by Bob Backlund
Princeton kids were from the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. A lot of the spectators at our athletic competitions didn’t like to see the kids from Princeton do well in athletics. They wanted to see some clean-cut, handsome businessman’s son do well, as opposed to the derelict sons of some country farmers. But that’s why it was good that wrestling was an individual sport. You could prove yourself on your own merits, and not have to worry about publicity, or politics, or the whims of the referees. It was just you, down on the mat, all by yourself—and if you pinned your opponent, there was no room for politics or subjectivity.
I liked that.
The match didn’t really live up to all the hype, as I whipped Anderson 7–2 on points. He couldn’t do much at all with me. Given how much I had idolized Anderson the year before, beating him that decisively in that match gave me my first tangible reinforcement that hard work pays off. I was also able to answer the question I had asked the year before about how Anderson had been able to accomplish so much at such a young age. The answer was simple—you just had to work harder than everyone else!
Until that point in my life, almost every lesson I had learned had been a negative one. But this was the tipping point for me, and I was starting to get some recognition for the right reasons! As soon as I realized that, I felt ready to take on the world, and I understood that there was a way out for me if I could simply go out there every day and outwork everyone else.
I won the rest of my matches that season, went on to win the districts and the regionals in my weight class, and then went on to the state tournament at St. Cloud State University—about 30 miles from Princeton.
A “Clod from the Sticks”
A bunch of the coaches were sitting together and started talking about this 175-pounder from Princeton. They didn’t know his name. A coach from one of the more elite programs said, “he’s just a muscle-bound clod from the sticks—don’t worry about him,” and just dismissed him out of hand. That kid was Bob Backlund. In one of the early matches in the tournament, a high-seeded kid charged at Bob like a bull to start their match. Big mistake. Bob thrust his arms forward, mainly in defense, and tossed the kid backward to the edge of the mat. Bob handled him easily. The kid was totally psyched out by that one move.
—Coach Dan Brockton, Bob’s junior year high school wrestling coach
When the tournament seedings came out, it was apparent that if everything played out the way that it was expected to, I would be wrestling a guy named Randy Brekke from Faribault, Minnesota, in the finals. I had already wrestled and defeated two guys during the regular season who had beaten Randy Brekke, so everyone was telling me that I had it made. I had never been the tournament “favorite” before, and I had never experienced that kind of publicity and attention.
I started to believe the hype.
Before all my other matches, I had always gone through the same warm-up routine—but this time, I didn’t take much time to get ready. I was too busy thinking about being crowned state champion in a few minutes’ time. When I went out onto the mat to wrestle, I didn’t stop to shake my coach’s hand on the way out, which I had also always done.
I went to the middle of the mat for the introductions and looked Brekke in the eye.
All season long, I had been very aggressive. I had almost always gotten a takedown in the first minute of action. But Brekke caught me by surprise, took me down, and almost pinned me in the opening moments of the match. Before I knew what had happened, he had built up a five-point lead on me. I tried to make up the points, but even though I had done conditioning work all season long, I felt lethargic, and eventually, that lethargy turned to desperation. I was not yet ready to take on the world because I had not yet learned the critical importance that mental preparation has in sports.
Randy Brekke beat me on points and walked away with the state championship. The truth is, Randy Brekke had taken the match seriously, prepared himself properly, and gave the match and the moment the respect it deserved. I had not—and as a consequence I handed Randy Brekke the Minnesota state championship. Maybe he would have beaten me anyway—but the point is, I didn’t even show up that day, because I had drifted from the principles and behaviors that had put me in the position to win it in the first place.
A lot of my family and friends had come out to cheer me on, and I walked off the mat with my head down for the first time that season. I took a shower, and then came out still with my head down. When I saw my parents standing there, the tears came, and they just started flowing—not because I got beat, but because I knew I hadn’t given it my best. I had allowed myself to get cocky, and had just learned a tough lesson for it.
That felt much, much worse than simply losing.
I turned away from my supporters and walked out of the building. Nothing seemed important to me anymore. I walked around thinking about myself and what a fool I had been to listen to and believe all of the talk about my being “the best.” I remember going to school the Monday following that loss in the state finals and not being able to remember my locker combination. That loss took everything out of me. It took a long, long time for the pain of that loss to fade from my memory.
That was also the second major turning point in my early life.
The loss to Randy Brekke at the state championships was the most memorable and important wrestling match of my entire wrestling career. It was also the match that taught me to never take anything for granted—one of the most painful and important lessons that I ever had to learn.
I would never make that mistake again in any amateur match I ever had in my career. From that day on, I took my matches one at a time, never looking ahead to the future or assuming anything from looking at my opponent’s win-loss record. I was no longer interested in hearing my opponent’s name, where he was from, who he had beaten, or who had beaten him. After that humiliating loss to Brekke, I understood that each time, no matter where I was or who I was wrestling, that I had to simply go out there and give every ounce that I had to give, to never, ever give up, and to never take anything for granted.
Never again would I beat myself.
