 6.30 class or the

00:19:58.480 | seven o'clock. - So you leave it all behind your heart, your passion's completely in it,

00:20:02.960 | there's no clock. - And when you walk in that wrestling room, there's no distractions.

00:20:06.640 | And it's never eternal. The only thing that's eternal is death. There's nothing, sometimes

00:20:13.200 | guys come in there and they wig out. Oh, it's an hour and 25 minutes of, oh, or an hour and 45

00:20:21.040 | minutes of, oh. - Yeah. You have to be willing to go as long as it takes. There's no clock.

00:20:26.160 | - There's no clock. - Again, wrestlers are some of the hardest,

00:20:30.080 | some of the toughest people in all sports, but weight cutting often breaks people. So what's

00:20:36.320 | your thought on weight cutting, both nutrition-wise, mental-wise, how do you approach and think of it

00:20:43.200 | as a coach in your own career too? - It's a lot of discipline and it's a lot of discipline during

00:20:50.320 | a very uncomfortable time period that really doesn't last that long, but it feels like it

00:20:53.840 | lasts long and it's painful. But once you shrink your body down and if you're hydrated, you'll get

00:21:00.880 | through it. If you're a little hungry, but you're eating, but you're hydrated, once you break that

00:21:06.560 | sweat, your energy depletion goes away. That's a fact. I've practiced that. You come in and you're

00:21:12.640 | yawning and you're starting to shrink your body down and it's that time of year where, hey, I gotta

00:21:18.240 | get my body shrunk down, and you're dehydrated, you are dead in the water. But if you're hungry

00:21:24.720 | and hydrated, when you break that sweat. - Have people gotten better with that over the years,

00:21:31.920 | over the past few decades? - I think that coach's science is better. I think that coaches communicate

00:21:37.360 | it. I think they always have. I think the bottom line is having the energy to implement that

00:21:43.760 | and taking a guy by the hand when he doesn't understand and he's new in your program and he's

00:21:49.840 | essential and/or he's unwilling to and not disciplined enough because when you take him

00:21:54.320 | by the hand enough, they will learn that discipline. This is an important aspect of

00:21:59.360 | wrestling, buddy. You know what I'm saying? It's not just go and show up for the match.

00:22:05.760 | I mean, it's not about just making weight either. You gotta be able to make weight. That's part of

00:22:10.640 | the warmup. That's part of the process, getting ready to wrestle. - It's the whole thing. It's

00:22:14.800 | the lifestyle. Yeah. When did you first start believing you're going to win Olympic gold?

00:22:20.720 | - I don't know. I mean, I found out, I got really addicted to wrestling really, really fast.

00:22:27.200 | Started late, but looking back at my life, wrestled my whole life with my twin brother.

00:22:35.360 | When Terry and I would fight, it was wrestling and it was to maim. If you're trying to maim me,

00:22:43.920 | I better be tough because if I roll over and expect you to scratch my belly when you're

00:22:49.600 | trying to maim me, I will lose my head. Tom and Terry Brands, there was no alpha male.

00:22:54.880 | When it was on, it was on for real. - What do you mean there's no alpha male?

00:23:00.880 | - There's a lot of twins. There's a dominant twin, a lot of them. Very few times is there a

00:23:07.360 | situation where I'm going to win every time in everything and then he's thinking the same exact

00:23:13.760 | way. Terry used to describe it, when we used to get interviewed a lot about our careers,

00:23:18.000 | it'd be like you grabbing a steering wheel and me grabbing a steering wheel and fighting.

00:23:24.080 | That's what it was like when you would wrestle him or fight him. I had that benefit. When did

00:23:30.400 | I know? Well, I got addicted to wrestling really, really fast in fifth grade and started to research

00:23:35.840 | it and I don't know why and talked about the Olympics and put it in my head. I remember

00:23:44.080 | said something about being an Olympic champion in fifth grade and somebody made fun of me and I got

00:23:49.440 | in a fight in the playground. I remember getting pulled in, getting in trouble for that. The people

00:23:57.920 | that got me in trouble for that were smart enough to not rake me over the coals but they researched

00:24:04.080 | or they actually found out what the fight was about and I was distraught. I was really emotional,

00:24:10.880 | like crying or whatever you want to say. You don't want to admit that to me. But it wasn't because I

00:24:16.560 | got beat up or got my nose bloodied or got punched in the face or broke my arm or there was any pain.

