Dan Gable: Olympic Wrestling, Mental Toughness & the Making of Champions

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Dan Gable

00:00:02.720 | from two years ago.

00:00:04.460 | I did not previously publish this conversation

00:00:06.660 | as part of this podcast, but as a separate thing.

00:00:10.020 | And as a result, it did not receive many listens.

00:00:13.620 | Let me be honest and say that while I usually don't care

00:00:17.160 | about how many listens or views something gets,

00:00:19.860 | in this one case, I feel like I failed one of my heroes.

00:00:23.580 | I feel I didn't properly introduce

00:00:25.300 | a truly special human being to an audience

00:00:28.260 | that might find him as inspiring as I did.

00:00:31.380 | Dan Gable is one of the greatest Olympic athletes

00:00:35.020 | of all time.

00:00:36.300 | Bigger than records and medals, to many like myself,

00:00:39.300 | he's a symbol of guts, spirit, mental toughness,

00:00:43.340 | and relentless hard work.

00:00:45.420 | As a wrestler, he was undefeated in high school,

00:00:48.180 | undefeated in college until his very last match.

00:00:51.620 | And having lost that match, he found another level

00:00:55.580 | and became a world champion and an Olympic champion.

00:00:58.780 | And most importantly, he did so perfectly,

00:01:01.700 | dominating his opponents.

00:01:03.380 | He did not surrender a single point

00:01:05.180 | at the 1972 Olympic Games.

00:01:07.740 | As a coach, he led the Iowa Hawkeyes to 15 national titles

00:01:12.300 | and 25 consecutive Big Ten championships.

00:01:15.020 | He coached 152 All-Americans, 45 national champions,

00:01:19.820 | 106 Big Ten champions, and 12 Olympians,

00:01:23.260 | including eight medalists.

00:01:25.220 | He's the author of several books,

00:01:26.900 | including "A Wrestling Life 1 and 2"

00:01:29.780 | and "Coaching Wrestling Successfully."

00:01:32.540 | Quick mention of our sponsors.

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00:01:49.220 | And if you wish, click the sponsor links below

00:01:51.780 | to get a discount and to support this podcast.

00:01:54.540 | As a side note, let me say that I spent a few days in Iowa

00:01:57.940 | and got to attend a wrestling duel meet

00:02:00.300 | in the historic Carver Hawkeye Arena.

00:02:02.820 | Part of me wanted to stay in Iowa forever,

00:02:05.420 | to drill takedowns, to start a family, to live life simply.

00:02:10.100 | Wrestling is one of the pure sports,

00:02:12.460 | both beautiful and brutal,

00:02:14.860 | where both mental toughness and technical mastery

00:02:17.620 | of the highest form are rewarded with victory,

00:02:20.980 | and everything else is punished with defeat.

00:02:23.940 | And every such loss weighs heavy on the minds

00:02:26.100 | of anyone who has ever stepped on the wrestling mat,

00:02:29.220 | including myself.

00:02:30.980 | The same is true for one of the greatest wrestlers

00:02:33.900 | in history of the sport,

00:02:35.380 | the man who graciously welcomed me into his home

00:02:38.180 | for this conversation, the legend, Dan Gable.

00:02:42.100 | If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,

00:02:44.420 | review it on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify,

00:02:47.740 | support on Patreon,

00:02:49.060 | or connect with me on Twitter @LexFriedman.

00:02:51.900 | And now, here's my conversation with Dan Gable.

00:02:55.860 | - You're persistent, and I love that,

00:02:58.260 | because you've been trying to get me on this podcast

00:02:59.900 | for a long time.

00:03:01.260 | And until I saw you on another podcast,

00:03:04.900 | and you said you were Russian, did I call you back?

00:03:08.420 | - Then it was over.

00:03:09.380 | - Because Russia, to me, is leading the world in wrestling,

00:03:12.700 | almost every year.

00:03:14.900 | - What's the difference between American wrestling

00:03:16.540 | and Russian wrestling?

00:03:17.380 | You showed me this painting.

00:03:18.580 | - Well, it's MIT, it's science.

00:03:20.580 | - It's science.

00:03:21.500 | - And they really study the sport.

00:03:24.860 | They're really good technically.

00:03:26.140 | They're really good in strategy.

00:03:28.700 | They don't really push the real toughness.

00:03:32.140 | They don't push conditioning.

00:03:35.460 | And so Americans, we need what they have.

00:03:38.800 | Russians need what we have.

00:03:40.900 | And when you get the two together.

00:03:43.620 | And for me, why I could beat the Russians

00:03:46.580 | is because I went their way a little bit,

00:03:50.220 | but I kept my toughness.

00:03:52.660 | - But you're known for your toughness.

00:03:56.100 | - Yeah, but I wasn't known for my art.

00:03:58.060 | (laughing)

00:03:59.060 | I wasn't known for my science.

00:04:00.980 | - So when did you become a bit of an artist?

00:04:03.020 | - It took a loss.

00:04:04.780 | - The Larry Owens loss.

00:04:05.620 | - Most people thought I was already an artist

00:04:07.740 | just because I won 181 straight matches in seven years.

00:04:11.460 | And not just winning, but kind of punishing people.

00:04:16.060 | And from that point of view,

00:04:17.980 | yeah, I might've been pretty good,

00:04:19.300 | but I had a long ways to go yet.

00:04:21.340 | And I didn't really realize that,

00:04:23.700 | or I should say, I didn't really know

00:04:27.140 | how to get it out of me until I had a loss.

00:04:29.340 | And then I realized I got to buckle down,

00:04:31.560 | learn some of that science, become more of an artist.

00:04:34.560 | - How do you become an artist?

00:04:35.580 | So the Russian way has this drilling technique,

00:04:40.580 | thousands of reps.

00:04:42.780 | How do you think you work on the science, the art part?

00:04:46.740 | - You got to study the best in the world.

00:04:49.860 | I think Dave Schultz was our guy in America

00:04:53.380 | that probably showed us that being artistic, you needed that.

00:04:58.380 | And he studied it.

00:05:00.460 | He went over there as a high schooler

00:05:02.660 | and wrestled in some major tournaments over there.

00:05:04.980 | And he saw their ways.

00:05:07.180 | He used that Russian science,

00:05:09.960 | and then he was already an American

00:05:12.740 | and he saw how I trained athletes.

00:05:16.000 | He saw what I did in the Olympics,

00:05:17.700 | saw what other people, how we held up,

00:05:20.380 | and he applied that as well.

00:05:21.900 | But I'd have to say he was more the artistic type.

00:05:25.180 | He was more of a Russian than an American

00:05:27.180 | when it came to wrestling.

00:05:30.500 | - You've coached 45 national champions,

00:05:33.300 | 106 Big Ten champions, and eight Olympic medalists,

00:05:37.980 | which is incredible.

00:05:39.580 | What is a common thread between them

00:05:42.680 | and what are maybe some of the fundamental differences?

00:05:46.540 | - I think the common thread is that

00:05:50.500 | they all had one of those two avenues that we talked already

00:05:57.500 | and because we intertwined them.

00:06:02.140 | So in a Russian wrestling room, they got the same people.

00:06:05.360 | Most of the time in an American wrestling room,

00:06:07.100 | we had the same people.

00:06:08.520 | But when I was out recruiting,

00:06:10.620 | at first I recruited just attitude,

00:06:13.040 | but I needed more than that.

00:06:16.800 | I needed some genetics in that wrestling room

00:06:21.380 | to actually, that hard work people,

00:06:25.500 | they could look and see, wow, that execution,

00:06:30.500 | that's unbelievable.

00:06:32.820 | But yet I can beat that guy after the first minute.

00:06:37.360 | - So you think the art, the technique is genetics,

00:06:42.360 | you're born with it.

00:06:43.760 | You think it's not something--

00:06:44.600 | - I think your pop and your ability to move--

00:06:48.400 | - Timing.

00:06:49.240 | - And timing and your quickness and your strength.

00:06:53.320 | You know, the Russians, they usually picked out

00:06:58.200 | the people that can go into that sport.

00:07:01.760 | That was the old-fashioned sports school.

00:07:04.140 | But it's mostly like when you walk

00:07:07.000 | into a Russian wrestling room,

00:07:08.780 | you see them hitting skills, techniques.

00:07:12.200 | You don't see them banging against each other that much.

00:07:15.480 | But then when practice is over,

00:07:17.120 | you might not see a bunch of sprints,

00:07:18.920 | you might see them walk over to the ropes

00:07:22.760 | and they drop down from the ceiling

00:07:25.160 | and they'll jump up and climb a rope, boom, boom, boom.

00:07:28.160 | And then they come down

00:07:29.440 | and then they don't jump right back on.

00:07:31.680 | They have three or four other guys go

00:07:33.320 | and then they jump back on.

00:07:34.760 | Whereas I probably made my guys climb 'em,

00:07:38.040 | get right back down, climb 'em right back again.

00:07:40.920 | But I also realized that I had to have a mix of that.

00:07:45.920 | - What was the role, what was your role?

00:07:48.520 | I mean, those guys looked up and Dan Gable

00:07:51.080 | and what was the role in helping these athletes

00:07:53.600 | become their best, these national champions?

00:07:55.520 | - Well, you had to first of all prove

00:07:56.620 | that you knew what you were doing.

00:08:00.360 | - In terms of technique or in terms of--

00:08:02.400 | - Everything, everything.

00:08:03.600 | They just, you had to be the first guy there

00:08:05.680 | and the last guy to leave

00:08:06.600 | and you had to be the most dedicated guy,

00:08:08.440 | even though they were the ones

00:08:09.440 | that's trying to win the championships.

00:08:12.000 | You had to prove that you were gonna work

00:08:13.980 | just as hard as they were as a coach.

00:08:15.920 | - And what does that look like?

00:08:17.280 | So you can see it when you, you know it when you see it?

00:08:20.180 | - Well, you're there ahead of 'em

00:08:22.200 | and you're there after they leave.

00:08:24.360 | (laughing)

00:08:25.200 | You know, it's that simple.

00:08:26.800 | I'm picking up after 'em and you're analyzing 'em.

00:08:29.920 | You outwork 'em, you outwork 'em and you outthink 'em.

00:08:34.400 | And so, you know, use that type of strategy.

00:08:36.240 | And over time, when you prove it works,

00:08:39.860 | because some of my kids that were the best kids in the world

00:08:44.520 | really shouldn't have been a wrestler.

00:08:49.600 | I mean, they weren't very coordinated.

00:08:51.520 | (laughing)

00:08:53.080 | But they worked so hard, they developed themselves.

00:08:56.940 | - What was your role in that process?