Looking back over my life now, I’m actually happy that I lost that match to Randy Brekke—because that loss caused me to make a lot of lasting changes in the way I approached athletic competition, and life in general. If I had still beaten him after such lackadaisical preparation on my part, I might have gotten complacent. Instead, that loss gave me a new respect for the importance of preparation and hard work—an ethic that would carry over into my work entertaining fans in the professional ranks as well.
More than a few times, years later, when we were wrestling in a small town high school gym in front of five hundred people on a one-off Tuesday night, some of the guys I’d be in the ring with would want to take it easy and just go through the motions. Any time I was tempted to do that, I thought of Randy Brekke—and it made me remember that the fans in that small town on that Tuesday night had worked just as hard for the money to pay for their ticket to see me wrestle as the people in Madison Square Garden had paid for theirs—and that every fan in every building deserved to see the very best that I had to give them.
Going into senior year, I had been elected captain of both the football and wrestling teams, and I was really looking forward to my final year of high school. Ross Johnson and I continued as training partners that summer. Ross and I were very different people. He was a straight-A student and a very religious guy. He didn’t do wild things, and led a very restrained life. But through our training, we got to be as close as brothers.
We trained hard, and had big dreams.
And I had finally found a friend I could count on and was beginning to trust.
There came a point in our training that summer, though, where I was getting a lot stronger, but Ross was getting weaker. We couldn’t figure out why. We checked his diet and his sleep patterns. He was eating well, and we were doing practically the identical workouts. It was very discouraging for him
.
Just before football season started, we found out that Ross Johnson had leukemia.
I had to take Ross’ position as fullback that year. It was a hard year, as Ross couldn’t play football anymore and we all watched helplessly as he got weaker and weaker. Ross battled to the end, insisting on working out with us in the weight room and trying to train with the team and work himself back to health. He came to all of our games to cheer us on.
In the end, though, Ross Johnson lost his battle with leukemia. He died that year at the age of eighteen.
Ross and I had talked about a lot of things while we were training—about life, and our goals for our lives. Ross had a clear picture of where he wanted to go. He was full of dreams and big ideas—of going off to college, getting married, playing professional football, and having lots of children. By contrast, I didn’t really have any idea about what I wanted from my life. I had expected so little of myself for so long, that I had never even really thought about it. But Ross Johnson pushed me to see further, dream bigger, and understand that deep inside yourself, it was okay to set lofty personal goals. A lot of the dreams that I have fulfilled in my life are dreams that Ross Johnson first showed me were okay to dream.
Senior year, I was recruited by a few schools after football season, but I was monomaniacal in my focus to right a wrong during wrestling season. Fueled by the still painful memories of what had happened in the finals of the State Championships the season before, I went 26–0 and won the 1968 Minnesota state wrestling championship at 175 pounds. It wasn’t as exciting as it had been my junior year when it was all fresh and new. Senior year, I was much more cautious. I was totally focused on winning and took no chances. It was certainly exciting to win the state title though. My combined record as a junior and senior was 51–1.
The only blemish on my record was the loss to Randy Brekke.
The Strongest Ever
Bob’s ability to push himself is what made him different. Often, after the regular practice was over and everyone had gone home, he would stay and work. Sometimes he’d ask me to stay with him and just continue to drive himself. He’d come to my house when the gym was locked up on a holiday or something, and ask me to open it up so he could work out. As for wrestling, Bob was the attraction. The crowds just went for him. I’ve heard many, many people say that he was the strongest high school wrestler that they’d ever seen. I can still remember one match in a tournament when another team just conceded a loss to Bob in their match at 175. They put in this kid who was probably 20 pounds lighter, and throughout the match, this kid kept screaming and yelling like he was being murdered out there. I asked Bob afterward how hard he was squeezing this kid, and Bob smiled at me and said, “I didn’t want to hurt him, coach. I could have squeezed a lot harder!”
—Dan Brockton
I had been recruited by quite a few colleges. The University of Minnesota was pushing the hardest, but I made clear to them that I wanted to both play football and wrestle—and their coaches had told me that I couldn’t do both. That didn’t interest me, so I turned them down. North Dakota State’s wrestling coach Bucky Maughan, a decorated wrestler who had won a state high school title in Pennsylvania and an NCAA national championship at Morehead State, was pushing pretty hard too; but he was a new coach up there and was just getting established. I liked Coach Maughan a lot, and I was hoping that he would be able to make things work out for me. In the end, though, he was too new there to exert much influence—so with my dreams of playing both football and wrestling scuttled at least for the time being, I ended up packing my bags and heading to junior college in Iowa.
That is what amateur wrestling did for me. Wrestling took me from the brink, gave me a sense of purpose and confidence, taught me critically important life lessons, and most importantly gave me a future. That is why I have always encouraged kids to become involved in amateur wrestling and why, after I became established, I started the Bob Backlund Kids’ Wrestling Tournaments. Amateur wrestling saved my life—and I wanted to be sure that other kids would have the same opportunities.