00:24:23.360 | It was because they stomped on my dream and they doubted me. I fought for that. That was a lesson.

00:24:30.880 | There's going to be a lot of doubters. One thing we talk about as a staff is our staff has to be

00:24:38.000 | lockstep in that hallway, in our offices. When you deviate outside of that, that is heresy.

00:24:47.840 | Everybody has to be on board, confident that you're going to be number one in the country.

00:24:51.760 | We go forward and we go put our public foot forward. There is a decision. We are unified

00:24:56.720 | and there is no backbiting. We have great people right now. We haven't had that before.

00:25:02.240 | We've had detractors in our Hawkeye Wrestling Club. We've had guys that would go out and get

00:25:07.040 | rolled up in ankle laces and not care in our club. We got Brandon Sorenson who got rolled up by James

00:25:13.360 | Green last night. But I'll tell you what, I don't have a problem with that. You know why? Because

00:25:18.560 | I know it means a lot to him. He didn't roll over. He didn't quit because he was on the consolation

00:25:23.760 | side of a bracket. When you have that and then you have, if there's a disagreement, it's behind

00:25:30.320 | closed doors and then you're moving forward. When you have people that when they're meeting your

00:25:35.440 | fans and your supporters, they're talking the right way with the right message. Anything that's

00:25:41.920 | catty wonk is to that, you got to be careful there. You got to be careful there.

00:25:46.880 | - So that in terms of affirmations, in terms of really believing as a team, as an individual,

00:25:51.760 | believing that you're the best in the world, did you, I'm sure you had detractors. You had

00:25:57.520 | people that continued after fifth grade. - And that's probably where my hatred of

00:26:02.000 | losing trumps my love for winning because I wanted to shove it up their rear end bad.

00:26:07.920 | And the thing is, is we maintain a high level and there's very few programs,

00:26:15.440 | Oklahoma State, Ohio State now, Penn State. I mean, there's four programs that try to win a

00:26:21.760 | national title every year and that's it. And these other teams, they get up and they got a good team

00:26:28.320 | and they get up and they get going. And then when things don't go well, okay, we're going to do it

00:26:33.280 | next year or this is a down year. We're going to get right, we're three years out. - So no matter

00:26:38.480 | what you're fighting for first knowledge. - We do and we haven't won and you say, well,

00:26:42.000 | we haven't won in eight years. Well, you're right, we haven't. But look at our results are better

00:26:46.640 | than anybody out there and besides Penn State. And it's because of our mentality and because we

00:26:53.280 | have great people. Ryan Morningstar, Bobby Telford, Terry Brands, our medical team even,

00:26:57.920 | our strength coach, Quinn Holland, we're all on the same page. And when I send something,

00:27:04.000 | I hit it immediately. I don't have time to waste. There will not be dissension in that hallway.

00:27:09.120 | - Everybody's in it together, yeah. 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Can you take me through the day

00:27:16.320 | when you're going for the 62 kg gold? What did you eat, drink? What did you think? - It really

00:27:23.840 | doesn't matter. I have a routine that, I had a routine as a competitor that I could run through

00:27:29.840 | right now. It was a lot of self-talk, very, very positive self-talk. - Visualization?

00:27:36.160 | - Yes, visualization, self-talk. And that's how I was able to relax and getting ready for matches

00:27:43.920 | my whole life. Learned that very early age at a camp, at a developmental camp, at a young age,

00:27:50.320 | Terry and I did. And I could tell you what I ate and I could tell you what I did to relax and it

00:27:59.040 | doesn't matter. What you have to do is you have to find that peace. And I just know that when I was

00:28:06.320 | getting ready for the finals match, I had gone back to my room, I had my relaxed material,

00:28:12.240 | you know, and I was able to relax because I prepared for it. - Hopefully I'm right on this,

00:28:20.000 | but just looking at the insane bracket you had to go through. You had to beat, just to get to

00:28:25.120 | the finals, to be three world champions, eventually world champion. I mean, Dave. - And you know what,

00:28:30.320 | I don't talk about that and nobody else does either, but everybody talks about it in their

00:28:34.080 | own career. So now you're making my head big, but yeah, I had a road. I had a road, you're right.

