Death Clutch (2 page)

WRESTLING WITH MY FUTURE

F
arming is the life I enjoy, and the one I look forward to most when my fight is over. I farm now because I choose to—not because it's all I know. I'm not stuck on my farm. I want to be here. But it wasn't always that way.

When I was a junior in high school, I wanted a future that included something more than milking cows and sitting on tractors. It just happened that as I was thinking about how to get off the farm, a National Guard recruiter showed up at my school. My dad was in the Guard, so I didn't think he'd mind if I signed up. As a matter of fact, I didn't even ask him; I had my mom co-sign for me.

Here I was, seventeen years old, on my way to Fort Leonardwood, Missouri. Let me say this for the record, so that everyone who is reading this can understand something. The nine weeks I spent in the National Guard that summer changed my life. I came back home a totally different person, and all for the better.

The only problem was that I went into the Guard to join the local artillery supply unit. We worked with explosive charges that were coded red and green. That's what I wanted to do. But after an eye test, which showed that I am red-green color-blind, I was assigned to clerical duty. Can you see my big ass sitting at a computer screen all day? That was not exactly what I had in mind when I signed up. Lucky for me, I couldn't pass the typing test, and that was the end of my Guard career.

During guard training, we had to run every morning, which helped me nail a two-mile run in 10:56. When I went back to high school for my senior year, I was in great shape, and I had one more year on the football team with my friends. I even signed a letter of intent to play football at Northern State University in Aberdeen, because I didn't have any wrestling offers.

I wanted to run the ball. I had the speed, and I was getting some size. But just as I was starting to rack up some impressive numbers, a defensive back took my knee out, and I had to have knee surgery. That was the end of my high school football career.

High school wrestling starts when the football season ends. That meant that my knee wouldn't be completely healed before the first day of wrestling practice. In fact, when wrestling started I was still on my crutches.

That was bad enough. But to make matters worse, every year since I was in sixth grade, our coach, John Schiley, made us do a six-mile run on the first day of practice. It was called a “gut check,” and everyone was expected to finish if they wanted to be on Schiley's team. This was my senior year and I was a leader. So I started the six miles on crutches and kept going until the coach was satisfied and let me jump in the back of his pickup. I was disappointed, though, because I had finished that run every year since I was in sixth grade.

Believe it or not, I was a late developer. As a young kid, I certainly was no heavyweight. I was a string bean.

In seventh grade, I wrestled at 103 pounds. As a freshman in high school, I was a 152-pounder; sophomore year, I was 160. By my junior year, I was 189 pounds. Finally, as a senior, I made it to the heavyweight division, but only by a couple of pounds.

Looking at me now, it might be hard to believe that I didn't even have hair in my armpits when I graduated from high school. I guarantee you I was the last guy to go through puberty in my class. I lifted a lot of weights, and even though I was a six-foot-tall, 210-pound senior, I still looked like nothing more than a big stretched-out kid. Even in my freshman year of college, at my heaviest, I was only 226 pounds.

Coming up through the high school ranks, I was never a monster by any means. I was just trying to grow into my own skin. But that struggle became a huge positive for me: when I had to wrestle as a 103-pounder, or a 152-pounder, I developed the moves and quickness of a lighter-weight wrestler. When I got to heavyweight, I still had those moves, and I was fast. Had I always been big, I probably would have skated by on strength and size alone, and I never would have learned to move like I do now.

In both my junior and senior years in high school, I placed third in the state tourney. But to me, that was nothing special. I was supposed to win. That's what I came to do.

Even though I only played football in high school because everyone else did, I was still pretty good at it. In my heart, though, I was a wrestler. Football was just something to do with my friends until the wrestling season started.

I never thought of myself as a football player, even when I was exploding through the defensive line. I never for a minute thought I was going to play football in college, or at the professional level. When I looked in the mirror, all I ever saw was a wrestler.

That's probably why, when things didn't work out for me with the Minnesota Vikings, I wasn't all that upset. Instead, in some ways, being the last man cut from the roster only confirmed something I had always known. I can't hide the fact, and I really don't want to hide it. I'm proud to say it: I'm not a football player, I'm a fighter. It's what I do. It's my passion. It's my life.

