Gable expects more from you, and he convinces wrestlers to expect more from themselves. His standard is set to the highest level. It reminds me of the old expression “to make a man trustworthy you must trust him.”
Tom goes on to say, “A lot of coaches will tell their guys, ‘you gotta believe in me, trust my system and believe in it,’ but the bottom line is, it’s about the damn coaches believing in the athletes. Gable believed in me, in my brother, in all these other guys.”
It’s how Dan made pumpkin pie.
In his tenth year as head coach at the University of Iowa, Dan was going to break all the records. It was being dubbed “Season X” and T-shirts were printed, the proverbial champagne was iced. In a shocking turn his team came in second in the country.
“We crumbled on the edge of that championship, we went from first to second, but we were losers. Sure, we were second out of a hundred and ten teams, but if you’re on top, then anything coming down feels like a loss. I got hate mail the next day, saying I’d lost my touch, that the team will never be good again.”
He ruminated, “I went back and really tried to figure out what happened. I think the downfall of the X season lies much earlier, five years earlier, in ’83. We had the top-recruited class in the nation, for the first time ever.” Dan means that his team had gone out and found the best high school wrestlers in the country. That’s what having a legendary coach will do—it will bring the best young wrestlers, who will sacrifice a lot just to be in the room with Dan Gable.
“Well, those guys, they could carry us through with talent. And the work level fell off. And I fell for that. I was scared of doing something wrong. And the next year, we didn’t have quite the same class, but it was still very good. Now, up until ’87 we were still winning, but they weren’t the extremists. Now, they worked hard, but not to the level that raises everyone up. Not to the level that affects the people below them.
“It comes back to dealing with adversity. Too much adversity, too much losing, and it becomes the ‘same old same old.’ It becomes a habit—it’s not devastating. But if you only lose once in a while, at rare CRUCIAL times, you can build to a much higher level. You can use that as fuel.” Dan was forced to relearn what his harsh mistress, greatness, demanded.
“My best wrestlers, most of them, were winning before they came here. They might not know any holds, or have a lot of skill, but they’d go all out, beat somebody up and run them into the ground. They knew how to win before they knew how to wrestle. That’s the critical thing. And then we take them and mold them and teach them, and in a few years they’re amazing. It’s easier to teach the skills than the mentality.”
I asked Dan if there was any way to teach the mentality—it’s part of the mystery that Tom Brands was alluding to. Dan nods, that’s the point. “I don’t give up on kids that don’t have it, but I have them surrounded by kids who DO have it. Without examples, it won’t happen. And there’s not many out there who have it. A lot of them have the science, but only a few have the mentality. I would count five or six kids in all my years coaching that really fall into that mentality or character. But they influence others. They win matches before they get on the mat. And what’s really good is when the whole team gets labeled that way.” They start to see where the standard is, and those below rise to meet it and are vastly improved even if they don’t get all the way there.
“We’ve had that as a team, when we’d win the meet before the meet. I can’t ever tell you that all ten athletes were all that. Of the ten maybe four or five would really have that mentality. And that’s unusual. Usually it’s one or two that can really bring that extreme-level influence. These guys who just know how to win.”
“Would you call that the killer instinct?” I ask. He nods.
“Killer instinct, a little bit. You can’t make up for time lost. If you miss a practice it’s gone. But I do think—one of these guys that I’m talking about—CAN, because of the LEVEL OF EFFORT AND INTENSITY THAT THEY CAN ACTUALLY PUT INTO A SINGLE PRACTICE!” his voice has grown again, almost to shouting. Then he subsides and continues in a normal voice.
“They can get so much out of themselves in a practice, they’ll make up that lost time. The effort that’s coming out of their body is so great, they’re at such a level. I had a kid who could make up a week in one practice. He could make it up, very few can do it, and that’s that mentality that I’m talking about.”
Dan goes thoughtful again, musing out loud. “Is it just the body? But I look at those guys that I’m talking about, and not all of them had that incredible physical gift. At least two that I can think of are doing what I’m talking about, weren’t physical specimens—which takes it down to one area—between the ears.”