00:28:40.800 | - That is the hardest bracket I've seen. So I've talked to a lot of Olympic champions,

00:28:45.200 | that is the hardest bracket I've seen of any champion. So maybe I'm confused on this,

00:28:50.000 | but it seemed like a really tough day for you. Did you know the bracket ahead of time? Did you

00:28:55.440 | know who you faced? - You see the draw and it's a two-day tournament. So psychology comes into it

00:29:02.400 | as much as physical shape, you know, because there's those, you gotta sleep, you know, the

00:29:09.600 | night before after the weigh-in, then you gotta sleep again that next night after your semi-final

00:29:14.080 | match is gonna be in the morning, you know, and then you have to go back and rest 'cause your

00:29:18.480 | final match isn't until whatever time it was. And so all this relaxation and all that stuff that you

00:29:24.480 | just talked about, that visualization and self-talk, that's what helps you, it's your routine.

00:29:27.840 | - And was there any doubt, any fear, anything there?

00:29:33.200 | - The fear is the type of fear, and I just talked about this to one of my athletes today,

00:29:39.120 | Jack Dempsey talked about fear and the fear of losing is what motivated him to try to take his

00:29:46.240 | opponent's head off, he was a boxer, and that's okay. So fear of competition, fear of screwing up,

00:29:54.160 | fear of, "Oh, I don't feel good," no, no. But that little fear that, you know what,

00:29:59.680 | there's somebody out there that thinks that, you know what, they're gonna revel in my,

00:30:04.720 | they're gonna eat it up in my misery, they're gonna love, they're gonna be thriving because I

00:30:11.920 | fail, and I'm not gonna let that happen. - You're identical twin, brother, Terry,

00:30:18.400 | you've been at him, like you said, your whole life, and you're both some of the greatest wrestlers of

00:30:24.640 | all time. You won the gold medal, he won the bronze medal. You've mentioned, you know, all

00:30:30.000 | that really matters is the six minutes or, you know, just a few minutes, sometimes a few seconds

00:30:34.960 | to find your whole career. So how do you think about that thin line, the tragic line at the

00:30:40.480 | Olympic level between winning and losing? - I think you come to peace that in the end,

00:30:45.920 | when it's over, that you did the best you could. And that's certainly the case with Terry.

00:30:51.600 | He has a career, credentials are better than mine internationally. You know, he won two world

00:30:57.280 | championships, I won one. And he won an Olympic bronze medal, and, you know, I won an Olympic

00:31:04.320 | gold medal, but I only won one. And the thing is, is that's not what's important anyway. What's

00:31:09.920 | important is, is that when it's all over, you know, how do you look back on it? And you're kind

00:31:18.960 | of like, well, you just said that you made sure that you weren't going to leave anything undone.

00:31:23.120 | But you know what? There were tournaments where I did leave things undone. And so how do you come

00:31:28.240 | back from that? Well, Terry never came back from 2000 because he retired. Well, you know what? You

00:31:33.680 | duplicate and exceed when you're communicating to these young athletes. And because of that

00:31:39.360 | experience, that makes Terry a better coach. Because of, you know, 1995, that makes me a

00:31:45.120 | better coach. You know, realizing that there are certain things that unraveled in that year that

00:31:52.400 | I could have controlled looking back on it. And when you have that perspective, you can communicate.

00:31:58.640 | So what control? Is there, can you control everything? How big of a role is luck?

00:32:05.520 | Control how you react to an injury. Control that. So you can't, you don't have any control of it.

00:32:11.760 | It's over, you know, you have whatever and whatever happened, but relax. And you learn to deal with

00:32:20.080 | injuries better because of that. You have that experience that you let this thing maybe get the

00:32:25.440 | best of you. And that's just an example. And, you know, Terry put a lot of demons to rest

00:32:32.960 | with that bronze medal. So becoming an Olympic medalist, a few demons could relax.