00:08:58.400 | I mean, that means pushing kids to their limit.

00:09:01.600 | If you're not--

00:09:02.920 | - Yeah, but you can't push kids to their limit.

00:09:04.680 | And even when you push 'em to their limit,

00:09:06.480 | that's not their limit.

00:09:07.800 | 'Cause their limit's above and beyond that.

00:09:09.640 | I mean, yeah, coaches sometimes accidentally don't,

00:09:14.080 | they lose kids.

00:09:15.000 | - Yeah.

00:09:15.840 | - Because of the heat, because of hard work and all that.

00:09:19.040 | And you gotta know when to back off.

00:09:22.680 | You gotta read your athletes.

00:09:24.540 | And by that I mean, you gotta know 'em pretty well.

00:09:28.160 | Every once in a while, you make a little bit of a mistake.

00:09:30.100 | But if you don't react right on that mistake

00:09:32.120 | before it gets too far, then it's gonna be a casualty.

00:09:35.560 | And I don't mean somebody dying necessarily,

00:09:38.040 | but maybe something that could turn 'em off,

00:09:40.840 | or maybe something that could run 'em away,

00:09:43.240 | or maybe something that, wow, that was close.

00:09:46.840 | Maybe shouldn't have pushed 'em that far.

00:09:49.040 | So you really have to be very educated.

00:09:51.640 | And it's not just what you know,

00:09:54.640 | it's what you know about them.

00:09:56.320 | And I'm not talking about the team.

00:09:57.920 | I'm talking about each guy on the team.

00:09:59.320 | - Individuals, yeah.

00:10:00.160 | - Yeah, each person on the team.

00:10:01.360 | - And you know it how?

00:10:03.440 | You see it in their eyes?

00:10:04.280 | - You know it how?

00:10:05.100 | Because you're the first one there,

00:10:06.920 | and you're the last one to leave,

00:10:08.200 | and you sit in the environment with 'em.

00:10:10.760 | You're there in the morning for practice sometimes,

00:10:13.280 | you're there in the afternoon for two or three hours.

00:10:15.320 | After practice, you might have a hot room,

00:10:18.480 | or you might have a sauna, or a steam, or a whirlpool,

00:10:21.720 | and you get in there with 'em, and you listen.

00:10:24.880 | You know, you're not just feeding out information.

00:10:28.120 | You do that, but you're taking in a lot of that too.

00:10:31.240 | And I'm telling you, when you get in an atmosphere

00:10:33.760 | that they're relaxed, and they feel comfortable,

00:10:36.600 | it's like a massage.

00:10:38.640 | And that's after practice, in one of those areas

00:10:41.600 | that people are around you, you learn a lot.

00:10:44.480 | I mean, you got a lot to learn as a coach.

00:10:46.520 | And when you get in that atmosphere,

00:10:48.100 | when all of a sudden you feel like very comfortable,

00:10:51.240 | words start flowing.

00:10:54.280 | And when those words flow, you take 'em in as a coach,

00:10:59.280 | and there's something probably gonna be said

00:11:02.280 | that you can do and act upon

00:11:04.080 | that's gonna help certain situations.

00:11:07.320 | I've saved a couple of kids' lives, for sure,

00:11:09.880 | that were on the brink.

00:11:11.280 | You know, sometimes performance is at such a high level,

00:11:14.120 | in a high-level atmosphere,

00:11:16.180 | that life and death's actually involved.

00:11:21.520 | And I don't mean pushing a kid to where he just dies,

00:11:24.480 | but I mean, he might feel himself as a failure.

00:11:27.840 | He might go home and take his own life.

00:11:30.360 | - Yeah, I mean, but that's part of it.

00:11:31.840 | You're putting so much heart,

00:11:34.280 | so much blood and heart and sweat,

00:11:36.080 | and your whole meaning of life becomes winning.

00:11:39.520 | So, and sometimes it's so hard to lose within that context.

00:11:43.600 | So, in your, I think, the first wrestling life,

00:11:47.080 | you wrote about Chad Zapato, who lost,

00:11:51.320 | I mean, an incredible wrestler,

00:11:52.880 | but lost in three finals in the nationals,

00:11:55.440 | and has this tattoo of a hawk clawing out the human heart.

00:12:00.000 | Yeah, so what lessons, is there any lessons

00:12:03.200 | from the incredible wrestling he's done,

00:12:06.580 | but also the incredible suffering

00:12:08.080 | that he went through on himself?

00:12:11.040 | - Yeah, again, you like that word, suffering, which is okay.

00:12:14.880 | - Okay, so-- - No, no, no, no, no,

00:12:16.440 | keep it, keep it, 'cause it fits right in where I want.

00:12:19.600 | I have to turn that suffering around

00:12:21.760 | to where he makes and feels good about himself,

00:12:25.800 | or better, doesn't have to feel perfect,

00:12:29.120 | 'cause he did lose, you know?

00:12:31.360 | And so, but you have to actually get him to realize

00:12:35.580 | that, yeah, he's still unique.

00:12:37.440 | Compared to the walk of the earth,

00:12:38.960 | he was unbelievably unique, right at the top,

00:12:41.880 | just a little bit short of, but because it was,

00:12:44.960 | you know, he felt the suffering,

00:12:48.080 | you now have to go about and change that

00:12:50.680 | and put it into goodwill some way.

00:12:52.800 | And because you really have a lot of goodwill,

00:12:55.560 | you can do a lot of goodwill.

00:12:57.360 | And so, and it's not easy.

00:13:00.640 | It took him probably years, years of tattooing,

00:13:05.640 | years of covering the tattoos.

00:13:08.400 | And, you know, he told me he moved to,

00:13:12.040 | I go, "Why you moving to California?"

00:13:13.440 | 'Cause he was here for a couple years

00:13:15.200 | after his wrestling was done, 'cause he had a good job

00:13:18.160 | around here and he was, I thought he was doing a good job,

00:13:21.280 | but he just, he said, "I had to escape."

00:13:24.720 | Yeah, same as the covering up the tattoo.

00:13:26.880 | I had a wrestling terminology, I have to get,

00:13:29.240 | I hate to say this, I hate to say this.

00:13:32.120 | I go, "Where are you going?"

00:13:33.800 | He said, "I'm gonna go to California."

00:13:35.760 | And I go, "Is there any reason

00:13:38.280 | "why you're going to California?"

00:13:42.080 | He says, "That's where everybody goes to hide."

00:13:46.520 | But I said, "I think you're wrong there,

00:13:51.080 | "but I think what will determine your life

00:13:55.000 | "will be what you do from now on."

00:13:57.080 | And if you can find, and he's actually turned it around.

00:14:00.240 | I mean, it's a journey. He's actually turned it around.

00:14:01.440 | You have to discover that yourself.

00:14:02.880 | Exactly, and he went someplace

00:14:04.280 | that he thought he could fit into, and I think he did.

00:14:09.040 | And I think he's got a good job and he's helping people.

00:14:12.940 | He covered that tattoo with feathers, another tattoo.

00:14:17.940 | - Well, in the end, it's a beautiful story.

00:14:20.540 | - Yeah, it is, it really is.

00:14:21.540 | - Of suffering and overcoming.

00:14:22.940 | - Yeah, and he's not done yet.

00:14:25.140 | - He's not done yet.

00:14:25.980 | - No, he's not done.

00:14:26.820 | He's got a lot more to do.

00:14:29.820 | - So you mentioned Roger Bannister,

00:14:32.580 | again, I think in your first book,

00:14:34.620 | and somebody you looked up to.

00:14:36.460 | That's the man who broke the four-minute mile, right?

00:14:40.060 | When everybody said it was impossible,

00:14:42.020 | everyone thought it was impossible.

00:14:43.420 | - Oh, they thought you would die.

00:14:44.620 | - You would die.

00:14:45.460 | It's not humanly possible.

00:14:47.340 | - Yeah.

00:14:48.180 | - So what--

00:14:49.100 | - Well, you've done your homework.

00:14:50.820 | - For what, the book, or what?

00:14:51.940 | - Oh, I don't know, for me.

00:14:52.780 | You've done your homework.

00:14:53.620 | - Yeah, I know, but yeah.

00:14:54.940 | Sent here by Putin to do research, yeah.

00:14:59.500 | So what lesson do you take from that story for yourself?

00:15:03.060 | The impossible, trying to accomplish the impossible.

00:15:05.900 | - Well, the impossible is possible.

00:15:08.500 | It's just that simple.

00:15:10.380 | Time changes things.

00:15:12.100 | I mean, if you looked at where the mile time is right now

00:15:17.100 | compared to that four-minute mile,

00:15:20.620 | which when it was broke by a couple tenths

00:15:23.180 | or three or four tenths,

00:15:24.700 | it's now broke by another 20 seconds.

00:15:30.540 | - Yeah, by several hundred people, yeah.

00:15:32.980 | - Yeah, I mean, by tons of people.

00:15:35.220 | And it's pretty much common knowledge

00:15:37.500 | that you gotta run a four-minute mile

00:15:38.700 | if you're gonna go somewhere now,

00:15:39.980 | or below if you're gonna win events at major level,

00:15:44.020 | that you gotta be able to do that.

00:15:45.820 | And so you can take that and you can look at what

00:15:48.860 | in time history has as its record performance,

00:15:56.540 | and you can realize that,

00:15:59.740 | ah, that record performance, it's gonna change.

00:16:02.620 | - Yeah.

00:16:03.460 | - And they don't take into all the factors of knowledge.

00:16:07.400 | They don't take in all the factors of better shoes.

00:16:12.540 | They don't take in all the factors

00:16:13.860 | of better understanding of nutrition.

00:16:16.940 | I mean, it's like me as an athlete.

00:16:19.060 | I went to practice every day in high school

00:16:23.740 | for at least my sophomore and my junior

00:16:27.740 | and part of my senior year,

00:16:29.980 | and all of a sudden, a new rule came up.

00:16:33.800 | It said, the rule said, before that,

00:16:37.400 | said, at least most of the coaches,

00:16:41.580 | we don't want you drinking water at practice.

00:16:45.600 | - Yeah.

00:16:46.440 | - And, okay, why?

00:16:49.000 | 'Cause you gotta toughen you up.

00:16:50.440 | That's a weakness, water.

00:16:52.460 | And so we would go through practice.

00:16:55.320 | I mean, and you're sweating,

00:16:56.600 | and then you're sweating so much

00:16:57.820 | that you're almost out of sweat.

00:16:59.640 | - Yeah.

00:17:00.480 | - And so you're mostly, at the end of practice,

00:17:02.840 | you're not even wrestling.

00:17:04.600 | Excuse me.

00:17:05.440 | You're sitting against a wall.

