Showing posts with label wrestling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wrestling. Show all posts

Thursday, July 4, 2019

Wrestling: Canada Cup 2019 and Other Thoughts

Scenes from the Canada Cup (held in Calgary this year) on June 29 and June 30, 2019:  

1. Ms. Alexandria Town won the award for "Most Awesome Hair." Wait, no, she won a medal for wrestling. But she should have won another one for the hair. I'm just sayin'.
Ms. Town, medalist. For wrestling, not the awesome hair.
2. When I saw Canada's Darthe Capellan shoot, I knew he was special. His shot was so fast, I began to process it only after his opponent was already turned, 2 points lost. Watch this man in Astana, where he'll be looking to make his mark.
Even if "Darthe Capellan" wasn't the name of a Harry Potter villain,
I'm still assigning him Team Slytherin.
3. Gotta love the well-worn uniform of one of Canada’s best tacticians and smartest wrestlers.

Ms. "Name Indecipherable" won Most Outstanding Female Wrestler of the tournament. Five possible reasons for her singlet choice are below: 

a. "Coach, I've got CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] on the line, and they want to know your response to allegations of embezzlement from the Badgers' equipment fund. How long has the cover-up been going on? The people have a right to know, sir." 

b. "Yes, as part of winning the Outstanding Wrestler award, you're automatically entered into a federal witness protection program." 

c. "The Tomb of the Unknown Wrestler." 

d. "Look, it was between feeding them and a new singlet, and I swear to God I have receipts for the cocaine... I mean, the applesauce." 

e. "Coaching a possible future Olympian? Priceless. Ordering a new singlet online before Canada's most visible wrestling tournament? Impossible." 

Congratulations, Jessica Brouillette of Brock Badgers Wrestling Club. One day, maybe you'll get a new red singlet. Until then, I hope Canada Wrestling Lutte buys this historical artifact and frames it. 

4. Your eyes do not deceive you. A blond white man is wrestling under Jamaican colors. This is the most international sport in the world. Several ex-Soviets wrestle for Arab countries as well.

5. Ladies and gentlemen, Brasil's Aline Silva, former judoka, now wrestler

6. Olympic medalists Carol Huynh and Tonya Verbeek paved the way for Canada's current superstars, Erica Wiebe and Justina Di Stasio. 

7. Speaking of Erica Wiebe... 

As far as ambassadors go, they’re in short supply everywhere. That’s why Canada’s Erica Wiebe is so special, so important, and so valuable. Not only is she an Olympic gold medalist, she also happens to be vivacious, intelligent, and not prone to arrogance or showboating. In other words, she’s the perfect ambassador. 

Her perfection in this area is particularly suitable for wrestling, which isn’t built for popularity, especially not women’s wrestling, which only recently became mainstream. If we ever live in a world where women’s and men’s wrestling are considered equal athletic and character-building avenues, and wrestling itself as commercially viable as other sports, it will be in large part due to Erica’s energy, smile, and willingness to promote the sport. I’ve never liked the idea of kings and queens—something about inherited status rubs me the wrong way—but if Calgary wants to crown Erica as part of the Commonwealth, you won’t get any objections from me. I’ll even curtsy.

8. I didn't get selfies with Justina Di Stasio, world wrestling champion and Canada's second-best active wrestler. Why? First, without speculating about anyone, I have a Chasing Amy (1997) problem when it comes to women--watch the movie if you really want to know--and I'd rather not embarrass myself. Second, if I really, really like someone, I usually run the other way faster than Usain Bolt
Erica Wiebe vs. Justina Di Stasio is equivalent to Sampras vs. Agassi, but with a twist. It's still the upstart minority (Di Stasio is part First Nations) vs. the golden child, but in this case, Wiebe wins on charisma, and Di Stasio wins on equinamity. I cheered for Wiebe because I think she's a wonderful ambassador in general, but I think it's unfortunate Di Stasio gets less attention. After all, she's also a world champion, also intelligent, and also articulate. 