00:32:39.040 | Well, no, he'll never admit that. And he probably is truthful and I should, I'm speaking for him,

00:32:44.240 | but he's truthful when he says that. But if I look at it and bronze sucks.

00:32:49.840 | But if I look at it, he did put some demons to rest and I'm proud of him for it.

00:32:57.760 | There's something there that is a consolation in the fact that he won the consolation medal.

00:33:05.280 | The consolation medal sucks, but there is a consolation that he won the consolation.

00:33:10.240 | That's a tough medal to win, by the way. Yeah. But do you see the Shakespearean tragedy of it all,

00:33:17.040 | that the line between winning and losing? So you often say that, you know, winning is everything,

00:33:22.560 | but it feels like, especially at the Olympic level, or you talk about NCAA finals or that

00:33:28.800 | tournament, you know, a split second miss move can result in a loss where you dominated all the way

00:33:37.120 | up to there. That's where your psychology comes in and that's where the repetition and all of the

00:33:43.280 | self-talk and visualization and the physical shape and everything comes together. And so that doesn't

00:33:50.080 | happen. And tonight we got beat twice, actually three times, and we out wrestled those. We lost

00:33:57.520 | three matches and we out wrestled the guy for six minutes and 30 seconds, or one match went to

00:34:04.400 | overtime. And if our guys can move forward with the right perspective, I'm confident that they'll

00:34:10.480 | be better. I'll tell you what, I'd take our guy over their guy any day, any day,

00:34:17.360 | because our guys get up for every match. And now we got a lot to work on.

00:34:21.600 | Right. A lot to work on. But you know what? I

00:34:25.200 | can say all that and I'll take our guy and blah, blah, blah. But what are they going to do tonight

00:34:30.160 | in their meal? How are they going to grow? What are they going to do tonight in their rest?

00:34:33.120 | What are they going to do tomorrow in their recovery on their own necessarily? What are

00:34:37.600 | they going to do Monday? Great wrestlers can use their imagination with a win that they're not

00:34:48.640 | satisfied with and go forward as if it was a loss, but it's still easier to go forward with that win.

00:34:55.520 | But they can, they don't just, "Oh, I won. I'm fine." It goes on. But then when they lose the

00:35:02.480 | exact same way that they could have lost before, then they go off the deep end. And then that's

00:35:06.960 | when they're going to make the change in their life. And we talked about that to our team tonight.

00:35:11.680 | And the mature rare ingredient is, is guys that can get better even with success,

00:35:21.040 | like it was a loss without beating themselves up. That's complicated.

00:35:25.680 | It is. It's a balance. You often talk about Iowa's focus on creating individual champions,

00:35:32.560 | like Spencer Lee. Can you explain the philosophy of focusing on individuals versus the team?

00:35:38.400 | I think that we need to put them both together and the individual impacts the team. And

00:35:46.720 | we haven't done that since 2010. And we need to do a better job of putting 10 weight classes

00:35:54.800 | out there that contribute to the team. And if it's not 10, then it's nine. And if it's not nine,

00:36:00.960 | it can't be four. And that takes a lot of pride and it takes a lot of where the coach is on top

00:36:10.880 | of it. And you're not just working on the easy things, the glaring things. You're working on

00:36:20.640 | everything. What do you mean by everything?

00:36:27.680 | There's ideas that when you're a coach, they're beneath the surface and you got to find them.

00:36:36.320 | And that's where communication comes in.

00:36:40.320 | Yeah. But you're talking about, yeah, we got to move forward. Well, what does that mean?

00:36:45.600 | Well, I know what that means. But how many guys really know what that means in their program?

00:36:51.600 | There's so many levels of that.

00:36:56.080 | You've said before that winning is everything. And that means people lose. Most people lose.

00:37:03.840 | There's really in whatever the context is only one winner. In many parts of our world today,

00:37:10.400 | outside of wrestling, that concept, the brutal honesty of that is uncomfortable for people.

00:37:15.760 | So how do you think about this very philosophical, difficult concept of

00:37:25.680 | there only being one winner, that winning is everything? It's kind of a really painful idea.

00:37:30.880 | I don't think that that's a bad thing to have that mentality. I mean, I think at Kutukov,

00:37:36.080 | I remember a story I read about him. He comes to mind.