THE COW-CHIP RECRUIT

I
t makes me laugh every time I read one of these articles about how I was a blue-chip athlete and had my ass kissed by recruiters and scouts when I came out of high school. There was no college recruiting war for my services. No under-the-table money. No fancy cars. That's all bullshit. I placed third in the South Dakota state wrestling tournament. That didn't exactly put me on the national recruiting radar.

One thing those articles fail to mention, and what a lot of people don't know about me, is that after high school, I didn't go straight to the University of Minnesota to wrestle at the NCAA Division I level. In fact, I wasn't recruited by any Division I schools, and I almost never made it to the U of M.

Because the big schools were not recruiting me, and because I really wanted to continue wrestling, I started my college career at Bismarck State in North Dakota, a junior college. It was bad enough that I wasn't wrestling in a big-time program; but I only finished fifth at Junior College Nationals my first year. Even worse than the fifth-place finish, though, is that I got beat by a pudgy little kid whose name I can't even remember, and neither can anyone else.

The loss to that pudgy no-name was a major turning point in my life, because there was no way that kid should have been able to beat me. I looked at the guy who won the whole tourney and I knew in my heart I could have beat him for the championship. That killed me, because I never got the chance—the fat kid made sure of that. Sorry I can't remember your name, but I do want to say thanks.

At that moment I looked inside myself, and I got serious. I vowed to be the biggest, strongest, fastest, meanest SOB I could become. I wanted to put on pounds of muscle, train like my life depended on it, and just start crushing everyone. I knew I had it in me, and I was determined to grind through it in the weight room, and on the mat, every day, for as long as it took, until I was on the top. I'm no quitter, and I wasn't going to finish my college career as a loser.

After that first year at Bismarck State, I went home to Webster, South Dakota, for the summer to work and make a little money. My mom and dad helped me as much as they could, but they were poor and just keeping the farm going was draining them. I couldn't call home, and ask my mom and dad to send me money. My mom and dad didn't have the money to give. They did what they could, but it wasn't like the kids I roomed with in the dorms. They had decent cars, cash for food, and money to go out. I didn't have any of that.

When I went back to Webster for the summer break, I knew I had to find a job. My number one goal that summer was not only to make some money, but also to put on twenty-five to thirty pounds of muscle. I didn't want to be a power-lifting meathead guy, one of those big goofy immobile guys who are obsessed about how big their arms look when they wear a T-shirt that's too tight (although I did check out my pythons in the mirror from time to time). That just wasn't me. I wanted to be an athlete: strong, quick and explosive.

I have to tell you, it was a great summer. I worked as a laborer for the REA power company in Webster. Every day, I packed my own lunch, and worked from eight in the morning until three in the afternoon. Then I would go work out with my buddies, Jason Nolte and Troy Knebal. We just pounded the weights. I was determined to bulk up, but at the same time to be a better overall athlete. So I not only went after the weights like an animal, I stretched. Yeah, I stretched! I kept my body flexible and mobile.

Every night we hit the gym at five-thirty. No excuses. It was an obsession. Sometimes, we'd drive to other gyms just to shake it up, keep it interesting, keep the blood flowing. But we never missed a day.

I think that all of my drive, my passion to get bigger, faster, and better comes from the mentality of bring a wrestler. I'm not talking about a pro wrestler, although that requires enormous discipline and sacrifice as well. I'm talking about the lifestyle of an amateur wrestler.

Amateur wrestling is not just a sport, it's a lifestyle. You breathe it, like air. The lifestyle consumes you. As soon as you get up, your first thought is about the fuel you will put in your body. Then you hit the road and do some roadwork, because you want that blood flowing, you want to get that cardio where it needs to be. Always one more mile, one more step. You attack the weights like you're a man dying of thirst, and you're thinking that it will always take one more rep to bring some water up from the well. Then you go to bed, exhausted, and get some needed rest so you can get up and do it again, day after day.