That’s what I’m after, and I pursue it. But Dan won’t or can’t elaborate. You just have to keep your eyes open and look for it. “Because I’m like that, maybe I can pick it out easier. But it’s not an easy thing to recognize. In our sport, for somebody just to make it through a difficult practice is pretty extreme for other people to imagine. But then you have those few guys who are really unique this way. It’s impossible for people to understand them. People think that they’re working hard, and they are, but there are other levels. You’ve got to have all the support, and the environment, and you have to have an imagination that’s unreal.”
I was reminded of the stories of Dan’s childhood, where he would pretend to be a famous ballplayer and talk about how “real” it felt to him. Imagination is a crucial component, oft overlooked. If you can’t imagine running a four-minute mile, how can you ever run it? Gandhi said, “Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability.”
Dan continued, “People don’t want to work hard. They want to get to the top without really paying the price. I just read a story where they interviewed these people who wanted to be great, and the question was: If you could go to the Olympics, be guaranteed a gold medal and then die two years later, would you do it? And fifty percent answered yes!”
Dan is disgusted, and incredulous. For so many reasons. He goes into a hypothetical, which takes on the air of a farce.
“If I was going to wrestle in the finals of the Olympics against a Russian, which I did, and if I knew he had been trained specifically to beat me, which he had—but then if I knew the guy was on steroids, that would HELP me. Whereas some might think ‘oh, he’s cheating’ or he’s got an unfair advantage, for me you didn’t pay the price. You’re not as committed as I am. It’ll tear him apart. He may be strong, but all I have to do during that nine minutes of wrestling is loosen one single wire in his brain, make him do something that isn’t perfect, and he’ll fall apart. That’s what I feel.
“Breaking somebody is the goal. You get him to quit trying to win, he tries to survive. It’s there a lot, but often people don’t see it. You have to have done it quite a few times or you’ll miss the key point, because he can come back,” Dan warns me. “Once he shows signs of breaking, if you don’t take advantage, there’s a chance of him coming back. So keep pressure on at all times.”
Then Dan laughs a little. “But there’s a catch-22. It’s not as black and white as black and white. Sometimes you shouldn’t attack to win, and it’s hard to have both instincts. For the Owings match, I couldn’t have understood it without going through it. But then I had the instinct in the Olympics. And I used it to eliminate the chance of losing, pretty much.”
The Gable museum had a viewing room where an ESPN special on Gable was shown. It was a basic overview. His triumphs were documented, his tragedies more so. There was a fascinating blurb by some talking head, saying, “As Dan got more famous, as he became known to more and more people, his focus was all the time becoming narrower, more purely about wrestling.” Gable had won gold at the ’72 Olympics in Munich, without a single point scored against him, one of the dominant performances in sporting h
istory. Three days later, Munich descended into tragedy, with terrorist attacks, the hostage crisis, and the eventual deaths of the Israeli athletes. When Gable got off the plane back in the United States, a reporter shoved a camera in his face and asked him about the atmosphere in Munich. Dan responded lightly, that the weather was about the same as it was here. He was embarrassed when he realized his mistake, but Dan Gable’s world had shrunk to himself and wrestling, to the head of pin.
THE CHOIRBOY
Freddie Roach.
© Miguel Salazar
What usually wins fights is not so much style as content.
—A. J. Liebling
Wild Card Gym is on the corner of Vine and Santa Monica, in a part of Hollywood that has resisted gentrification; it’s still a rough neighborhood, at least at night. Although Freddie Roach, the owner, recently expanded, the gym is small for its massive reputation. During midday it’s crowded to the point where you’re actually stepping on people’s toes. Freddie is there almost every day, unless called away to help some world-famous fighter figure out his next opponent.