00:37:40.000 | Sargouche, I remember when he lost in London and I remember the look on his face. And those are

00:37:50.560 | some of the greatest wrestlers in the history of the sport, freestyle wrestling. And you know what?

00:37:56.560 | It's what works for you. And you can talk about being at peace with your results and that the

00:38:03.200 | approach is and the journey is what it's about. But and that's great. And that relaxes some

00:38:09.760 | champions and that makes some champions really, really tick. But not everybody. So it's okay.

00:38:18.160 | It's okay. And if that wigs you out and that really makes you uptight, then go the other

00:38:24.160 | route. You have to find what works for you. And that takes a lot of work. If you're lazy,

00:38:28.480 | forget it. Forget it. So you and Terry, but in general, how do you find the line between

00:38:37.920 | extremely physical, extreme physical wrestling and rough wrestling or angry wrestling? So to

00:38:43.280 | which degree has anger, whether it's in your wrestling room these days or in your own career,

00:38:47.920 | entered wrestling? Do you see it as a tool that can be used in the wrestling match?

00:38:53.440 | I think there's a balance or not even a balance. There's a line that you go up to and you can't

00:38:58.880 | cross it. Sportsmanship is everything. You can get dinged for points. You can get thrown out

00:39:04.480 | of tournaments. There's rules with flagrant misconduct where you're kicked out of the match,

00:39:10.400 | other team gets the points and then you have to sit the next meet.

00:39:15.840 | So it's very serious. The NCAA sends a message, a very serious message about sportsmanship.

00:39:23.120 | And so we talk about that. And the other thing with wrestling is there's rules in wrestling.

00:39:27.200 | These guys that are tough guys outside of the rules,

00:39:30.800 | that's what you want in your opponent. That means they're frustrated.

00:39:38.480 | You got to be a tough guy inside the rules of the sport. That's more honorable than cold cocking

00:39:46.480 | somebody and knocking them out. So yeah, anger doesn't mean breaking the rules, but I mean,

00:39:50.320 | a lot of people know you just watching you as a coach. There's quite a bit of passion there.

00:39:56.160 | Well, come and do what you're doing tonight. I mean, break bread with me in my kitchen and

00:40:00.240 | see how big of a jackass I am. No, you're a pretty nice guy.

00:40:03.040 | Well, I'm not asking for that necessarily, but thanks. I'm saying, you know what, as a coach,

00:40:09.280 | okay, come spend a month in our program and you'll see really what kind of people we are.

00:40:15.600 | And there's a stigma out there because they are very threatened by our program.

00:40:20.640 | There's nobody else that threatens the sport of wrestling like we do. And that's the truth.

00:40:26.880 | There's a legend to Iowa wrestling. It's one of the most intimidating.

00:40:32.480 | There's a legend to John Smith. It's the same thing. They get up for John Smith. They get up

00:40:38.640 | for Oklahoma State. They get up for Penn State. My question is, okay, I'll answer it this way.

00:40:45.680 | I'll give you an example. In my coaching career, I coached at Virginia Tech for 22 months.

00:40:50.320 | We recruited the number one recruiting class. We got the administration to change

00:40:57.440 | 100% 180 how they looked at wrestling. Here's the thing. And because of how serious we were

00:41:03.840 | and because we weren't idiots, we were able to do that with our administration. But my point is this,

00:41:10.640 | we tried to win. We tried to win. Even at Virginia Tech, it wasn't a stepping stone for me. It ended

00:41:17.200 | up being one quickly. And looking back on it, I was a fool to think that I'd be there for 20 years.

00:41:23.120 | But you believed you would be.

00:41:24.560 | I did. I did. I did.

00:41:27.520 | Do you remember a time that you really pushed yourself to your limits?

00:41:32.960 | Gable talks about having to be carried off the mat. Have you really found that level?

00:41:39.040 | I said something about that too in a book. I think I was misquoted one time.

00:41:43.440 | Actually, it was Gable's quote. I was trying to make the point that Gable's

00:41:48.000 | quote was like this. They were making it like it was my own words. I think it was a first

00:41:54.160 | wrestling tough book. It's a good book. But the story is Gable's. And I don't know if there's

00:42:02.480 | anybody that has done that besides him. And I think that's a very rare quality.