00:17:06.840 | - Yeah.

00:17:07.680 | - 'Cause you're tired.

00:17:08.500 | So then all of a sudden, they say,

00:17:10.640 | okay, go ahead and drink water during practice.

00:17:12.960 | Drink Gatorade during practice.

00:17:14.400 | And all of a sudden, at the end of practice,

00:17:16.240 | we're still out there competing.

00:17:18.200 | And so I look at my career for two and a half years,

00:17:21.160 | where I, and junior high too,

00:17:24.000 | so I got another three years,

00:17:25.520 | where I didn't really, wasn't able to push

00:17:28.880 | as good as I could because I just was probably under.

00:17:32.560 | - Under hydrated.

00:17:33.400 | - Yeah.

00:17:34.220 | - Yeah, so what, so, but at the individual level,

00:17:37.080 | in terms of the impossible,

00:17:38.800 | when did you first believe the thing

00:17:41.440 | that maybe probably people would laugh at you about

00:17:44.240 | that you would be an Olympic champion?

00:17:46.640 | - Well, I always visualized me being the best.

00:17:50.920 | - You believed it in the very beginning.

00:17:52.080 | - Forever, forever.

00:17:53.760 | Yeah, I was, because I was a,

00:17:55.840 | I don't know if you should call it a dreamer

00:17:57.520 | or somebody that, I was just involved

00:18:00.240 | with competitive sports at the YMCA from age five.

00:18:05.200 | - Did you tell people that dream,

00:18:06.680 | that you're gonna be Olympic champion one day?

00:18:09.080 | You're gonna be the best in the world?

00:18:10.360 | - I think they knew.

00:18:12.280 | And the only reason why they knew,

00:18:13.520 | 'cause there was something a little different

00:18:15.160 | about this guy.

00:18:16.000 | He was--

00:18:17.840 | - He's not gonna stop.

00:18:18.660 | - Well, he was out in the yard.

00:18:20.160 | - Yeah.

00:18:21.000 | - And he was swinging baseball bats.

00:18:22.280 | - Yeah.

00:18:23.120 | - You know, at six, at seven, at eight, at nine, at 10.

00:18:26.440 | And he was swinging baseball bats

00:18:29.240 | so much right-handed and so much left-handed

00:18:31.520 | with nobody even there throwing the ball.

00:18:33.560 | That all of a sudden when they walked by,

00:18:36.840 | all of a sudden the grass was down to dirt on both sides.

00:18:41.160 | So it's like, they saw me out in the yard

00:18:45.600 | playing by myself sports,

00:18:48.320 | or you know, or you get the neighborhood kids

00:18:50.880 | and you play a lot.

00:18:51.820 | But if they weren't there, you know,

00:18:53.960 | if you walked in my front room,

00:18:55.600 | I was hiking a ball like I was the quarterback.

00:18:58.120 | And I was running and running through the furniture,

00:19:02.160 | you know, that type of stuff.

00:19:03.000 | So, you know, who saw this guy mostly

00:19:06.320 | was probably the parents.

00:19:08.520 | - Yeah.

00:19:09.360 | - And the coaches at the YMCA level, the junior high level,

00:19:12.680 | they saw this guy come first and end up last.

00:19:15.440 | But I wasn't that great.

00:19:18.600 | I wasn't the fastest guy at that time.

00:19:21.200 | And I wasn't the strongest guy.

00:19:24.220 | You know, actually before I went to the Olympics,

00:19:25.900 | when they tested me, they tested everybody.

00:19:28.080 | And I probably came back with one of the highest scores,

00:19:31.020 | but it was not like the highest person

00:19:34.760 | on this and this and that.

00:19:38.340 | I was all high across the board,

00:19:40.340 | straight across the board high on every one of them.

00:19:43.160 | But there was always people that were higher than me.

00:19:45.820 | - Genetics.

00:19:46.660 | - But then they would go down.

00:19:47.980 | - Yeah.

00:19:48.820 | - Then they would test on something else,

00:19:49.660 | they'd go back up.

00:19:50.500 | Mine stayed high all across the board.

00:19:53.020 | And so I really didn't have too many flaws,

00:19:56.120 | but I didn't have any things that also said

00:19:58.640 | that you were gonna be unscored upon at the Olympic Games.

00:20:02.560 | - Right.

00:20:03.380 | So take me through that day if you could.

00:20:06.120 | 1972, when you were going for the 68 kilogram

00:20:09.580 | freestyle wrestling gold.

00:20:11.400 | You scored 57 points, if I'm correct,

00:20:15.760 | and had zero points scored on you.

00:20:18.040 | 57, zero.

00:20:19.940 | So maybe take me through almost the details.

00:20:24.080 | What was your routine?

00:20:25.000 | What was your process?

00:20:25.960 | What was going through your mind,

00:20:27.440 | your thoughts of that day?

00:20:29.040 | - Yeah, first of all, it was quite a day

00:20:32.580 | because we weighed in every day at that time.

00:20:36.920 | - In the morning?

00:20:37.760 | - Yeah, we weighed in two hours

00:20:39.040 | before the start of the competition.

00:20:41.160 | And so that didn't mean that you weighed in two hours

00:20:43.480 | before you wrestled, 'cause you didn't know

00:20:44.600 | whether you're gonna wrestle right away or later on.

00:20:47.120 | In fact, in that day, I don't think I wrestled

00:20:49.520 | until later on in the evening, so had all day to recover,

00:20:54.120 | but I didn't really need it anyway,

00:20:55.800 | 'cause I wasn't really pulling a whole lot of weight.

00:20:58.960 | But it was just interesting.

00:21:01.720 | - But what was in your mind?

00:21:02.680 | What were you thinking?

00:21:03.680 | Were you nervous?

00:21:05.160 | - I was confident.

00:21:06.800 | I was confident.

00:21:07.640 | - So you knew you were gonna win the gold?

00:21:09.360 | - Yeah, I knew I was gonna win.

00:21:11.240 | But in reality, I didn't know it

00:21:14.480 | from a cocky point of view.

00:21:16.040 | I only knew it because for the last,

00:21:19.200 | one, two, three and a half years,

00:21:23.600 | I had been going to practice,

00:21:25.100 | and I'd win in every practice.

00:21:29.000 | - You felt good.

00:21:29.840 | - And I hardly ever lose a takedown.

00:21:31.720 | And if I lost, if somebody scored on me,

00:21:34.600 | it was like when I went to bed,

00:21:37.920 | I couldn't sleep until I figured it out.

00:21:40.560 | Or if I didn't figure it out, I would fall asleep,

00:21:46.320 | and I would wake up with the answer

00:21:49.480 | of what I needed, why I got scored upon.

00:21:51.200 | - So maybe now that you've won the gold,

00:21:53.440 | can you tell me in the practice room,

00:21:55.080 | if somebody took you down,

00:21:57.120 | how do you take Dan Gable down in the practice room?

00:22:00.240 | Timing, technique?

00:22:01.080 | - Very difficult, but somebody could,

00:22:03.960 | because they were going for one move.

00:22:07.660 | All I wanted was one move.

00:22:11.000 | Whereas if you can arrest somebody,

00:22:12.720 | arrest them the whole practice or half a practice

00:22:14.320 | for at least 10, 15 minutes,

00:22:16.480 | and they were maybe gonna score

00:22:18.820 | if they could work it in their mind,

00:22:23.180 | but they knew that was gonna be their victory.

00:22:27.480 | - So in the practice room, maybe you can educate me.

00:22:31.360 | When you're going for the Olympic gold,

00:22:34.680 | you didn't want to allow any takedowns.

00:22:38.200 | So there's no such thing as working

00:22:39.580 | on some kind of weird position, a weak point,

00:22:41.880 | or something.

00:22:42.700 | It's important to not let down, take down.

00:22:45.720 | - It's kind of like what we were saying before.

00:22:47.960 | If something happened and somebody scored on me

00:22:50.760 | in a certain way, I would go over that situation,

00:22:54.480 | over that situation, over it again,

00:22:56.880 | and I would come up with an answer.

00:22:58.680 | And then I would actually test it.

00:23:00.460 | Maybe I wouldn't go right back the next day

00:23:03.520 | 'cause I didn't want the guy to not have some,

00:23:07.160 | I didn't want him to think

00:23:08.160 | that I was thinking about it all night.

00:23:09.960 | I didn't tell him.

00:23:11.120 | But maybe three days later when we wrestled again,

00:23:14.140 | I actually had it figured out because he wasn't able to.

00:23:19.140 | Or even if I was in on an offensive move

00:23:24.460 | and I got stopped and didn't score,

00:23:27.140 | I had to go back and filter that.

00:23:29.980 | But it wasn't something that usually I couldn't solve.

00:23:34.220 | I could usually solve it.

00:23:35.780 | Let's go back to the Olympic game.

00:23:37.060 | So I get up in the Olympic in the morning,

00:23:39.360 | and I'm not sure when the weigh-ins were,

00:23:41.300 | but I think I was probably a pound over.

00:23:44.320 | That's about a half a kilo, 1.1 pounds is a kilo,

00:23:49.100 | 'cause we went in kilograms.

00:23:50.300 | So what do you do with that pound?

00:23:51.540 | You aren't off or?

00:23:52.420 | No, I just went over to the,

00:23:54.220 | they had a sauna there, and I got in the sauna.

00:23:56.980 | And the funny thing was, the morning of the finals,

00:24:01.980 | there was another athlete in the sauna.

00:24:09.060 | And it was-- American or?

00:24:10.680 | No, it was a European.

00:24:12.880 | I don't remember where she was from.

00:24:14.880 | Not a Russian.

00:24:15.760 | Well, you know what?

00:24:16.680 | I kind of think it was a plot, 'cause it was a girl.

00:24:21.680 | Interesting.

00:24:22.880 | And she didn't have her top on.

00:24:24.680 | Oh, wow.

00:24:25.520 | And that was pretty common.

00:24:28.640 | And so it's kind of interesting.

00:24:31.040 | You think back about it,

00:24:33.200 | because there's some funny things

00:24:37.140 | that go on behind the scenes in Olympic games,

00:24:40.820 | in world games, anytime when you have country against country

00:24:44.540 | and so there's some crazy stuff that goes on.

00:24:46.780 | Yeah.

00:24:47.620 | Did any of it affect you?

00:24:49.140 | Was there any?

00:24:49.980 | Well, I almost stayed too long in the sauna.

00:24:51.820 | (laughing)

00:24:54.060 | You lost a little bit over a pound.

00:24:56.260 | I lost a little more than a pound.

00:24:57.420 | Yeah, yeah.

