I made a comment on Twitter the other day, after reading the comments I could see I was definitely in the minority. The article was about David Taylor who had just won the Gold, he said he would have torn his arm off to win the match. Most people didn’t look at that fondly, on the other hand I was a wrestler and his thoughts sounded rational to me.
Wrestlers are a different breed of athlete, to be certain I’m not comparing my ability as a wrestler to David Taylor, that would be absurd. I had and still have the mentality but not the talent. I started wrestling when I was nine years old, and I blew the whistle as an Official when I was fifty-nine. During that time, I wrestled in high school and a little in college. A nagging back injury stopped each iteration of my wrestling life. In high school, the original time I hurt my back right before the post season tournaments. A guy who ended up one of the top guys in the state slammed me onto the hard wood surface, I was beating him and in the final thirty seconds after the whistle blew and I relaxed he did the deed. In the match to move to the next round I was heavily wrapped, and my back gave out and I yelled in pain. I was on top and winning, in those days before liability Officials didn’t stop the match out of fear to be sued. Although, he did stop it eventually, after the other guys scored five points. I lost eight to six. When I became an Official, I did matches with the guy who wouldn’t stop the match, we became friends and I never asked him about the match.
In college I ended my wrestling career before it got started. The coach took me on the team as a favor or recommendation from my high school coach, he didn’t really want me, but he allowed me on the team. The college team was good, number nine in the nation for our class, not D1. The coach was having a scrimmage match within the team, and I’ll always remember this. He was matching guys and when it came to me the only other option was an All American. As I look back, I know he was trying to figure a way not to have me wrestle him, in the end my guess if t was too much work to undo all he had done so he had me wrestle the All American. In short, I won 14 to 1. Some time after that my back was injured severely, I opted not to have surgery and hung it up.
After college I coached for a while and later became an Official, for thirty-one years. I hung up the zebra in part to my back hindering the way I could move on the mat. In my mind I didn’t want to accept my skills slipping. The last year I Officiated I was ranked number five in my region out of about two-hundred Officials.
I’ve done some insane things to my body for those fifty years. In high school I ate Exlax (this is a laxative) like it was candy to lose weight. I’ve slept in my plastic sweat suit; in my sophomore year I went from 175 to 138 in a timespan of the beginning of November to the first week in December. My metabolism to this day is a mess. In those days, the mid-seventies it was a badge of honor to see who could cut the most weight. I unfortunately for my future self was very good at losing weight. Once, to my coach’s horror I was a fraction overweight for a match and had minutes left to make my weight stuffed a tongue depressor down my throat until I puked the final few ounces to make weight.
The most insane thing I did to lose weight was in my junior year. The day before the match I knew I was overweight by a lot, it turns out I was over by seven and a half pounds. I got to the locker room and picked the lock to the door and got dressed quickly. When the assistant coach how much I was overweight, I said four and he wasn’t happy.
Just then my best friend in high school Wynn Jones laughed. Coach made me strip down and I thought he would kill me, as it turns out he almost did. Wynn wrestled at 132 and I wrestled at 138, he was my partner the fours years in high school. He played football at Howard as a tailback and ran track after high school. He died at 31, from Aides. He was the most charismatic person I ever met; the room lit up when he walked in. At that time Aides was deadly and no one talked about it. As popular as he was, I was the only athlete that went to his funeral.
That practice was brutal, I didn’t get a break at all. In 1977 my high school basketball team finished second in the state. Fans would come early to the JV game just to get a seat for the Varsity. As people filed in for the Friday night game all the mats were rolled up except for a small portion in the center of the gym. There I was on the mat with the assistant coach, every time I got up, he knocked me down until it was time for the basketball teams to warm up. Checking my weigh after practice I was three pounds over. My coach put me in one of stainless-steel whirlpool up to my neck and raised the water temperature to just under 120 degrees. I was there until halftime of the JV game. When I got out, I was a quarter pound over and exhausted.
Some of the guys on the team came to the locker room and still joke about this. I asked them not to turn the showers on until I got in, there was one lever to turn all the showers on. I laid on the shower floor and they turned on the water. There is always cold water until the showers warm up. When the cold hit me, steam came off my body. Next day I came in three and a half over, I ran for about an hour and made weight and won my match. I never told my parents and to this day I joke with the coach who is now a trainer for a big group that if he did that today it, would-be all-over CNN.
My junior year I broke my thumb and set the bone myself so I wouldn’t miss a match. To this day I have a knot at the base of my thumb where I didn’t set the bone correctly. My senior year when I injured my back, it was a Thursday. I was taken to the hospital and the doctor told me my season was over. When I talked to my coach the next day, I told him I only need to wrap it. I had a good reason, the guy I was going to wrestle on Saturday was as they say today, talking all kinds of trash. Plus, his dad worked with my dad in the steel mill and his dad was doing the same. My dad never cared about wrestling; in fact, I think he hated it. He didn’t see what I went through as character building as I now see it. It was one of the few matches he came to. I took the kid down and secured a far side cradle and pinned him in the first period. The only time my dad was happy about me playing any sport.
I get where David Taylor is coming from, I’d tear off my arm to stand alone on top of the hill sporting a gold medal.
Mike Settino 