00:42:08.880 | But I've definitely been in that nirvana level of, you know, you could go all day long.

00:42:19.520 | And you have to shoot me to stop me. Yeah. But there's a balance because you're not going hard

00:42:25.840 | with and holding your breath. It's not a, it's a relaxed. And like you got a guy cornered and

00:42:34.720 | who's most dangerous? Well, the guy that's cornered. And so that's where you relax. I'm

00:42:39.440 | not bum rushing him. I'm relaxed. I'm still moving, faking very fluid. Guy falls down on his

00:42:45.440 | face. I run around behind him. That's offense. You don't have to just grunt to the leg and call

00:42:52.480 | that offense. Offense is a in and out smooth. Now you're starting to sound like a Russian wrestler.

00:42:59.440 | Yeah. Well, that's, they're the best. In a certain light, looking at the history of wrestling,

00:43:05.600 | wrestling is much bigger than folk style, freestyle, Greco. It's one of the oldest forms

00:43:12.000 | of combat period. There's been cave drawings 15,000 years ago. Do you ever see, so you're,

00:43:18.880 | you're one of the great coaches of all time. You're now focused on a particular rule style

00:43:24.000 | right now, but do you ever see wrestling as bigger than all of this, you know, as, as one of the pure

00:43:31.680 | combats? I do. And we're raising $20 million for a facility to make it the best facility on the

00:43:37.040 | planet. We have a vision to build the best facility on planet earth and put the best wrestlers in it.

00:43:43.200 | And that is bigger than wrestling. It's for the university of Iowa and our donors are doing it

00:43:52.480 | for the university of Iowa, but it is about the value of wrestling to me also. There is so much

00:44:00.080 | value to wrestling. Blind, blind people don't play football. They wrestle. Blind people don't

00:44:05.840 | play basketball. I mean, maybe they do, but it'd be very difficult. They can wrestle. Wrestling is

00:44:12.880 | a feel sport. Yeah. There's no ball. There's nothing. It's just two guys or two girls and

00:44:18.640 | that's it. That's right. And, and you get, I mean, I'm not going to say you can't because somebody

00:44:23.280 | will get ahold of this and I'll get an email or a letter that says you said blind people can't

00:44:28.000 | play baseball and blah, blah. I'm just saying that blind people can wrestle very effectively.

00:44:33.440 | Yes. I've wrestled with my eyes shut. I mean, was honest about it too.

00:44:37.280 | And it was, I was effective. So why, why was I able to be effective? Because

00:44:42.960 | wrestling is a sport that you can overcome a lot. Your demons that you're overcoming,

00:44:50.800 | they're not limited with whether I'm blind or not. The demons that are overcoming are inside you. You

00:44:59.200 | have to overcome those demons from within. So what's the future of Iowa wrestling look like

00:45:04.480 | with this facility and this momentum you have now and this great group of guys you have now?

00:45:09.360 | We have a good young group of guys and, you know, there is a lot of buzz in the program and

00:45:17.760 | probably hasn't been this much buzz for quite some time. And our job is to, you know, be relaxed and

00:45:26.720 | be focused and not get caught up in the buzz. But we have to put it together and we have a catalyst,

00:45:33.680 | Spencer Lee, but he's going to have to, he's going to have to get better. And we have some

00:45:38.000 | other catalysts as well that are, you know, going to help us in the future. But they got to get

00:45:44.800 | better. And so all this stuff about independence and accountability and, you know, being able to

00:45:52.400 | get better every day under duress and not knowing that you're getting better, but you are,

00:45:59.520 | you know, you don't, you know what I mean by that? Like the great thing about Gable was,

00:46:03.680 | wrestling for him was, is you were getting better and you didn't know you were getting better.

00:46:07.920 | Well, just like you said, grow from success. So even you, you never allow yourself to think that

00:46:14.720 | you're, that you're, you're getting good. All of a sudden you do something in the practice room

00:46:20.000 | that you've been working on and all of a sudden you hit it and it's like, it was automatic.

00:46:23.200 | And then that, you know, yeah, that multiplies success.