00:24:58.260 | But it didn't really bother me,

00:25:00.940 | 'cause I wasn't cutting a lot of weight.

00:25:04.220 | So your match against the Russian, the--

00:25:08.120 | Azhelyev.

00:25:08.960 | Yeah, Azhelyev.

00:25:09.880 | He went on to be a two-time world champion,

00:25:12.040 | a silver medalist as well.

00:25:13.600 | I mean, this is an incredible wrestler.

00:25:15.560 | So what was going through your mind

00:25:17.560 | before stepping on the mat with that guy?

00:25:20.600 | You've beaten a bunch of wrestlers,

00:25:22.240 | haven't had a point scored on you,

00:25:24.600 | and you're stepping on the mat against a Russian

00:25:26.840 | who you said was really,

00:25:28.520 | they picked, the Soviets picked to beat you.

00:25:31.360 | Right, and I know why they picked him,

00:25:33.200 | because he had a great attitude.

00:25:34.740 | So he wasn't just the typical artist.

00:25:38.540 | He was a good artist.

00:25:39.740 | He hooked elbows like Sadylyaev,

00:25:42.380 | and he's from that area of the world

00:25:45.000 | where they have some of those types of moves,

00:25:47.380 | and he was a goer,

00:25:50.020 | but by cutting down a weight, he lost some of that go.

00:25:53.640 | And I don't know if,

00:25:57.100 | that's a process you gotta go about scientifically.

00:26:00.620 | Yeah.

00:26:01.820 | And so if you don't do it as an American,

00:26:04.860 | it can really hurt your performance.

00:26:06.380 | If you don't do it as a Russian,

00:26:08.100 | it can hurt your performance,

00:26:09.140 | and they already didn't really do that a lot,

00:26:12.760 | where you usually wrestled a weight

00:26:14.980 | where it was more like your weight.

00:26:17.140 | And so by cutting him down,

00:26:19.660 | it maybe slowed his belief down a little bit.

00:26:23.060 | So you saw it in him.

00:26:23.900 | The spirit was a little bit gone when you were facing him.

00:26:26.260 | Yeah, but then he came back,

00:26:27.380 | and he won the rest of the matches,

00:26:29.660 | and he was in the round robin,

00:26:31.420 | and he was able to go to the finals.

00:26:33.480 | But he had lost another match, actually,

00:26:37.340 | in the round robin against the Japanese.

00:26:39.180 | So I think I had already gained enough of artistic,

00:26:44.180 | being able to finish a match.

00:26:46.780 | Once I lost my match in college,

00:26:49.060 | for the last two years,

00:26:49.980 | I took on some of that artistic work.

00:26:52.660 | And I think that he was already hoping to win,

00:26:57.660 | but he was hoping to win by a long ways

00:27:00.080 | because he had to pin me or beat me by eight points

00:27:04.540 | to be able to win the gold.

00:27:06.260 | And that wasn't gonna happen.

00:27:09.020 | I mean, the chance to pin is pretty good.

00:27:11.020 | - Is it hard to pin Dan Gable versus take down?

00:27:14.500 | Have you taken risks where you could pay for them?

00:27:17.900 | - I can't remember too many that I took

00:27:21.180 | that would actually put me in a danger position.

00:27:23.980 | I've taken risk,

00:27:25.340 | but the risks were so scientifically, technically correct

00:27:28.940 | that I wouldn't land in that danger zone.

00:27:33.120 | It's like, if I'm gonna lock up and throw you,

00:27:35.080 | I'm not gonna throw you to my own back

00:27:37.060 | and roll you through.

00:27:38.100 | I'm gonna turn in the air.

00:27:40.300 | - So you were scientific about it.

00:27:41.420 | - Yeah, exactly.

00:27:42.660 | I learned the hard way.

00:27:46.240 | Early on, there was moves from collegiate wrestling

00:27:49.680 | that you did that exposed your shoulders,

00:27:51.980 | which it cost me in some early freestyle matches

00:27:55.500 | against great wrestlers.

00:27:57.580 | But I would go back to my collegiate escaping type moves

00:28:02.580 | to where I hit a Gramby roll

00:28:04.860 | where you expose your shoulders

00:28:06.260 | and you lose two points every time.

00:28:08.020 | But you learn that that's not the system.

00:28:10.400 | But if you hadn't wrestled much,

00:28:12.780 | you would get exposed under maybe a desperate situation.

00:28:17.780 | You would hit it.

00:28:18.860 | - So you won the gold.

00:28:20.620 | How did it feel?

00:28:22.380 | - I think the question would be,

00:28:25.300 | how would it feel if you lost the gold?

00:28:28.140 | For me, 'cause I already went through that once.

00:28:31.220 | Not at that highest level,

00:28:33.540 | but the National Collegiate Championship level,

00:28:35.820 | my senior year.

00:28:36.660 | - The Larry Owings loss.

00:28:37.660 | - Larry Owings, yeah.

00:28:39.020 | And that didn't set well.

00:28:40.500 | - Were you afraid of that happening again

00:28:43.340 | at the Olympic level?

00:28:45.420 | Was that even--

00:28:46.240 | - No, I really wasn't.

00:28:47.420 | But it was why I changed my philosophy of training

00:28:52.220 | and added to the scientific artist type.

00:28:57.220 | And if I had won that match,

00:29:00.100 | even though I wouldn't have felt good about it,

00:29:01.620 | even though I squeaked it out,

00:29:03.740 | I wasn't feeling good about that match.

00:29:06.900 | It would have affected me a little bit.

00:29:09.700 | But if I'd have won it, I would have got over it.

00:29:12.420 | I mean, I'm not over it now.

00:29:14.660 | I mean, I don't know why I was doing this kind of stuff

00:29:17.740 | right before my match.

00:29:19.860 | By that, I mean this kind of stuff, talking--

00:29:21.420 | - Interviews, yeah, journalists.

00:29:23.220 | - Yeah, and I really wasn't a good talker then.

00:29:25.100 | I mean, me and you were talking pretty good right now,

00:29:26.860 | except for I got a little cold.

00:29:28.060 | But I don't think I could say two words hardly then.

00:29:32.740 | And they took takes.

00:29:35.580 | Wide World of Sports said,

00:29:36.420 | "Hey, we want you to be the introduction

00:29:39.460 | "for our next week's show."

00:29:41.420 | So I just said, "Hey, I'm Dan Gable.

00:29:42.880 | "Come watch me as I finish my career undefeated, 182 and 0."

00:29:46.340 | That's what they want me to say.

00:29:47.260 | - Everybody assumed you'd be undefeated.

00:29:48.980 | - And I said it.

00:29:50.700 | I had to take it 22 times.

00:29:52.700 | And the last two or three times, they wrote it out.

00:29:56.060 | And I read it, and still it wasn't like I just said it.

00:29:59.300 | I was reading it like, "Hi, I'm Dan Gable.

00:30:02.820 | "Come, come on."

00:30:05.100 | You know, that type of stuff.

00:30:06.420 | So, and they finally just closed the book

00:30:08.380 | and said, "Yeah, that's good enough."

00:30:10.140 | But I turned and it was my time to wrestle.

00:30:12.380 | And so, you just, you learn that,

00:30:17.180 | and for me, it was great coaching experience.

00:30:20.380 | 'Cause that's what I turned into be.

00:30:22.020 | You know, I coached for longer than I wrestled.

00:30:25.420 | And I put up a lot of champions,

00:30:28.220 | but you learn through mistakes

00:30:30.660 | that even in your own career that you had made.

00:30:33.480 | You know, it's an ever learning process.

00:30:36.060 | It's an ever learning process.

00:30:37.680 | - Have you ever been afraid on the mat?

00:30:41.020 | Does fear have any role, do you think, for a wrestler?

00:30:45.700 | Or it must be--

00:30:46.540 | - Well, I'm sure fear is out there.

00:30:48.900 | And I'm sure that was to my advantage almost every time.

00:30:52.380 | I'm sure in my Olympic finals,

00:30:54.020 | I was really, he had these doubts.

00:30:56.220 | He probably had these doubts.

00:30:57.860 | And that gives me the edge.

00:31:01.940 | And I don't know if I really ever had fear,

00:31:07.260 | but obviously there was points in times

00:31:12.140 | where I didn't perform as well.

00:31:14.420 | Not many, but a few.

00:31:18.020 | And if I look back at it,

00:31:20.140 | I don't think it was that American, you know,

00:31:24.460 | raw, raw, raw stuff.

00:31:26.200 | I think it was probably the fear

00:31:28.940 | of not being an artist as much.

00:31:33.100 | You know, maybe this guy might be better than me

00:31:36.180 | scientifically.

00:31:37.980 | And, you know, you're a scientist.

00:31:40.420 | I think that got to me more than anything else.

00:31:43.660 | I said early on that I wanna eliminate

00:31:46.780 | ever having to worry about getting tired in a match.

00:31:49.820 | So I kind of eliminated that.

00:31:51.620 | So I got rid of that point.

00:31:53.420 | And I do think that in wrestling,

00:31:56.020 | that is one of the fears that a lot of wrestlers have.

00:32:00.360 | Actually, how they feel during the match.

00:32:02.620 | And are they gonna get tired?

00:32:05.980 | And is it gonna affect my performance?

00:32:08.420 | And as a coach, that really was one of the things

00:32:11.340 | I tried to eliminate on all my athletes.

00:32:13.540 | So there wasn't that fear factor.

00:32:15.380 | But that fear factor would be put upon my opponent,

00:32:19.860 | which would give me an edge.

00:32:22.400 | But that's not what I needed as much.

00:32:25.740 | I needed to just focus,

00:32:26.780 | make sure that I was doing the right things.

00:32:28.740 | And I needed my team to be focused.

00:32:30.100 | So I made sure that for my mistakes as an athlete,

00:32:33.320 | or even as a coach sometimes,

00:32:35.140 | that I didn't repeat them.

00:32:36.440 | Didn't repeat them.

00:32:38.260 | And if you make a mistake once and then you can repeat it,

00:32:41.140 | then it's like you didn't learn anything.

00:32:45.640 | - Your goal throughout your wrestling career,

00:32:47.800 | as you've beautifully put,

00:32:49.440 | was to work so hard that you pass out on the mat, right?

00:32:52.400 | That you would be carried off the mat.

00:32:54.160 | So you never did successfully.

00:32:56.500 | That's one of the ways you failed in your career,

00:32:58.440 | is you've never worked so hard that you've passed out.

00:33:01.420 | Have you ever come close?

00:33:02.640 | Do you remember a time that you've come close

00:33:04.640 | that you've been pushed to the limits of exhaustion?

00:33:07.000 | - You know, the question's really a good question

00:33:09.000 | about that pushing to you collapse.