Like Ali-Frazier, Di Stasio has the unfortunate coincidence of being in the same weight class as the stronger (and older) Wiebe, and many people forget were it not for Muhammad Ali, we'd be singing along to Joe Frazier. So here's to the underdogs, to the golden children, and everyone in between--especially because it appears Di Stasio may have deserved 2 points for a back exposure in the finals (her coach challenged and lost), while Wiebe only 1 for a reversal. 

9. USA's Olympic medalist Clarissa Chun also attended this year's Canada Cup. Though she flew in from Denver, CO, she made sure to bring a piece of Hawaii with her. 
Hang loose!
10. USA's Victoria Anthony really is that small, that fast, and that cute in person. 

11. Let's not forget the coaches. I had the honor of meeting University of Calgary Dino Wrestling Club's Mitch Ostberg and 3-time Canadian-Cuban Olympian Haislan Garcia, now an Arizona State assistant coach. Arizona State is where Bobby Douglas--perhaps America's greatest wrestler-coach--won an NCAA team national title. 

12. It wasn't all good news. Jasmit Phulka and Ty Lydic stood out in terms of poor sportsmanship. In Canada Cup's least classy match, Jasmit Phulka received multiple warnings regarding face-slapping, then after (barely) winning, raised his arms in a weightlifter pose. Like Canada's Phulka, USA's Ty Lydic seemed to think face-slapping was a normal part of international wrestling. 

I'm reminded of Iowa's Brands brothers. From Sports Illustrated (June 3, 1996, by Franz Lidz): "'It's in their nature to be violent." Brutal, savage, ruthless is how they described themselves on T-shirts at Iowa." From same article: 

On Super Bowl Sunday in his senior year at Sheldon (Iowa) Community High, Tom says, he and three buddies were involved in what was termed sexual misconduct with a 16-year-old. "Some people thought it was rape, but it wasn't," insists Tom, who until now has never spoken publicly about the incident. "The girl was willing." 

Sigh. Except where natural resources and banking are concerned, I'm a libertarian. I favor legalizing and taxing most drugs and most currently-illegal sex to direct taxes and social programs towards the most vulnerable (drug addicts, orphans, prostitutes, the impoverished) and to reduce the government's ability to use laws as pretext to target politically-different individuals. Without making any declaration about Tom or Terry Brands, my political views only work if alcohol and/or drugs aren't used to muddle the concept of consent, and if people want to be known as honorable. That's why you'll hear me yelling in protest the second a wrestler starts engaging in WWE-style tactics. Sadly, it seems American wrestlers are more likely than any other country to try illegal tactics, perhaps reflecting the country's foreign policy since the Vietnam War

13. Why do I attend as many wrestling events as possible? First, wrestling helped me tremendously. Though I participated in judo and tae kwon do as a kid, it wasn't until I wrestled for the first time in high school that I learned persistence and other values. 

As a high school freshman, I lost every single match my first year. In my last match that year, I was leading on points, only to lose in the final period after running out of gas. Extremely upset, I went to the bathroom and kicked a hole in the plaster wall. The following year, I won Most Valuable Frosh/Soph Wrestler, and by senior year, I had a much better record. Even if I wasn't good enough to wrestle after high school, I still felt part of an honorable, hardworking club

Second, I had not one, but two excellent coaches: Mitch Vierra and Terry Vierra. They knew I wasn't a great wrestler and never would be, but they still took the time to teach me a few moves, including my go-to, "The Iranian" (aka the Superman). 
More importantly, they were good guys, exposing my introversion to more outgoing personalities. Since I didn't like any of my non-math and non-science teachers, I cannot emphasize how important it was to meet people I admired. (For the record, I liked Ms. Gundacker, too, but a middle-aged English teacher ain't exactly someone a teenage boy wants to emulate--though I did end up earning English and Philosophy degrees from UC Davis with high honors.) 