Incredible Transformation
Bob and my wife are both from Princeton. In 1965, when I was visiting Princeton, my wife’s younger brother Gary was a member of the Princeton High wrestling team. I had just graduated, so I went over to the high school practice to help out my brother-in-law and to get in a workout. The coach asked me if I wanted to work out with this kid named Backlund. He was a sophomore then, and was about 5’ 10’’ and maybe 155 pounds. I weighed around 145 then, so I said, “Sure!” He didn’t know much about wrestling then, and he tried to muscle me, so I had no problem throwing him around pretty easily. I left the practice not really even remembering the kid’s name.
The next Christmas, which was Bob’s junior year, I was back in Princeton and again attended a practice to work with Gary. I remember asking the coach about this big muscular kid who was lifting weights in the corner of the gym. And he told me, “That’s Bob Backlund—the kid you wrestled last year.” I couldn’t believe it was even the same guy. He had made an incredible transformation over the year since I had seen him. There would be no wrestling with him this year!
I went over and talked with him, though. He was extremely shy, and I had to work really hard to pump even a few words out of him. That year, though, I remembered his name, and made a note to myself to see how he did in the state tournament. As you know, he took second in states that year, and the following year, when I again returned to Princeton, I made it a point to talk to him in practice. He had developed even more by then (his senior year) and he had these large charts that he made to record the weight and number of reps that he did in each lift. I knew right then that he was a wrestler I’d like to have in our program at North Dakota State. And that year, he went on to become Minnesota State Champion.
In 1968, the NDSU wrestling program was just getting off the ground, and scholarship money was practically non-existent. I talked and talked with our football coaches to try and interest them in Bob, but for some reason, they didn’t think that a young wrestling coach who had never played football was their leading talent scout. So they didn’t offer Bob a scholarship, and we couldn’t—so Bob ended up starting off at Waldorf.
—Bucky Maughan, head wrestling coach, NDSU
2 In professional wrestling, kayfabe is the portrayal of facts or events as true or real and not of a fictional or staged nature.
3
The NCAAs
“Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement. Study every person you can think of who has achieved lasting success and you will find that each … had a plan for reaching that goal, and each devoted the greatest part of his or her thoughts and efforts to that end.”
—Napoleon Hill, “Develop a Definiteness of Purpose”
With no four-year college prepared to allow me to pursue both football and wrestling, I decided to enroll at Waldorf Junior College in Forest City, Iowa—a small Lutheran school about 200 miles from Princeton. Waldorf had very good football and wrestling programs, and had agreed to allow me to pursue both. There were only about six hundred students, and it was very quiet socially, but it kept you on your toes academically. At the time, it was also one of the only junior colleges that had dorms.
I drove down to Waldorf in my ’57 Olds and got there a bit early for preseason football. I met a lot of people from all over the country because Waldorf, being a Lutheran school, drew a lot of students from outside the region. It was a very different atmosphere from Princeton—a town where everyone pretty much knew everyone from birth to death. At Waldorf, I didn’t know a single person.
I earned a starting position on the football team, and played offensive guard and defensive end for Coach Dick Bosdorf, and was on the field for every play on both sides of the ball for every one of our eight games that year. That is also where I earned my nickname “Tiny” because I was pretty muscular when I arrived at Waldorf.
Totally Committed
Even though I’ve placed ten players in the NFL in the past twelve years, Tiny is the player who stands out the most in my mind. He wasn’t the best football player I’ve ever coached, but he was my most totally committed athlete. Everyone looked up to him. He is a totally self-made person, and others tried to follow him because of the example he set.
—Dick Bosdorf, Waldorf Head Football Coach
I also wrestled in my first year at Waldorf for Ron Nelermoe. Coach Nelermoe was very strong and pretty hard to handle. Usually coaches don’t get on the mat with their wrestlers and actually wrestle them—but there really wasn’t anyone else on the team who could push me, so it fell to him to do so. To his credit—he did!
I lost one match that first year, by one point to a kid from Iowa named Joe Hatchett. That was my first loss in almost three years, and I was so upset because of it that I didn’t come out of my room for three days. Eventually, they had to send a couple of football players to come drag me out.
Back then, the national junior college wrestling tournament was almost as strong as the NCAA tournament was. There was some very, very good wrestling done at the junior college level by kids who were really excellent wrestlers, but may not have had the grades or the money to go to a four-year college. By way of example, Chris Taylor, who wrestled in junior college in Michigan, couldn’t win the national junior college tournament. He finished third one year, and second the next year—and then went on to Iowa State, which was kind of the powerhouse of Division I wrestling at the time, where he was a teammate of the legendary Dan Gable. At Iowa State, Chris won the NCAA Division I tournament twice, and then went on to win the bronze medal at the Munich Olympic Games.
He Had Heart
Even though I only coached Bob for one year before I moved on to Concordia, I remember him well. Bob placed third in the JC Nationals that year, losing to the eventual JC champion, and then coming back to win the losers’ bracket. He was the best all-around athlete I have ever seen. He was a workhorse, and he had heart, willpower, drive, dedication, strength, speed … well, he had everything. But that wasn’t God-given. He earned it.