00:33:12.960 | Because as a coach today,

00:33:14.880 | I don't think I could,

00:33:15.960 | if I said that to my athletes,

00:33:17.700 | I don't know, I could get in trouble.

00:33:20.640 | Because it's like--

00:33:23.120 | - But it's understood, isn't it?

00:33:25.160 | By the athletes?

00:33:26.720 | - Yeah, they understand it.

00:33:29.000 | But the outside might not understand it.

00:33:31.480 | Because it's almost like, what do you mean?

00:33:34.000 | You push them to the point where they go collapse.

00:33:36.840 | That means they might die,

00:33:37.800 | or something might happen to them.

00:33:40.080 | And that's dangerous.

00:33:41.920 | That's dangerous.

00:33:42.760 | We can't have our kid in that type of atmosphere.

00:33:45.200 | But it's something that's highly unlikely

00:33:48.520 | that's gonna happen.

00:33:49.360 | But I'm gonna tell you,

00:33:50.180 | there's many times in a practice

00:33:52.200 | where I had pushed myself

00:33:53.960 | to all of a sudden the whistle blew,

00:33:56.520 | or it was time to stop.

00:33:58.360 | And when I got up off the mat,

00:34:00.300 | or wherever I was at,

00:34:01.920 | and I needed water,

00:34:04.520 | I needed fresh air.

00:34:06.840 | 'Cause you're usually in a fairly small room

00:34:09.440 | with a lot of guys,

00:34:10.600 | that the heat rises,

00:34:12.480 | and it's hard to breathe.

00:34:15.000 | And that I can remember,

00:34:16.640 | and I stayed a lot of times not by the door,

00:34:18.840 | the far end of the room.

00:34:20.440 | I can remember walking from the far end of the room

00:34:22.720 | to that door.

00:34:23.640 | And I can remember,

00:34:24.880 | am I gonna make it the next step?

00:34:27.160 | Am I gonna make it the next step?

00:34:28.960 | I need air, I need water,

00:34:30.560 | I need oxygen, I need to get out of here.

00:34:33.120 | It didn't happen often,

00:34:34.520 | but I can recount four or five times in my career

00:34:37.640 | that I pushed myself to that level

00:34:39.400 | where I thought I was gonna maybe go out,

00:34:42.280 | but every step I was dizzy.

00:34:44.800 | But once I got to that door,

00:34:47.120 | I was able to open it and go out,

00:34:49.240 | and grab the water,

00:34:50.160 | and get cold water in my face.

00:34:52.360 | So no, I never really was able to do that.

00:34:55.240 | And I think the story is in a book

00:34:57.320 | where my daughter pushed a collapse, Molly.

00:35:00.800 | - Made you proud.

00:35:01.640 | - Oh my gosh, and she didn't win.

00:35:03.560 | But she pushed a collapse.

00:35:06.600 | Now, did she suffer because of that?

00:35:10.820 | Well, she didn't get to go to the next event

00:35:13.420 | 'cause she had to qualify.

00:35:15.260 | But I think it probably helped her too,

00:35:18.900 | realizing because she was winning the race,

00:35:20.780 | and she was beating people she normally never pushed,

00:35:23.260 | but she was at a new level that she had never been before,

00:35:25.800 | and she only needed about five feet to finish.

00:35:28.740 | And it was just one of those things

00:35:30.100 | that I bet there was a lot of learning that she did there.

00:35:33.340 | And it probably made her realize that she could be better.

00:35:37.480 | But she had to hold up though.

00:35:40.380 | - So you mentioned in "Wrestling Life"

00:35:42.620 | that the Brands brothers looked up to Roy Salger,

00:35:47.380 | who was known for pushing the limits of physical wrestling,

00:35:50.620 | but not getting too rough.

00:35:52.740 | So how do you find the line

00:35:54.220 | between extreme physical wrestling,

00:35:56.660 | but at the same time,

00:35:58.180 | not rough wrestling or angry wrestling?

00:36:00.940 | So that line between aggression,

00:36:03.140 | tough wrestling, and anger.

00:36:05.340 | - Well, I think anger would cause

00:36:09.740 | less successful wrestling.

00:36:11.780 | I think anger would cause you to make mistakes

00:36:14.980 | and actually get out of position.

00:36:17.340 | Because I think anger is kind of a loss of control.

00:36:21.660 | And there can be a furious type of attack,

00:36:27.660 | but I think if it crosses the line to anger,

00:36:35.100 | then you're gonna be vulnerable.

00:36:39.700 | And so, Royce and the Brands

00:36:44.700 | wrestled to the edge, through the edge,

00:36:49.740 | but when the whistle blew, they stopped.

00:36:52.580 | And there's people that,

00:36:53.820 | when the whistle blows, they keep going.

00:36:55.820 | It's like in a football game,

00:36:59.420 | a fight breaks out and it's after the whistle's blown.

00:37:02.860 | Well, when the whistle blew, they backed off.

00:37:07.540 | So that whistle was something that, in a match,

00:37:12.420 | that kind of gave them the boundaries.

00:37:18.140 | - But perhaps it could be a little bit of fuel.

00:37:20.460 | So in "Wrestling Tough,"

00:37:21.660 | the book that you just got from Mike Chapman,

00:37:24.140 | the new edition, talks about Bill Cole,

00:37:26.540 | undefeated Northern Iowa wrestler.

00:37:28.780 | And how he talked about how my strength,

00:37:33.180 | speed, and ability to think were increased tremendously

00:37:36.220 | by just sitting apart from the action prior to the match

00:37:39.460 | and getting into a state of controlled anger.

00:37:42.940 | So can anger-- - Controlled anger.

00:37:45.140 | - Controlled.

00:37:46.020 | So anger could be fuel as long as it's controlled.

00:37:49.780 | - Right, exactly.

00:37:51.060 | You had that line.

00:37:52.780 | One side of the line, you can have an anger for performance,

00:37:56.940 | and the other side of the line,

00:37:58.580 | if you go beyond that, it's not gonna be for performance.

00:38:02.780 | It's gonna be for not performance,

00:38:05.060 | 'cause you're gonna lose points.

00:38:06.580 | It's a fine line.

00:38:07.580 | There's definitely a fine line.

00:38:09.620 | You're talking about Roy Seliger.

00:38:11.460 | You're talking about Tom Brands.

00:38:13.060 | You're talking about Terry Brands.

00:38:14.860 | I mean, you got world championship titles there.

00:38:16.700 | You got Olympic championship title there.

00:38:18.420 | You got a world silver medalist in Roy Seliger.

00:38:23.420 | And when I talked to him about the world silver medalist,

00:38:28.740 | he's haunted by that.

00:38:32.100 | 'Cause he was actually 20 seconds away from winning

00:38:35.260 | when he got beat in the end there,

00:38:36.940 | but that's part of the game.

00:38:38.580 | And I don't know whether he's okay with it or not

00:38:43.580 | 'cause he says, after talking about things,

00:38:45.900 | he goes, "I'm okay with it now."

00:38:49.460 | But then he keeps talking about it.

00:38:51.500 | So I don't really think he's okay with it.

00:38:54.000 | And it's hard for him to actually make amends to himself

00:39:01.140 | when you really don't do it.

00:39:02.660 | I mean, no matter what the situation,

00:39:04.860 | even with the Owings loss.

00:39:07.460 | - Yeah, it still eats it.

00:39:09.140 | - I mean, yeah, I'm a world champion.

00:39:10.940 | He's not, and he wanted to be.

00:39:13.340 | I'm Olympic champion.

00:39:14.660 | He's not, and he wanted to be.

00:39:16.100 | - One of the greatest coaches of all time.

00:39:18.180 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:39:19.340 | And so he, it's like, why do I keep going back to it?

00:39:24.340 | Because you don't get over those things.

00:39:30.300 | So Royce really keeps going back to it

00:39:32.380 | even though he says he's fine.

00:39:33.880 | But then he realizes he's really not fine

00:39:38.100 | because that's just the nature of the game.

00:39:39.580 | And that's why he was able to win national titles

00:39:42.220 | and make world teams and stuff like that.

00:39:46.360 | What's interesting about him,

00:39:49.220 | he's analyzed all the people that he's wrestled.

00:39:52.260 | And a lot of them have won World and Olympic Championships.

00:39:55.700 | And he's beaten every one of them at one time or another.

00:39:58.580 | And he didn't get to that world championship gold

00:40:01.540 | or Olympic gold.

00:40:03.340 | And that, he says it because they did it.

00:40:08.040 | So he's showing people that I've beaten those guys.

00:40:12.940 | But apparently he didn't beat them at the right time.

00:40:18.100 | And so it still haunts him.

00:40:20.620 | You don't get away from that stuff.

00:40:22.540 | I mean, it's just like anything in life that's really high.

00:40:27.340 | I mean, it doesn't have to be athletics.

00:40:30.260 | I mean, you think I'm ever gonna get over

00:40:32.500 | the murder of my sister?

00:40:35.580 | And you might not even know that.

00:40:37.140 | - Let me pause for a second, please.

00:40:39.080 | You've talked about it, you've written about it.

00:40:41.500 | So I hope it's okay for me to say that your sister,

00:40:44.140 | your older sister, on May 31st, 1964,

00:40:49.020 | was raped and murdered by a local boy.

00:40:53.020 | So the echoes of pain and anger from that tragic day,

00:40:57.540 | do they ripple through your life still?

00:40:59.820 | Through your wrestling, through your coaching,

00:41:02.500 | through the way you, when you wake up in the morning?

00:41:06.380 | What is that like? - Yeah.

00:41:07.740 | It can be very emotional to me under certain circumstances.

00:41:14.580 | And it can be the mood I'm in.

00:41:21.580 | You know, it can be maybe if I've had a Mountain Dew

00:41:24.660 | or maybe if I've had a Gable beer.

00:41:27.380 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:41:28.220 | Or maybe if you turn the country music up

00:41:33.780 | a little bit loud.

00:41:34.800 | You know, emotions come out.

00:41:39.380 | And everybody has them in their life.

00:41:43.300 | It just so happens, you know, what brings it out?

00:41:46.700 | And hopefully it's nothing that you do

00:41:49.340 | to the extreme point of to where it brings it out.

00:41:52.460 | For me, it's not extreme.

00:41:54.100 | I don't have to have any of that, really.

00:41:55.660 | I can get emotional.

00:41:56.940 | - How did that change you as a man?

00:41:59.540 | - What it did was realize that I was already

00:42:05.540 | pretty well developed.

00:42:09.060 | Because I was only a sophomore, 15 years old,

00:42:12.260 | in high school.