Today's athlete is bigger, stronger, and faster than ever before. They train harder, and they train smarter. No longer can a guy rise to the top of any sport on talent alone. The winners are the ones who train right and are willing to sacrifice the most. The good news is that I had the passion, I was willing to listen to my coaches, and I was always willing to work harder and longer than anyone who wants to take me on.

My work that summer paid off. I went from 226 pounds to 258 pounds. I was flexible, and I was fast. I put on muscle because I had great genetics—my dad and brothers are all big guys—and I ate a lot of beef, drank milk by the gallon, ate bananas by the bundle, and worked my ass off in the gym.

All the time I was training I kept thinking about the discipline I had learned on the farm, and how important it was to follow through on my plans. I knew I could do it, and I did. As a matter of fact, before I went back to school, I believed that I could do anything I wanted in life.

In my sophomore year at Bismarck State, I wrestled in the Daktronics Open at South Dakota State, and I beat the defending two-time national NCAA Division II champion, Ryan Reisal. Next, I went to the Bison Open at North Dakota State University, and I steamrolled through the heavyweight tournament. That's where University of Minnesota head coach J Robinson, and his assistant coach Marty Morgan, first saw me.

The Bison was the first big tourney of the year, and a lot of the guys who went there had to work some of the rust off, because they'd been out in their nice little cars and enjoying themselves all summer. Not me. I had been in the weight room and in the gym all summer, so I had no rust. I came in looking to hammer anyone that stepped on the mat with me.

One of the star athletes for the U of M was a heavyweight named Shelton Benjamin. A two-time All-American for Minnesota, Shelton was no joke, and J wanted to build on Shelton's success and create a great heavyweight team. I was part of that plan.

Next thing I knew, I was on a plane headed to Minneapolis on a recruiting trip. I remember my junior college coach, Robert Finneseth, telling me not to sign anything, but when I got to Minneapolis it just felt like home. The U of M didn't waste any time, and I signed with them that day.

I still had a full season of junior college wrestling ahead of me, but I knew what I wanted for myself and I could see it happening. I went 36–0 that season and won the National Junior College Athletic Association Championship.

Here's a bit of trivia for you. I was the last guy to ever wrestle for Bismarck State College. They shut down the wrestling program after my last year there.

My sophomore year was over, I was the NJCAA Champion, and I was headed for the big time to wrestle for the Gophers. Or so I thought.

A DETOUR ON MY ROAD TO THE NCAA HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP

T
he U of M coaches, Marty and J, wanted me to move to Minneapolis right away when I finished junior college so I could start working out with their heavyweights, like Billy Pierce and Shelton Benjamin. But, as always, I didn't have any money, and I couldn't afford a place in Minneapolis.

That's where Alan Rice came in. He was a former Olympian, and he was a huge Minnesota Gophers booster. He also happened to own a frat house on campus. Alan said there was an extra room in the attic, and he would rent it to me for dirt cheap, something like a hundred dollars a month. It sounded like a great deal to me.

Let me tell you, if Rice would have charged me twenty cents a month for that flophouse attic, it still would have been too much. It was absolutely horrendous. When Rice said the room was in an attic, he wasn't kidding. This was not some bedroom above a frat house; it was really a stinking attic. I had pigeons up there. It was dusty. It was cramped. It was drafty. I was living in a miserable attic in Minnesota!

To pay the rent for that frickin' place, and to get some money for food, I took a job as a demolition man with a construction company. That was the perfect job for me. Every day from 7
A.M.
till the middle of the afternoon, I demolished things with a sledgehammer. And when I was done swinging the sixteen-pounder, I still had time to make my afternoon workouts at the gym.

Yeah, I was paying my dues, but I knew it would all be worth it. I was determined to win an NCAA Division I title, and I was willing to do whatever it takes to get there. The U of M was a program on the rise, and I was going to be its star. But then the road took an unexpected turn.

Just as I was settling into my routine, J Robinson called me and said there was a problem. They were trying to get me enrolled at the U for the fall, but my junior college transcript was twenty-four credits shy of the minimum for eligibility to transfer. Are you kidding me? I was pissed. All I could think was, “You guys had all my transcripts and you saw what classes I was taking. I'm nineteen years old. You're the wrestling coaches. This is something you should have seen right away.” But there we were, sitting in J's office, and he's telling me I am twenty-four credits short.