Freddie Roach is a boxing trainer, a Hall of Famer, and Trainer of the Year in 2003, 2006, 2007, and 2008. He’s coached a “who’s who” of boxers in his career, from Manny Pacquiao and James Toney to Mike Tyson. Oscar de la Hoya hired him to train for Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the hardest-hyped “superfight” in the past ten years. Freddie’s considered one of the two or three best trainers in boxing and is frequently called in to troubleshoot career-defining fights for big-name fighters. He’s a superstar. The walls of Wild Card Gym are covered with old fight posters and pictures of Freddie and his brother with champions, ex-champions, and celebrities. The timer dings and holds sway, marching through the day, like a flashing red-eyed idol.
A boxing trainer’s link to his fighter is more intense, more mutually dependent, than any other coaching relationship in sports. It is private, one on one, the trainer focused with his whole being on the fighter. It’s a long relationship, built over years, thousands of hours in the gym, day in and day out. Trainer and fighter are closer than family, and there are many father-son teams out there. The fighter is something of an extension of the trainer; often trainers will use the royal “we” as in “when we had to fight so-and-so,” but only the fighter is in the ring. This is a relationship under dire stress. The consequences are severe, money is short. This is a hurt business.
Freddie Roach isn’t a big guy, only five-foot-five with short, Irish red hair, myopic-thick glasses, and pale, freckled skin. His face is familiar from the TV, in the corner for all kinds of fighters. He had the fighting nickname the “Choirboy” for his boyish look (as well as “La Cucaracha,” for the obvious reason). He’s one of the most unassuming men you’ve ever met, although his physical presence has an awareness to it that palpably extends outward. That awareness he has makes you pay attention—quiet and powerful. You get the feeling he sees everything in the gym, even when his back is turned. Even if you didn’t know who he was, you’d know he was somebody.
Freddie was featured heavily on HBO’s dramatic series 24/7 for the buildup to Mayweather/de la Hoya fight, and on the show he admitted publicly to having Parkinson’s brought on by boxing. Sometimes he stands with his hands stuffed under his armpits to keep them from shaking. But when he climbs into the ring to work mitts with a fighter all weakness falls away. He moves like a young man, crisp and sure. And he can catch. When he hit mitts with Mike Tyson, somebody asked, “Is that Bruce Lee in there with Mike?”
Freddie has been to the wars, without a doubt. As a fighter, he was known for his reckless style—he would take a few hits to give one. He was good enough to make it to the top, where he lost big fights to world champions; he was a very good fighter but not a great one. Perhaps Freddie mumbles more than he might otherwise, but he’s not punchy. His mind and his intellect are deep, his eyes quiet and shielded behind his glasses. You get the feeling Freddie knows all kinds of things. Like any good boxing trainer—anybody who is good at making a living building fighters—he can look right through your exterior and see what’s happening inside.
Freddie sits at the front desk and watches his domain with a wary eye, but he’s eminently approachable, with the usual coterie of fighters and friends lounging, soaking up the presence of one of boxing’s greats. He enjoys himself, enjoys his day, and chats with all kinds, from this Russian trainer with his eastern bloc protégé to that crusty old boxing writer. For a while I lived ten minutes from Wild Card and I would hit mitts with his brother, Pepper, and then sometimes catch Freddie for a few minutes to talk. I gave him a copy of my first book and told him about this project. I had boxed under Tommy Rawson at Harvard, and Tommy had refereed a lot of Freddie’s fights. We had the Massachusetts connection and I milked it. Massholes recognize each other, something about those grim New England winters, the endless slush of spring.
Pepper is Freddie gone awry. The brothers grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, and were boxing from childhood. Freddie says Pepper was the really talented one—people thought he was going to be the next Willie Pep. Willie was one of the greatest pure boxers ever—he famously won a round without throwing a punch, just with his grace of movement and skill. Pushed hard by their father (himself a seasoned pro), they both boxed from six years old, and they fought and won Golden Gloves and amateur competitions. But then the older brother, Pepper, fell into drugs and crime and his career derailed.
Pepper himself snorts at Freddie’s “Willie Pep” comparison, and says, “I was just older than Freddie, so he looked up to me. Freddie was always the one.”