Mind you, I hated middle and high school. I never studied but managed to get good grades. In fact, before one AP American History exam, I claimed I needed to use the bathroom but took my book right outside to study. My teacher called me in after 10 minutes, but I'd secured just enough study time to pass. Deep down, I guess I knew all my classes except for math and science were useless and often wrong. Making matters worse, outside chess club, I had no friends. Without wrestling, I genuinely believe four years of my life would have been completely wasted in high school.

Third, wrestling isn't just the most international sport--it's also the most diverse. On my high school team, I interacted with teammates from Honduras, one deeply evangelical Christian from South Korea, a Mormon (who later became a teacher and wrestling coach), a future Marine and Bronze Star and Purple Heart recipient, and even someone from a rich local Italian-American family. We hated going against much better (and more Latino) Independence High School, which had several superstars, including Eric Guerrero. (Independence is located in my old neighborhood, Berryessa, where my family's weekend highlights included eating churros and buying knock-off underwear and socks at the local flea market.) Meanwhile, though I was the only four-year participant on my wrestling team to earn a law degreetwo of the three women I dated in college became lawyers, revealing the typical homogeneity that occurs post-high-school. I write a lot about politics and economics on my blog, and if I've been able to provide an objective viewpoint, part of it must be due to the people I met on my wrestling team. 

Fourth and finally, I've been severely hearing-impaired since birth. Other than tennis, I cannot think of another sport more suitable for the deaf or hearing-impaired. It's true you have to hear the coaches sometimes, but unlike school, everything is usually shown in ways emphasizing the visual over the auditory. 

So why do I write when others prefer to take videos and do fluff interviews? Because maybe, just maybe, there's someone out there like me--out of shape, no friends, hates school, or can't hear 50% of what's going on in class--who might be willing to take a chance on a sport that's been around for thousands of years. What have you got to lose? Besides every match your first year, like me? 

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2019) 


Lake Louise near Banff
Bonus, from Chuck Thompson's hilarious Smile When You're Lying (2007): 

And, yes, poor unappreciated teachers. I did say sweet deal. American public school teachers have the world's best PR operation going. Whining every chance they get about how demanding their jobs are, how many 'extra hours' they put in, how little they make, how much of their own money they have to spend just to do their jobs, how noble they are working this job that nobody ever asked them to do--welcome to the f*cking world... 

You think you got it tough? You don't got it tough. American teachers would crumble if they ever had to work the real hours of a cabbie, doctor, bartender, fisherman, truck driver, small-business owner, hotel clerk, mechanic, architect, janitor, musician, surveyor, accountant, or the million other jobs that don't observe weekends, much less every city, county, state, and federal holiday on the docket, almost three months' vacation a year, and pension programs funded out of the public trough. How is it we go through school painfully aware that half our teachers are lazy or incompetent or pathological control freaks, then turn around and let them convince us what a bunch of saints they are as soon as we become taxpayers?

Friday, September 28, 2018

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Bobby Douglas: the American Wrestling Legend You've Never Heard Of

Bobby Douglas is a great man--no reasonable person can disagree. He and his wife have made numerous sacrifices for the sport of wrestling, perhaps more than any other family not named Schultz. 
After reading Craig Sesker's biography, you'll wonder why Mr. Douglas hasn't been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Douglas was born poor and black in America when either trait should have confined him to a lifetime of neglect. Instead, despite his small stature, Douglas entered a wrestling mat, and the rest is history: "Wrestling is my best friend... it saved my life. I truly believe that. It saved my life." (pp. 172) 

Younger wrestling fans will have difficulty remembering a time when Jordan Burroughs wasn't the face of American wrestling, or when Kevin Jackson and Kenny Monday weren't household names. Sesker's gift as a writer is ensuring you realize once upon a time, it was different: "Bobby Eddie Douglas was born near the beginning of WWII in Bellaire, Ohio. He was raised in nearby Blaine, a tiny eastern Ohio community of around 150 people." (pp. 14) "When his uncle returned home... from the Korean War with a white German wife, members of the KKK burned a cross... 'Everybody carried some sort of weapon to defend themselves...'" (pp. 21) "We were so hungry... I knew we were poor because I was always hungry." (pp. 42)