00:42:13.860 | And I had parents that weren't making it.

00:42:17.860 | And my parents are a lot older than me.

00:42:20.620 | And now that we're down just to me and my parents,

00:42:24.140 | and I'm gonna be around the house for another two years,

00:42:26.940 | and they had just lost a daughter

00:42:30.420 | that was the only other sibling,

00:42:33.140 | they weren't handling it.

00:42:37.900 | They were the ones that were suffering much more than me,

00:42:42.980 | even though I always look back upon one area

00:42:47.860 | that I wasn't good at was communication at that time,

00:42:50.740 | except inside the restroom, 'cause I had been tipped off.

00:42:54.280 | And-- - Tipped off,

00:42:56.260 | what do you mean?

00:42:57.480 | - Well, the neighbor boy said that something to me

00:42:59.580 | about my sister just three weeks before that,

00:43:03.020 | that really wasn't normal or practical.

00:43:08.020 | And I said nothing to nobody.

00:43:11.380 | - You don't, is there a part of you that blames yourself?

00:43:15.160 | - Yeah, absolutely.

00:43:18.260 | Absolutely.

00:43:20.380 | But I'm 15 years old, and you make mistakes.

00:43:26.280 | And you don't really act on everything

00:43:29.940 | that happens in your life.

00:43:31.400 | But I can tell you how it affected me.

00:43:33.980 | And I acted a lot on anything

00:43:37.180 | that maybe wasn't even of that consequence.

00:43:39.540 | I mean, 'cause I had four daughters,

00:43:41.060 | and I'm telling you, when they left every time

00:43:42.780 | to go somewhere in a car or go out with someplace,

00:43:45.580 | I always said something to 'em.

00:43:47.800 | And they would always say, "Dad, you said that last night."

00:43:50.860 | I don't care.

00:43:51.700 | - What, like I love you, or like be careful?

00:43:54.100 | - I'd say like, don't be driving and drinking,

00:43:56.380 | or don't be in a car with somebody

00:43:59.620 | that's of the same nature.

00:44:03.080 | Or stay out of trouble.

00:44:05.300 | Don't go be somewhere where you have,

00:44:07.700 | I said, "You know how to get out of a car

00:44:09.100 | "if your car goes into the river?"

00:44:11.400 | You know, I just, I'm always thinking ahead a little bit,

00:44:16.000 | just in case if something did happen.

00:44:19.340 | And it goes back to that walk to school

00:44:22.100 | with that young man, when he was talking to me.

00:44:25.140 | And I just, I took it and I kept it inside me.

00:44:28.460 | And once I found out she had been murdered,

00:44:31.480 | it took me maybe 25 to 30 minutes,

00:44:37.020 | and I told my dad, I think I know who killed her.

00:44:39.900 | And he looked at me and he just like,

00:44:44.620 | he slapped me actually.

00:44:46.060 | He pushed me against the car.

00:44:47.300 | He didn't slap me, he pushed me against the car.

00:44:48.420 | My mom slaps me.

00:44:49.780 | She was the one that slapped me around a little bit.

00:44:51.300 | But my dad, he pushed me against the car.

00:44:55.020 | He goes, "What do you mean you might know

00:44:55.860 | "something about this?"

00:44:57.380 | I said, "Dad, I don't for sure,

00:44:59.700 | "but," and we were probably all crying,

00:45:02.380 | but, and I don't, I doubt if I was crying yet.

00:45:06.400 | I've probably cried a lot of tears since,

00:45:08.520 | but I just said, "Hey, I was walking to school

00:45:13.520 | "with this neighbor and I never had walked

00:45:15.880 | "to school with him before."

00:45:17.880 | And he was kind of a troubled kid.

00:45:20.840 | And he said something about Diane and it wasn't good,

00:45:25.840 | but I didn't, he goes, "Why didn't you say something?"

00:45:29.680 | I said, "Dad, I just boy talk."

00:45:33.040 | So, and so he hugged me.

00:45:35.240 | He hugged me.

00:45:36.560 | And it was one of these things that,

00:45:40.640 | it's definitely made me a lot of who I am,

00:45:45.640 | because there's been a lot of choices.

00:45:47.920 | And I don't, I took the word choice out of my life.

00:45:51.080 | And I just like to say, "Okay, do the right thing.

00:45:53.320 | "Do the thing that you should do."

00:45:55.560 | And so I don't really, it's like,

00:45:57.160 | "Are you gonna do this or this?"

00:45:58.520 | Well, what do you mean?

00:45:59.360 | Which one's better?

00:46:00.320 | Well, then I'm, so I don't have that choice.

00:46:03.680 | Just give me the right way to go.

00:46:05.400 | And so, not that I've been perfect by any means,

00:46:08.280 | but it's made a big difference in my life

00:46:10.880 | on how I handle my life.

00:46:13.800 | It's probably given me the opportunity

00:46:16.400 | to be married for 44 years.

00:46:18.120 | It's just given me opportunities to be better in my life.

00:46:22.440 | And I wanna thank my sister for that.

00:46:26.840 | And I think my family was ready to make a split

00:46:33.520 | because of that incident.

00:46:35.160 | They were blaming each other.

00:46:36.160 | And I think that I was able to help,

00:46:40.840 | but more than that, they really liked each other,

00:46:43.040 | but they didn't really know it at the time

00:46:45.520 | until I got out of the house.

00:46:47.480 | Two years later, it probably was going on

00:46:50.280 | for a couple of years until I moved on and went to college.

00:46:52.920 | Then they found out they really liked each other

00:46:55.280 | when they were alone and it worked out pretty good.

00:46:58.480 | But I think them being able to follow me,

00:47:02.040 | not just through college and Olympics and Worlds,

00:47:06.840 | but my coaching.

00:47:08.160 | So it's the same, the same success and factor,

00:47:11.960 | the excitement and all those things

00:47:14.280 | gave them a real purpose.

00:47:16.960 | And it gave my four daughters, it gave my wife,

00:47:20.760 | a real purpose to be able to be close

00:47:24.200 | to all these champions and championships.

00:47:27.120 | And now it's like there's a family of 22

00:47:32.080 | and they're all interested in what we're interested in.

00:47:34.640 | And it's going good, knock on wood.

00:47:36.400 | But it's something that when all of a sudden

00:47:39.280 | you got too much time in your hands

00:47:40.560 | and you're not doing and accomplishing much,

00:47:42.720 | that things probably get off track.

00:47:47.040 | - What do you think is the role of family in wrestling?

00:47:49.400 | Can a man do it alone?

00:47:51.000 | And if not, where's family most important?

00:47:55.840 | - You can do it alone, but why would you want to?

00:48:00.640 | - Yeah.

00:48:01.480 | - I think the chances of doing it alone

00:48:03.040 | are much less than the chances of doing it together.

00:48:06.080 | I know they say don't bring your profession home.

00:48:10.280 | Sometimes they say that.

00:48:11.660 | I never got away from my profession.

00:48:16.040 | And sometimes it's like my house right here.

00:48:21.040 | So when I'm moving home,

00:48:24.160 | I'm not gonna have an office

00:48:25.720 | 'cause I'm not gonna coach anymore

00:48:27.280 | or I'm not gonna be an assistant athletic director

00:48:29.800 | for a while.

00:48:30.640 | That you gotta do something

00:48:34.360 | that gives you a little bit of a break.

00:48:39.360 | Not you necessarily, maybe the person you're living with.

00:48:42.640 | And so I don't know if you looked outside there,

00:48:44.320 | I got a cabin right out in my backyard.

00:48:45.840 | You probably can't see it right there, but.

00:48:47.440 | - What's in the cabin?

00:48:48.800 | - That's my house away from my house.

00:48:51.520 | It's only 30 feet from my house and it's my office.

00:48:55.520 | And it's my workout room.

00:48:57.480 | I got a sauna there.

00:48:58.520 | It's a bed upstairs if I need it.

00:49:01.040 | If I ever get too close and she says,

00:49:03.320 | "Hey, why don't you go sleep in the other house?"

00:49:05.520 | But she kicks me out of the bed.

00:49:07.480 | - Get the heck out.

00:49:08.320 | - It's never happened.

00:49:09.200 | But I do spend a lot of time out there.

00:49:11.640 | You gotta have a little distance sometimes.

00:49:16.760 | You gotta know your role.

00:49:18.960 | And so all of a sudden when you're a guy

00:49:20.440 | that's been gone your whole life

00:49:21.800 | from eight o'clock in the morning

00:49:23.400 | till close to seven, 30 or eight o'clock at night.

00:49:25.440 | So 11, 12 hours a day.

00:49:27.400 | Then all of a sudden you're not gone as much.

00:49:29.960 | Even though you still work.

00:49:30.960 | She's trying to slow me down now.

00:49:32.160 | I'm doing not so much like here what we're doing right now,

00:49:35.040 | but it's when I get in the car and drive somewhere

00:49:37.360 | or fly somewhere.

00:49:39.240 | Like just last night I just went to bed

00:49:40.880 | and I hadn't told her that this guy called me

00:49:43.200 | and he wants me to speak for,

00:49:45.680 | he wanna build another,

00:49:47.760 | Wrestling wants to start another

00:49:49.720 | Wrestlers in Business Networking out in Delaware.

00:49:54.400 | Because we don't have any colleges

00:49:55.880 | in wrestling in Delaware.

00:49:57.360 | And so I said, "Well, I'm glad to do that

00:49:59.640 | "'cause that's my life."

00:50:00.880 | But then all of a sudden,

00:50:03.640 | I didn't say anything to my wife

00:50:05.040 | until all of a sudden this morning.

00:50:07.200 | And I told her that I might go

00:50:08.760 | on the Friday, the 21st of December.

00:50:11.280 | - Oh no.

00:50:12.440 | - Well, I said, "That's not Christmas."

00:50:14.760 | She goes, "We're celebrating Christmas that weekend early

00:50:18.440 | "because a lot of the family can't be here

00:50:21.120 | "except for that weekend."

00:50:23.440 | And I said, "Oh, well, that's not gonna work."

00:50:26.080 | But I kind of didn't say anything to her at first.

00:50:28.600 | And then, well, I tell you,

00:50:30.440 | she started getting a little emotional.

00:50:32.680 | And if I wanna stay married for another year, 45 years,

00:50:36.960 | then I better tell those people

00:50:39.520 | that I got family obligations

00:50:43.360 | because it depends what's most important.

00:50:48.040 | I love wrestling.

00:50:49.040 | I love wrestling.

00:50:50.240 | And I wanna start another,

00:50:51.680 | help start another wrestlers and business network.

00:50:54.040 | But there's more than one Dan Gable out there.

00:50:55.920 | Well, maybe not.