00:46:27.760 | So if I may say so, you're a bit of a man of the Bible. What's, where do you go?

00:46:36.160 | What do you go to the Bible for? Your faith, strength, love, patience?

00:46:41.440 | Same things I talked about, things that you can't control, you turn them over.

00:46:45.360 | So the biggest thing for me is I got to turn over the things that I can't control, turn them over

00:46:50.240 | to that power and I'm going to be a lot better off. And that's the reason why I'm not in the

00:46:55.360 | funny farm. Cause very competitive to me. Yeah. It's very serious that we, we know that these

00:47:04.000 | young wrestlers come to school here to be the best that they can be and to accomplish goals

00:47:10.080 | that like me, when I was young, they've set out to accomplish and they chose Iowa to do that.

00:47:15.920 | And so we have to deliver. And because of that, peace with God, you know, it's pure,

00:47:25.040 | it's a pure motivation. It's a pure platform. It's not, it's not doing this for my ego.

00:47:36.000 | We're not corrupt people. We're not liars and cheaters. And so often that gets in the way of a

00:47:44.400 | decent person. Yeah. First and foremost, you're a good person and God helps you be that.

00:47:50.160 | Yeah. And we're serious about wrestling.

00:47:52.320 | So a couple more questions. What's the role of family in wrestling? You mentioned your wife,

00:48:03.200 | who I read, uh, turned you down when you asked her for a phone number,

00:48:08.960 | said it's in the phone book. That's pretty smooth. Her story of that is that she didn't want me to

00:48:15.520 | have to remember the number. And I say at this point, and I say, there's no way. And I remember

00:48:21.840 | it very clearly like, Hey, it's in the phone book. And I was like, okay, she's blowing me off. That's

00:48:26.000 | okay. But luckily anyway, here's the thing with family. I mean, we, we have great people in our

00:48:33.200 | program. We have great parents. We have a culture of parents that that's part of the buzz. And this

00:48:40.400 | class that you see wrestling right now, that's been here a year now, um, Lee Mirren, Costello

00:48:46.160 | Warner, and then Lugo was a transfer and I'm forgetting somebody. I don't want to forget

00:48:50.880 | anybody, but, um, these parents are phenomenal and that's a different parental culture. Um,

00:48:57.760 | so the camera's dad is the same. And, and, um, so there's a lot of good there. And that's a big,

00:49:04.320 | that's a big, a big boom because how we talk to parents, we don't talk to parents to get along

00:49:10.480 | with them. We talk to parents to help them understand, you know, where we're at with their

00:49:15.280 | sons. And when you can have a direct conversation with a parent who helping his son or her son,

00:49:22.160 | the mom helping her son to be accountable and to own it, then you can get a lot accomplished.

00:49:29.200 | And that's what we've been able to do. And so you're solving problems like I talked about

00:49:32.880 | earlier. Um, that's part of the family. The other part of the family is the coaches, um,

00:49:38.800 | are like family. The other part of the family is the coaches, uh, significant others and wives

00:49:45.040 | are part of the family. And we fed, you know, we fed 40 guys and an entire coaching staff and

00:49:52.320 | wives and their children here at Thanksgiving. And that equals 70 people. And it's, it's fun.

00:50:00.320 | It's fun. So a family means administration. Gary Barta, my, my athletic director gives us everything

00:50:08.960 | that we need to be successful. And he has an open mind for, for the sport of wrestling and

00:50:14.320 | wrestling is important in Iowa. So that's a no brainer, but not if you're not a wrestling guy,

00:50:19.200 | but he sees we do it the right way. And so the commitment is there from him. If we were doofuses,

00:50:25.520 | you know, he, the commitment wouldn't be there. So family is everybody's all in. I mean, it's from

00:50:32.160 | the rest of us to the family. It goes back to what I said earlier about our people. Our people are

00:50:36.720 | great. Ryan Morningstar is great. Bobby Telford is great. Uh, Bobby Telford took over for a guy

00:50:42.400 | named Ben Burrhow, who is great. Um, our medical team is great. Dr. Westerman, Dr. Wolf, uh, Jesse

00:50:49.920 | Donenworth, our athletic trainer is great. Um, uh, Terry Brands is great. Mariah Stickley and,

00:50:57.920 | and Elise Owens, our managers are great. My daughter's a manager as well. It's great.