And it continues, cards so stacked against Douglas, you have to wonder if the Biblical Job had it easy by comparison: "His grandparents were illiterate. When they received letters in the mail, they handed them to a young Bobby to read to them." (pp. 21) Douglas even has a south side of Chicago connection: his aunt lived there, "in the ghetto," and used Douglas as a numbers "runner" in the summers: "Douglas would run gambling slips and collect money for the lottery.. At times, Douglas [a kid weighing about 50 pounds] would be carrying several hundred dollars in his pocket." (pp. 22-23)

At this point, I imagined a cross between LeBron James (born and raised in a small town in Ohio) and JAY-Z (also raised in the projects and who carried today's equivalent of hundreds of dollars, 2,000 USD, as a drug dealer), only to realize America's curse for poor young black men in any era: unless you develop a talent at the highest levels, you'll be stuck wherever you are because decades of segregation cut you off from opportunities others take for granted. 


Despite his small town background, Douglas's warm, authentic personality helped him transition to different neighborhoods seamlessly, even in Tokyo. In every story, he is universally likable as a wrestler, recruiter, or coach. For example, Sesker tells us a story about Douglas up against the dirtiest coaches (and wrestlers) in America, the Brands brothers. After an opposing wrestler uses a dangerous and illegal move, Coach Douglas "felt [the] move was unintentional." (pp. 128) Everyone but Douglas seems to know the move was pre-meditated, even Sesker, who uses the word "illegal" four times on the page. Afterwards, an Ohio State wrestling coach informs Douglas, "That [injury default] was the wrong thing to do." (Id.) Douglas, of course, disagrees. In the end, the greatest American tactician not named John Smith refused to win on a technicality even when his own wrestler was injured in an illegal move. And on and on it goes, Douglas always being the better man, the reader feeling smaller and smaller with each passing page. 
We find out Douglas is father to a child, now a man, suffering from paranoid schizophrenia; he coached the first West Coast college team to a national wrestling championship, only to be harassed by an incoming Arizona State athletic director for going 20,000 USD over budget; he feels responsible for the unexpected suicide of a wrestler he'd recruited ("I told [the parents] I'd take care of their son like he was my son"); and he remains married to his first girlfriend, Jackie. 

The most unexpected story in the book involves one of Douglas's best students, Cael Sanderson. Sanderson was undefeated in college and today coaches America's top-ranked college wrestling program at Penn State. Douglas coached him to college and Olympic victories, but that wasn't enough for Sanderson to avoid placing his own interests above his coach's. After two years as an assistant coach under Douglas at Iowa State, Sanderson appears to have issued an ultimatum to Iowa State's athletic director, Jamie Pollard, demanding to be made head coach at Iowa State or he'd leave to Ohio State. Coach "Douglas still had three years left on his contract," but that didn't matter to Iowa State: "I'm willing to give you one more year," said Pollard. (pp. 148) And just like that, Douglas was out, and Sanderson in. Perhaps karma took notice, because Sanderson only coached at Iowa State three years, from 2006 to 2009, and then transferred to Penn State. At Iowa State, Sanderson failed to win a national championship. 

Sesker has done an incredible job writing Douglas's story. His writing style is straightforward, making his book easily translatable into any language. I can think of only one other book that is similar, Jack August's Adversity is my Angel, about Raul H. Castro (who, interestingly, also has an Arizona connection). If I had my way, Sesker's and August's books would be required reading for every 9th grade American boy. For now, I hope you'll discover these gems on your own and gift them to your sons.

(Sesker's book is difficult to find online. You can reach him directly at sesker493 at yahoo.com to order a copy.) 

Friday, April 20, 2018

Book Review: Dan Gable's A Wrestling Life 2

If you're a wrestling fan, you will enjoy this second installment in Dan Gable's autobiographical series. If you're not a wrestling fan or not involved in the sport (as a parent, student, coach, etc.), you should probably skip this book--it's heavy on details that would appeal only to people interested in American Olympic and collegiate wrestling. 