00:50:56.760 | But there's a lot of people that are maybe even closer.

00:51:01.440 | And they got big names.

00:51:05.080 | I mean, we're doing pretty well right now.

00:51:06.800 | I mean, we got first two years ago

00:51:09.600 | and we got second this year.

00:51:11.360 | And then we got the women's freestyles

00:51:14.160 | doing good in wrestling.

00:51:15.640 | We gotta work a little bit on our Greco yet,

00:51:17.840 | but they are working on it.

00:51:20.280 | But our men's freestyle team right now are excellent.

00:51:25.280 | And the key for them is to get them all on the same page

00:51:30.560 | instead of just have new highlights.

00:51:36.000 | And by that, I'm saying,

00:51:37.400 | who you look and see who won this year.

00:51:39.120 | Well, the three guys that have never won before

00:51:41.240 | won this year.

00:51:42.080 | We had three world champions.

00:51:43.280 | Our two past world champions didn't win this year.

00:51:48.080 | I mean, they did okay.

00:51:50.160 | They got medals.

00:51:51.360 | - Did Burroughs win?

00:51:52.840 | - No, he did not.

00:51:54.160 | He got third.

00:51:55.520 | - Oh, that's right.

00:51:56.360 | He got bronze, yeah.

00:51:57.200 | - And Sajalive got, I mean, Snyder got second.

00:52:00.120 | So those two are our main guys.

00:52:02.800 | So the three new guys that came through

00:52:05.840 | were guys that hadn't won world gold.

00:52:08.760 | In fact, two of them had never made a world team before.

00:52:11.400 | And so we have three world champions this year,

00:52:14.200 | but we needed all five of them to come through

00:52:16.240 | to win the championships.

00:52:18.440 | And so the key really is getting them all

00:52:21.920 | to do the same at the same time, year in and year out,

00:52:25.680 | and not just based on, okay, Burroughs got beat this year,

00:52:30.480 | so he'll win next year.

00:52:32.160 | It's gotta be every year if you're capable of doing that.

00:52:34.680 | And that's what the coaching staff has to do.

00:52:36.760 | What's kind of funny that I do have a lot of influence

00:52:39.000 | actually on the coaching staffs right now at the USA level

00:52:41.960 | because the women's freestyle guy is Terry Steiner,

00:52:46.760 | and he wrestled for me and was a national champion.

00:52:49.080 | He's got a twin brother that's at Fresno State.

00:52:52.240 | And then Billy Zadig is the freestyle coach,

00:52:56.560 | and he wrestled for the Hawkeyes back in the early days,

00:53:00.400 | and he was the national champion.

00:53:02.040 | So we got a lot of former Gable influence on there,

00:53:06.280 | but it's- - You got deep roots in there.

00:53:08.840 | In 2013, the International Olympic Committee, IOC,

00:53:12.120 | voted wrestling out of the Olympics.

00:53:14.480 | So a lot of folks know about this,

00:53:17.280 | the absurdity of it, and so on.

00:53:20.020 | But in a big picture, you can step back now,

00:53:22.440 | it's five years later.

00:53:23.480 | What did you learn from that experience?

00:53:26.800 | - Well, first of all, did it surprise me?

00:53:31.120 | Yeah.

00:53:32.840 | But did it really surprise me?

00:53:35.480 | No.

00:53:36.320 | You gotta run, you gotta have people running

00:53:42.800 | the organization that are top-notch.

00:53:46.920 | If you take anything for granted,

00:53:50.380 | and you're not the person of authority,

00:53:53.840 | somebody can kick you out.

00:53:56.500 | And even though we had a lot of authority

00:54:00.240 | because we're wrestling,

00:54:01.660 | we're one of the first sports in the Olympics ever,

00:54:05.400 | and that we think that we're in 180-some countries,

00:54:12.160 | and some of the number one countries in the world

00:54:17.160 | that are politically strong have the sport.

00:54:22.400 | You know, we thought we were okay.

00:54:23.440 | But then you gotta look and see who's running the IOC.

00:54:26.200 | The IOC, the International Olympic Committee.

00:54:31.160 | - Yeah.

00:54:32.680 | - And then you gotta see that, in wrestling,

00:54:35.880 | we don't have anybody in there.

00:54:37.640 | I mean, that shocked me.

00:54:39.380 | We've never had anybody on the IOC from wrestling.

00:54:43.840 | You know why?

00:54:45.000 | Because we didn't have to.

00:54:46.600 | But yes, that's wrong.

00:54:50.400 | You have to.

00:54:51.920 | And if you don't have somebody looking out for you

00:54:55.600 | right within the structure,

00:54:57.320 | then it's pretty easy for people to turn their head.

00:55:01.240 | But all it took was the statement,

00:55:06.240 | "You guys are kicked out of the Olympics.

00:55:08.720 | You guys are done."

00:55:09.740 | - Everybody came together, woke up.

00:55:11.460 | - Well, yeah, I mean, it's the first time in ever,

00:55:13.680 | in history, that probably all this competitive people

00:55:18.060 | that were working for their own agenda

00:55:20.860 | turned that agenda to the sport.

00:55:25.360 | So that made a big difference, and we got a lot done.

00:55:30.000 | In fact, in America, there was several people

00:55:35.420 | that were really out there that we didn't know about

00:55:40.420 | until this point in time.

00:55:42.580 | And when they came aboard, now they're still aboard.

00:55:46.540 | That doesn't mean we're doing everything perfect,

00:55:50.300 | because just because we got voted back in

00:55:52.220 | before we even got kicked out, really,

00:55:54.660 | that doesn't mean we're by any means safe.

00:55:57.460 | We have to do some of the things that I'm talking about,

00:56:00.940 | or some of the things that we didn't do before.

00:56:03.780 | We can't fall right back into the same mess.

00:56:06.460 | And so our leadership got changed, and it's better,

00:56:11.420 | but it's gotta stay better.

00:56:13.340 | But there are things that we could still be doing

00:56:17.980 | to make sure that we don't have situations like this happen.

00:56:22.740 | I'll tell you, when I first learned about it,

00:56:24.580 | I was like, I broke down and wept.

00:56:28.020 | - Yeah. - Again.

00:56:29.100 | It's like every once in a while,

00:56:30.100 | I'll break down and cry about my sister.

00:56:35.100 | Or I'll break down, I don't know if I cry

00:56:38.540 | about losing the O-ings, but I probably get more determined.

00:56:42.100 | But that's kind of, you have to go back

00:56:45.220 | and think about those moments when you heard.

00:56:47.820 | When I heard that moment, and I, it just overcame me.

00:56:52.820 | It was like 4 o'clock, 4.30 in the morning

00:56:56.820 | when I heard about it.

00:56:57.660 | And my wife had been up looking at the internet,

00:57:00.420 | and she woke me up, and I thought she was joking.

00:57:03.020 | But I jumped out of bed really quick when she said that.

00:57:05.620 | I knew she was serious.

00:57:07.100 | And I started making phone calls right then

00:57:10.700 | to find out if it was true.

00:57:11.980 | And when I found out it was true,

00:57:13.340 | it was just like devastating.

00:57:14.740 | It was one of these things that, it's a nightmare.

00:57:20.180 | And, but you don't let it happen again.

00:57:24.060 | It's that simple.

00:57:26.060 | - Yeah, and you keep getting stronger.

00:57:27.700 | - Yeah.

00:57:29.100 | And if people haven't read, they should read

00:57:31.380 | "The Loss of Dan Gable" by Ray Thompson, the ESPN article.

00:57:34.620 | They kind of, in this very beautiful poetic way,

00:57:37.020 | ties together all the losses of Dan Gable,

00:57:42.860 | the losing your sister, losing to Larry O-ings,

00:57:46.580 | losing wrestling from the Olympics,

00:57:48.700 | all of these tragedies of various forms.

00:57:53.940 | So that's the IOC, there's politics,

00:57:57.980 | and you're sort of being very pragmatic.

00:58:00.100 | But stepping back, wrestling is one of the oldest forms

00:58:03.500 | of combat, period.

00:58:04.940 | Dating back, there's cave drawings, 15,000 years ago.

00:58:08.580 | And if you look at the ancient Olympics,

00:58:11.620 | the Greek Olympics, 2,700 years ago,

00:58:13.900 | did you ever, when you wrestled or coached,

00:58:17.340 | do you now see wrestling in this way,

00:58:20.620 | of freestyle and folk style wrestling,

00:58:22.540 | the purity of sort of two human beings locked in combat,

00:58:26.580 | the roots of that, us as just human beings,

00:58:30.380 | this fair struggle between two men or two women?

00:58:34.420 | - I don't think I ever looked at it

00:58:37.500 | as anything but just a combat.

00:58:43.340 | And I think there's times that have made me

00:58:50.100 | figure out how to make that combat better.

00:58:52.280 | There's little markers or little points in time

00:58:58.180 | in your life that make you wonder,

00:59:01.660 | or I should say determined,

00:59:05.640 | to be able to get more out of yourself

00:59:10.820 | and to be able to take it to a new level.

00:59:14.060 | And I don't think people can actually feel that way

00:59:17.420 | unless you've actually had a lot of accomplishments,

00:59:20.380 | in anything, I think there's anything out there.

00:59:23.340 | I mean, no matter what sport

00:59:25.020 | or breaking the four-minute mile.

00:59:27.260 | I mean, when they broke that,

00:59:29.500 | Roger Bannister broke that four-minute mile,

00:59:31.580 | I can't imagine him breaking it

00:59:33.260 | from his best time being 4.30.

00:59:36.100 | You know, it's one of these things that,

00:59:39.460 | along the line, that he did had some close calls,

00:59:45.500 | or he had some coaching that was giving him

00:59:48.980 | the opportunity to become a little better.

00:59:50.980 | But I think because he was doing well

00:59:54.460 | and being very successful, that the opportunity came.

00:59:58.460 | And so it's for me, it's like the same thing.

01:00:00.740 | I had so much success

01:00:03.940 | and so many practices that went well,

01:00:08.460 | and so much goodness out of this sport

01:00:14.100 | that it gave me the opportunity

01:00:16.740 | to really look more finite

01:00:21.420 | and look more how I could even make it better.

01:00:23.900 | And so it's like, if you look at my library upstairs,

01:00:27.740 | I got a library upstairs,

01:00:29.500 | and there's a lot of books up there from the family.

01:00:35.840 | But if you look at the Gable books up there,

01:00:38.080 | I got a lot of Russian technique books.

01:00:42.380 | (Lex laughing)

01:00:44.260 | I can't read the book, but I can see the diagrams,

01:00:48.580 | and I can see the figures.