Can you believe that?

After all that I had been through, I wasn't about to just kiss my dream good-bye. I wasn't going to let the system beat me. I was going to take control of my own destiny. Unfortunately, summer sessions had already started at most schools.

J wanted me to go somewhere that had a wrestling team I could practice with, and he had a connection at Lasson Community College in Susanville, California, where the team was pretty good. The original plan was for me to go to summer and fall at Lasson, then transfer to the U. I thought it was a huge move going from the farm in South Dakota to the big city of Minneapolis, even if it is only a couple hundred miles away. But California? J might as well have told me I had to move to Japan. They were both a world away as far as I was concerned.

I immediately went back to my attic in the frat house, grabbed all my stuff, and headed home to Webster. On the way, I was thinking about how to tell my parents that I wasn't a U of M Golden Gopher, and that I was heading out to California in two days.

I never did think of a good way to deliver the news, so I just told my mom and dad straight out, “I'm not eligible for college, and I need to get some quick credits at a school in California.” They looked at me like I was nuts, but my mind was made up. If this was what I had to do to get on the U of M wrestling team, then this was what I would do. There was no discussion.

I left home in my ten-year-old Mazda RX-7 with Lasson Community College in Susanville, California, as my destination. I remember thinking this might actually be a really fun road trip.

I didn't know anything about the school I was going to. I didn't know where I would stay. I didn't know how I would afford to eat or where I'd train. All I knew was I had a long drive to Susanville, and by the time I got there, I would be just in time for classes.

I remember driving until I hit Salt Lake City, Utah, around 5
A.M
. on a Sunday morning. I pulled into a truck stop and took a little nap, but I knew that if I didn't get my ass back on the road I couldn't get my school credits. And without the credits, I couldn't get into the U of M wrestling program. How could J Robinson not have known I was twenty-four credits short?

I finally got to Lasson Community College at 5:30
A.M.
on Monday—the day classes started. I immediately tried to call the wrestling coach. Of course, no one answered—only farm boys would be up at five-thirty in the morning. So I left a message and sat by a pay phone just waiting for it to ring.

I don't know if I was sleeping, or half sleeping, but at around 7 
A.M
. the phone rings and it's the coach. He says he'll meet me up at the school in a half hour. I was completely exhausted after the cross-country drive, but those damn credits were calling me.

When I met with the coach, he asked if I had any relatives at all in the state of California. If I did, I could register as a resident. It just so happened I had two aunts in California. So I used one of their addresses, and sixteen credits were only going to cost me $160. This was still a lot of money to me, because when I got to California I had exactly $480 in my pocket, and nothing in the bank.

I spent $160 on tuition, which left me with $320. I knew I was going to have to eat, so I put a $200 deposit down on the school food program. That got me breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the dining hall every day, and left me with $120 to spare. But that California school wasn't a great fit for me. I stood out in that place like a big infected sore thumb.

I had my tuition and meals taken care of, but the whole adventure would be pretty pointless if I didn't pass my classes, and that is hard to do without any books. But if I would have paid for all the books I needed, I wouldn't have had any money left over for anything else. So I shared books with the other wrestlers. Sounds easy enough, but I really hated having to bum books off the guys all the time.

Still, Susanville, California, will always be a special place to me. I almost started my fighting career there.

I found a little gym that had some weight-lifting equipment and a mixed-martial-arts dojo. This was my first MMA training. One night, the guys at the gym were all going to Reno, Nevada, for a fight. I called up J Robinson and let him know I was planning to fight in Reno to pick up a few bucks. He told me flat out that I would be jeopardizing my chances at becoming a D-I athlete if I did. That was all I needed to hear, and I didn't go. Had I gotten a taste of MMA fighting back then, who knows? Maybe I would never have gone back to school.

Someday, I'd like to take my wife and kids to Susanville, just for the hell of it. Maybe even make the drive. Show my kids where I had to go, what I had to do, to just make it to the University of Minnesota.