Freddie is a firm believer in the old saw, “Fighters are born not made,” because as a former fighter he knows the multitude of variables that go into making a world champion. They are infinite. If you start trying to make a world champion from scratch, you’re doomed to failure. First of all, you need the right athlete. He’s gotta be tough, strong, fast. You need a guy who’s showing promise, who has come far down the path of commitment, and you help him proceed. Nobody makes a world champion from nothing; he creates himself under the trainer’s shaping eye—over the long years, staying with the plan, and fighting through the pain and uncertainty. He has to maintain the dream. “They’re special people,” Freddie would say again and again, often with a rueful, sideways grin, his secret smile of amusement. “If I didn’t get talented guys, I wouldn’t be a good trainer.” It’s not just the athleticism, the speed and the power, but that has to be a part of it. Nobody becomes a world champion who isn’t naturally stronger and faster than other men. But then there comes the dedication, the ability to learn and listen, the fire to get in the ring and work and get up and run every morning. And it’s not six months, or even a year; anyone can do that. It’s five years, it’s eight years, ten years. That’s some serious fuel. The monastic lifestyle, “clean living” has to be a choice.
Freddie’s an adult; he’s not a father to his fighters. He’s not going to make someone do all these things, but he’ll help someone who’s come this far. He trains men, not boys. He’ll allow prima donnas and bear with craziness, because that’s part and parcel of being a “special person.” Big-time fighters are usually a little nuts, their place in society somewhat unknowable, and Freddie knows they have to be, to survive in this brutal business.
Freddie’s not going to try and change most fighters from the ground up; he’s just another fighter, primarily. He’s going to help you see some things you might not have seen, to fine tune some things that will work. With the notable exception of Manny Pacquiao, a tough explosive fighter whom Freddie took and nurtured for a long time and turned into a world-beating technician.
Freddie and Teddy Atlas had a philosophical difference over the training of Michael Moorer. Moorer, who features prominently in Atlas, Teddy’s autobiography, is a fascinating example of an extremely talented fighter, who won two world championships but at times seemed to hate boxing. Moorer came up under the intense tutelage of another legend, Emanuel
Steward, with whom he had a father-son bond. At light-heavy, 175 pounds, Moorer went on a run that has never been duplicated—22-0 with twenty-two knockouts. With nothing to prove at light-heavy, and sick of starving himself, Moorer went after the bigger money, at heavyweight. Moorer grew out of his familial relationship with Steward, and then Teddy Atlas was a good fit. Still, Moorer would have days when he didn’t want to train. He would sulk and make life hard for everybody around him. “I was an asshole, straight up,” Moorer said when I asked him about it. And he laughed. “I was doing things in order to keep my toughness. That’s not me, that’s the game I was in.”
When I met Michael he was working with Freddie as a trainer and teacher, around Wild Card, still touching the game that defined him. To me, he seemed like a big black boulder, slope shouldered, powerful, melancholy perhaps, reserved, almost baby-faced. His presence, his handshake, made me think of Mike Tyson’s challenge to a reporter who was pestering him, “You wouldn’t last two minutes in my world.” I wouldn’t last two minutes in Moorer’s world. He felt like a survivor from another time, a harsher world, with his iron grip and scarred hands, arms, face. He was quiet, polite, with the mildness of a man who has done what he set out to do.
Atlas describes in great detail the intricate head games that he played with Moorer to get him to train and fight the right way, and they won a world title together—an impressive achievement, and something Freddie speaks of very respectfully. The heavyweight strap is a serious thing. But later, Michael Moorer left Teddy and went over to Freddie Roach. Freddie was quoted as saying, “I let Michael be Michael,” and Teddy responds in his book that, “The whole point was not to let Michael be Michael.” It reflects their stylistic differences, their backgrounds. Atlas used to train kids, build fighters, shape young men. Moorer even says that Teddy taught him a lot about being a man. Freddie treats his fighters like professionals.
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