01:00:52.140 | They don't really show it in pictures.

01:00:54.220 | They do it in drawings.

01:00:55.760 | And so it was like when I was trying to beat the best,

01:01:01.420 | that is labeled the best,

01:01:04.020 | because they win the world championships every year

01:01:07.140 | since they've been just about involved.

01:01:09.940 | And I don't think they got started involved

01:01:11.420 | until like the '50s,

01:01:12.500 | but it's something, you study the best who's out there,

01:01:18.340 | but then you don't focus so much on the best

01:01:23.700 | that you can't beat the best.

01:01:25.740 | You learn from them,

01:01:27.600 | but there's something that they don't have

01:01:29.860 | that you can have.

01:01:32.980 | - Toughness to technique, to the art, to the science.

01:01:36.660 | - Yeah, all that stuff.

01:01:37.700 | And that's why even talking to you

01:01:39.420 | and you're sitting over there and you love MIT

01:01:41.740 | and you're bragging about it over Harvard.

01:01:43.940 | - 'Cause it's true.

01:01:47.660 | - In your eyes, and that's great, and it might be,

01:01:51.300 | but it's the same type of thing

01:01:54.100 | that there's something that you're probably stealing

01:01:57.700 | from Harvard, but you won't give them credit.

01:02:01.100 | - Well, Dan, in the interest of time,

01:02:03.740 | I've read that you're pretty serious.

01:02:07.220 | You're pretty seriously into fishing.

01:02:09.980 | So what's the biggest fish you ever caught?

01:02:12.140 | What are we talking about here?

01:02:16.820 | Are we talking about--

01:02:18.020 | - No, I don't think I've ever caught a big ocean fish.

01:02:22.140 | I'm a river lake fisherman.

01:02:24.140 | I have-- - Bass, trout?

01:02:26.100 | - No, probably northern.

01:02:30.020 | I probably caught a northern that weighed 20-some pounds.

01:02:35.620 | The fish I like to catch is walleyes.

01:02:37.620 | And the reason why I like to catch 'em

01:02:39.380 | 'cause they're really good eating fish.

01:02:41.780 | And the best eating fish are not the real big ones.

01:02:44.340 | It's kinda interesting.

01:02:47.820 | I got people hunting deer right on my land

01:02:50.100 | and they're looking for the big bucks,

01:02:52.300 | but they're not the best eaters if you wanna eat,

01:02:54.900 | but they're the best trophy.

01:02:56.300 | So I do have a couple of trophy walleyes on the wall,

01:02:59.500 | but most of the time I throw the big ones back

01:03:03.100 | and put 'em back in there.

01:03:05.060 | I don't know if you know there's a book by Hemingway

01:03:07.340 | called "Old Man and the Sea."

01:03:09.420 | - Heard of it.

01:03:10.260 | - And-- - Ernest Hemingway?

01:03:12.060 | - Ernest Hemingway, yeah.

01:03:13.780 | And there's an old man that basically catches an 18-footer,

01:03:18.780 | but can't pull it in, doesn't have the strength,

01:03:20.660 | so they together spend while the sharks eat away at it.

01:03:24.420 | I mean, this is a very powerful story.

01:03:26.620 | I think won him the Nobel Prize.

01:03:27.900 | But he says, "It's better to be lucky," the old man says.

01:03:31.700 | "It's better to be lucky, but I would rather be exact."

01:03:34.820 | That way, when luck comes, you're ready.

01:03:38.740 | So let me ask, what do you think about luck?

01:03:43.300 | Do you believe in free will, that we have actions

01:03:47.180 | that control the direction, destination of our life?

01:03:49.980 | Or does luck and some other outside forces

01:03:53.620 | really land you where you end up?

01:03:56.780 | - For me, I'm not about luck.

01:04:00.500 | But I do think there is, luck is involved.

01:04:04.980 | But I think it's mostly created,

01:04:06.740 | just how lucky you are through preparations.

01:04:11.060 | And things have happened in my life forever,

01:04:14.960 | and a lot of good things.

01:04:18.380 | And a lot of people could say,

01:04:19.540 | "Hey, you've been pretty lucky to win all these awards."

01:04:22.820 | I don't know, if you analyze my life,

01:04:27.220 | I don't think it was involved with luck.

01:04:29.860 | I think it was more involved with preparation.

01:04:32.100 | And again, science, had you been smarter,

01:04:36.140 | had you understood that you could do some things

01:04:39.860 | and be just as lucky, that'd be great.

01:04:42.040 | But I'm only as smart as today.

01:04:45.140 | So when I was training in my life,

01:04:48.320 | and me even training people in my life,

01:04:51.300 | as of that moment, that's how lucky I am

01:04:54.900 | to be able to have whatever is available to me.

01:04:59.900 | And that's what, you call that a lot of science.

01:05:01.900 | So for me, I think that, like right now, if I look back,

01:05:06.900 | I do a lot of things different,

01:05:09.340 | just because things are proven differently.

01:05:12.740 | Like I give people water during practice, and I did.

01:05:17.380 | And I would let them change their wrestling shoes

01:05:20.100 | into running shoes to run sprints on the concrete.

01:05:23.480 | Or I would actually, maybe I've had a guy

01:05:26.740 | climb 12 ropes after practice, one after another.

01:05:30.380 | And then maybe the next day I'd do it again.

01:05:33.460 | I might not make him do it the next day.

01:05:35.220 | I might let him recover a little bit more.

01:05:38.180 | And you gotta learn, keep adding to your philosophy.

01:05:43.180 | And your philosophy may have been great at that time,

01:05:46.540 | but it's at that time.

01:05:48.460 | And what is really important is

01:05:50.400 | where are you at with this time, today?

01:05:53.880 | And so there's better ways to do things.

01:05:56.360 | Now, if you ever take attitude out of it

01:05:59.000 | and just depend on total science,

01:06:02.000 | then you're not gonna be as,

01:06:05.000 | I think as I listened to a couple people

01:06:08.680 | that are really pretty famous people.

01:06:11.600 | One of them was John Irving.

01:06:13.040 | He was a writer.

01:06:15.040 | And he told me, he says,

01:06:16.360 | "You think I really learned how to be a great writer

01:06:21.120 | in writing school?"

01:06:24.680 | I said, "Yeah, I learned a lot there."

01:06:29.640 | But really what gave me the ability to stay focused,

01:06:34.640 | to work extra hours, to be more disciplined

01:06:38.680 | was wrestling practices.

01:06:40.300 | (Lex laughing)

01:06:41.240 | - That's right, he was a wrestler, yeah.

01:06:42.800 | - Yeah, he goes, "I go back to that.

01:06:44.720 | That's what gave me that chance."

01:06:46.560 | You know, and there's a guy in Iowa,

01:06:49.120 | a guy named Norman Borlaug.

01:06:52.480 | He invented a process to feed

01:06:58.580 | the underprivileged countries of the world.

01:07:02.420 | And he was a wrestler and he said the same thing.

01:07:06.680 | And he worked extremely hard.

01:07:08.720 | And he said, "I give a lot of credit

01:07:11.200 | to the sport of wrestling.

01:07:13.080 | And even though I'm known for this

01:07:15.400 | and I got a statue in Washington, DC

01:07:18.360 | because I saved a billion lives plus,

01:07:20.860 | I'm gonna give wrestling a lot of credit."

01:07:23.800 | So, you know, I think some of these MMA stars

01:07:28.800 | and some of these guys that maybe weren't wrestlers

01:07:32.940 | that had to wrestle, had to fight wrestling guys and stuff

01:07:36.760 | missed a little bit there.

01:07:38.280 | But I think the ones that did have wrestling

01:07:40.560 | probably have a really good chance

01:07:41.920 | and can adapt to the other ones.

01:07:43.480 | But I think every martial art or every activity is good

01:07:48.320 | and you probably can't skip any.

01:07:49.800 | But I don't think they're ever gonna overlook

01:07:51.920 | and say that wrestling's pretty not,

01:07:55.080 | or not valuable because it is.

01:07:58.720 | However, that doesn't mean you're gonna make it.

01:08:00.560 | You still gotta take the values and apply it

01:08:03.400 | whatever area you're gonna be in.

01:08:05.320 | And some people forget that.

01:08:07.400 | Some people can't get over the highness

01:08:12.200 | of getting your arm raised in a wrestling match.

01:08:15.400 | And you know what?

01:08:16.440 | What's even greater than me getting my arm raised

01:08:20.080 | is that if I'm a coach or if I was in "Belong With You"

01:08:23.320 | that you get your arm raised.

01:08:25.520 | And even if you don't get your arm raised

01:08:27.360 | it's what you walk away with

01:08:29.200 | and how you learn to handle that as well.

01:08:33.840 | Because there's gonna be some losses,

01:08:35.840 | but you don't want many.

01:08:37.720 | 'Cause you don't wanna get used to losing.

01:08:39.560 | I can tell you that.

01:08:40.520 | - So it's the hunger for the win.

01:08:42.240 | It's the brotherhood, the sisterhood of the wrestling room.

01:08:45.320 | And it's hard work and science

01:08:46.960 | that's gonna beat luck at the end of the day.

01:08:49.920 | - Absolutely, that luck.

01:08:51.120 | I like luck, but I think it's created

01:08:55.600 | by the opportunity that--

01:08:57.880 | - You make your luck.

01:08:58.880 | - You make your luck, yeah.

01:09:00.120 | - Dan, it was a huge honor.

01:09:01.960 | Thank you for welcoming me into your home

01:09:03.840 | and for having this conversation.

01:09:05.080 | - Yeah, no problem.

01:09:06.240 | Good man.

01:09:07.840 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation with Dan Gable.

01:09:10.400 | And thank you to our sponsors,

01:09:12.200 | Trial Labs, a machine learning company,

01:09:14.520 | ExpressVPN, Grammarly writing helper tool,

01:09:18.680 | and SimpliSafe home security.

01:09:21.200 | So the choice is artificial intelligence,

01:09:23.920 | privacy, grammar, or safety.

01:09:27.120 | Choose wisely, my friends.

01:09:28.600 | And if you wish, click the sponsor links below

01:09:31.200 | to get a discount and to support this podcast.

01:09:34.360 | And now let me leave you with some words from Dan Gable.

01:09:38.160 | The first period is won by the best technician.

01:09:41.280 | The second period is won by the kid in the best shape.

01:09:44.920 | And the third period is won by the kid with the biggest heart.

01:09:48.720 | Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

01:09:52.560 | (upbeat music)

01:09:55.160 | (upbeat music)

01:09:57.760 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Dan Gable: Olympic Wrestling, Mental Toughness & the Making of Champions | Lex Fridman Podcast #152

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