I'm not complaining. I'm glad I paid my dues and earned my own way.

After my California summer, I just needed another eight credits to get enrolled at the U of M. I called my U of M advisor and asked if she would help me make sure all my credits from California got transferred back to Bismarck State College. Then I drove from Lasson to Bismarck and started the fall semester at my old school. But BSC didn't have a wrestling program anymore, and I knew I had to do something to keep up my conditioning and skill level.

Because I had no one to wrestle with at BSC, I drove out to the University of Mary, an NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) school just outside Bismarck, and practiced with their team every day.

Being an overachiever, I took twelve credits that fall, even though I only needed eight. I wasn't taking any chances this time around.

At BSC, I was living with my old friend Mike Eckert, who was my dorm neighbor the year before. Mike was really cool. Same old story: I didn't have any money at all, so Mike shared his room with me. It was just a pad we could crash in, but that was important to me because I had nowhere else to go. I'm just glad that I get this chance to tell everyone what Mike did for me that fall.

I quickly fell into a routine at BSC. Weights in the morning. Back-to-back classes. Wrestling practice with the University of Mary team. Homework. But, every day, all I could think of is that I was one day closer to joining the U of M Golden Gopher wrestling team. I wanted that U of M singlet and all that went with it.

I finished up the semester at BSC and passed all my classes. Then I left school two weeks early so I could get to Minneapolis before Christmas break, because I wanted to get ready for the next semester at the U of M. I also wanted to meet the guys, because I was going to be placed on the team immediately.

When I got to Minneapolis, I moved in with Tim Hartung and Chad Kraft, and those guys really sacrificed for me. The U of M needed a big new heavyweight, so a lot of people went out of their way to help me out. Times were good, and I was headed in the right direction. I was finally living my dream. I was in my first tournament as a Gopher, and lost to Trent Hynek in the semi-finals at the Omaha Open. Welcome to NCAA Division I.

I lost. And it burned my ass. Here I was, the guy who was telling everyone that I was going to be the NCAA Division I Heavyweight Champion. I was the focus of the team. The poster boy. I was supposed to be the star heavyweight. And here I was, in my first tournament, and I lose. It was embarrassing as hell.

I only lost twice that year, that first tournament and my last. In the NCAA finals, I lost to Stephen Neal 3–2. Today, Neal plays right guard for Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, and he wears two Super Bowl rings. Back then, he was the returning NCAA heavyweight wrestling champion.

I lost the match to Neal because he was better than me that day. It was a lesson for me. Never give an opponent too much respect. I believe to this day that if I had just come at Neal full throttle, I would have won the 1999 NCAA finals. But I did learn from my mistake.

I had so much respect for Neal. He was the NCAA National Champion. It changed the way I approached the match. It took me off my game. I thought he was better than he really was. I thought about that 3–2 loss a lot, and I finally realized that I was never going to win the biggest prizes by showing that kind of respect to any opponent again. Not ever. If someone wants my respect, they better beat it out of me. That's the only way they'll get it.

The loss to Neal made me think back to those tournaments when I was five years old, and how disappointed my mom was if I lost a match. I hated to let her down, and I hated the feeling that comes with losing. I was embarrassed when I lost in my first big-time college tournament to Trent Hynek, but this was worse. I went through all this shit, California—back to BSC, borrowed books, borrowed wrestling partners at the University of Mary—just to get on the team at the University of Minnesota . . . and then I lost my biggest match.

I hear all these people say, “It's such an honor to make it to the finals, you should feel privileged just to be able to compete at such a level.” That's a lot of bullshit. I'm a competitor, and I learned from John Schiley when I was five years old that you compete to win. I am either number one, or I am a loser. And losing sucks.

I hated losing to Neal. If you think I was consumed with getting that loss back from Frank Mir during my professional career, you should have seen me after I lost in the finals of the 1999 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships. I had one more year to make my dreams come true, and at that moment I made up my mind that I was going all the way. There wasn't a college wrestler on the planet who was going to stop me.