00:51:01.920 | Um, they're, they're hardworking young women. Our rest, our Hawkeye wrestling club is,

00:51:07.840 | is where it needs to be in terms of how they help in their role. And now we have four women in there

00:51:15.280 | and that's great. And, you know, at least one of their dads is super involved with us, but,

00:51:22.800 | um, and so it's one thing that I've learned is that you have to have that. And if you don't

00:51:30.960 | have that, then you have to address it quickly. And those outliers, you know, let's solve that

00:51:36.800 | problem. Let's get it out in the open here. And if they're, you know, if it doesn't work out,

00:51:41.040 | it's not going to work out. That's a heck of a Thanksgiving dinner. Yeah. Next year. Well,

00:51:46.400 | I don't know if it'd be legal, but I'd have to check with our compliance and, you know,

00:51:51.120 | they'd have to vet you. You could come, you can come and see what it's all about. This room is

00:51:56.560 | full. Oh man. Well, yeah, I'll be back next year then. All right. Awesome. Last question. In 2014,

00:52:04.240 | I watched this video four years ago, uh, of you competing in, I believe your first swim meet

00:52:13.120 | against your brother, Terry. Uh, and you came out victorious. Not really. Okay. So let's,

00:52:21.520 | I won the race. Here's what happened. I had researched this thing because I'm, that's how

00:52:28.240 | I am. You practice. No, I didn't. But I researched it in swimming. If you flinch on that starter

00:52:34.080 | block, it's a false start. You can't twitch a finger. And because they would be doing that to

00:52:40.240 | get their buddy to move or the guy next to him, you know, so you have to be rock solid. Well,

00:52:45.760 | when we went, Terry was leaning forward as the gun was going off. So he's moving.

00:52:50.160 | And so I was like, no, no, no. False start. No, no, no, no. And he couldn't hear me. He was already

00:52:55.520 | in the water. And so he took off like a bat out of, you know, where for the end of the pool and

00:53:00.720 | couldn't hear me and got to the end of the pool. And it was a down and back. Well, that's a hard

00:53:05.920 | thing to do with a guy with no body fat. And so he burned a lot of energy and he come up on that end

00:53:11.440 | of the pool. And he was like, where's, where's the X. He didn't see me. And so we stopped him

00:53:15.840 | and then he came back and then we went another one and I beat him. Um, but it's the only time that,

00:53:22.000 | you know, I would say that he was tuckered out and that's the reason why. And, um, I'll also say

00:53:27.440 | this. We did a time where we timed my race, the one I won, and then we timed his first down to the

00:53:37.440 | wall. And then we timed his, the actual race where once he hit the wall, we timed him on the way back

00:53:43.520 | and he'd beat me. Now, how's that for being a honest, that's pretty honest, accountable person.

00:53:52.320 | And I'm going to tell you something else getting in those shorts, those swimsuits.

00:53:55.680 | That's impressive. They are tight. Yeah. So is there outside of wrestling, is there a thing that

00:54:03.440 | Terry got the better of you? I mean, I guess this could count as one, uh, that you're still really

00:54:09.520 | bitter about that. You need to avenge. I mean, that's passed. I mean, we, he's got an UNO title.

00:54:15.360 | We have UNO world championships. He's got an UNO title. I have, I have yet to have one morning

00:54:20.800 | star has two titles. That's unprecedented. So there's only four trophies out there. And Terry's

00:54:26.720 | got one of those and I don't have one yet. Yeah. Well, it's still time, Tom, thank you so much for

00:54:31.760 | letting a Russian with a tie into your home. Thanks for listening to this conversation with

00:54:36.560 | Tom brands to support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.

00:54:41.440 | And now let me leave you with some words from Marcus Aurelius. The art of living is more like

00:54:47.840 | wrestling than dancing. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

00:54:54.320 | [inaudible].

00:54:55.360 | [inaudible].

00:54:56.240 | [inaudible]

00:55:01.240 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Tom Brands: Iowa Wrestling | Lex Fridman Podcast #245

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