Before I share the most pertinent non-wrestling details below, I will confess I really like Coach Gable. In contrast to the Brands brothers ("If somebody loses a tooth or breaks a finger, it's not intentional [wink wink], but it happens. It's a tough sport."), Gable stands apart for his decency. This book burnishes his already glowing stature in several ways: 

1.  Coach Gable is a teetotaler. This fact garners special relevance when one discovers that Iowa's Tom and Terry Brands--both mentored by Coach Gable--were raised by an alcoholic father and, perhaps emulating Gable, do not touch liquor. 

2.  Gable is a fan of Mountain Dew. (Why Pepsi hasn't already recruited him, I don't know.) 

3.  He lifted award-winning writer John Irving's spirits at a time when Mr. Irving needed a morale boost, demonstrating Mr. Gable's capacity to inspire people of all stripes. 

4.  He plays by the rules: "I was the type of guy to take it to the limit, but not break the rules." Contrast Gable with the Brands brothers, currently the University of Iowa's wrestling coaches: "It's in their nature to be violent. Brutal, savage, ruthless is how they described themselves on T-shirts at Iowa..." (Sports Illustrated, June 3, 1996, Franz Lidz) 

Note: I attended the World Cup in Inglewood, California, where the U.S. lost to Iran. The Brands appear to have instructed Jordan Burroughs, a wrestler adored by Iranian fans in America and abroad, to stare down the audience during the finals. The audience was shocked by Burroughs' uncharacteristically unprofessional behavior. (At least one of the Brands has flipped the bird at a foreign audience during an international competition.) I'm not calling the Brands unwashed hillbillies, but if I did, I think they'd take it as a compliment. 

5.  In the most shocking bombshell in the book, Gable discusses how he was recruited by the Republican Party to run for office in Iowa, only to have Karl Rove put him off. Rove told Gable, "[Y]ou are done thinking... You do what we tell you now." Gable demurred. 

Coach Gable, a Republican, had somehow been registered as a Democrat and switched when it came time to contemplate a run. He states his political contacts "were all one-sided and have been so since Bush." 

Still, when it came time to take a stand, Coach Gable did so against his own party. He may someday regret openly disclosing working with President Trump's team, but his honesty on matters of importance is undisputed. Stories like these are part of the reason I'm a fan of Coach Gable--he has principles that transcend race, expediency, and politics. Most importantly, what you see is what you get. 
In Iowa City, Iowa. (April 2018)
6.  Above all, Coach Gable cares about his wrestlers. During the University of Iowa's title runs, he appears to have been thinking each second about maximizing every one of his wrestlers' potential. Whenever the University of Iowa's wrestling team failed, Gable expressly blames himself. This habit, this reflexive inclination towards perfection, is another reason so many people are fans of Coach Gable. 

7.  If you've made it this far, take a deep breath. We know Coach Gable always looked for ways to motivate his wrestlers, right? Now listen to this: "Watching Uetake [one of the most successful wrestlers in Japanese history] is where I learned the coaching technique of cracking your athlete across the face to get their [sic] attention or to get them ready." 

Before you become indignant, remember that with any other public figure, such words would be interpreted as malicious or not spoken publicly at all. With Gable, nothing is discounted as a tool to motivate his wrestlers, and like any good coach, he sought to interpret his wrestlers' individual temperaments to maximize performance. Coach Gable, like Coach Bobby Knight, is part of the same breed of old-school Americana: too damn honest to be politically correct, and unapologetic believers in their systems' ability to transform personal and athletic lives.
In the end, it's not just Coach Gable's success that attracts so many fans--he lost to Larry Owings, to Bobby Douglas, and in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1971--his popularity comes from his authenticity, a trait few public figures possess today. America could use more people like him, people who embody America's best traits: getting the job done, and being uncompromising on the issue of work ethic. 

Bonus, from Craig Sesker's Bobby Douglas (2011): "Bobby [Douglas] was way better than Gable." -- Coach Dave Bennett

"Some of the best moves I learned in wrestling, Bobby Douglas taught me." -- Dan Gable