did anyone else here wrestle in the 80s in high school? Football was a joke by comparison. Hard stuff. Will never forget the lessons and work.
Just stumbled back across this movie on YT. my god, what memories of getting jacked up watching this before the season or a big meet. kids are so weak now. good flick for anyone interested in traveling down memory road of a better time in the 80s.
one of the greatest movies ever made
Tyde, I love that actor in your clip, J.C. Quinn. He plays a good working-class avuncular alcoholic mentor type. I am a big fan of Vision Quest. It's an inspiring 80s sports movie with a great soundtrack. I like this opening sequence, with the voice-over "This is the year I make my mark."
Great flick. Wrestling, dad moves a chick in to statutory rape you. Linda Fiorentino. She was hot in Vision Quest, but Last Seduction, just wow.
I didn’t wrestle. Started it a few times, but I was never an indoor sport kid. Running around that mat in heated wrestling room. Spitting in cups. I liked to party too much.
I’ve been immersed in that world for last five years with girls kids. Takes incredible discipline, and it’s religion in PA. If you’re the best in PA, it’s fairly likely you’re the best in the country.
You’re certainly amongst the best. Just constant trips all over, then to Tulsa or Iowa. Never anywhere desirable. All for a sport that, at best, you might get a scholarship from and a coaching job some day if you reach the top. Really have to love it.
The parents suck for the most part. Just a lot dumb people living vicariously through their kids. That’s true of all the sports I played also, but when you’re putting that much time and money into an under-appreciated sport, they are really off the hook. Fights at hotels at every other tourney. The kids wrestle hard and then are friends immediately after. The parents are trash.
Linda was also hot as hell is another 80’s forgettable movie called “Gotcha” starring Anthony Edwards.
Originally Posted by The Boz
wow I forgot all about Gotcha that was a good movie too
Can we just reverse the clock about 30 years and get Hollywood back the basics when movies weren’t all CGI and woke bullshit ?
that would be just great
hard to believe we’ve fallen so far so fast
I can’t even remember the last time I went to the theater to see a new release
I never even knew a wrestler until I was an adult. A fellow hockey parent and former college wrestler became a pal of mine. We spent endless hours over the years sitting in rinks watching our kids practice and swapping lies.
This guy wrestled HWT class in college on scholarship. Before the 90’s you had your weight classes but then there was unlimited heavyweight. My buddy is a scary big boy.
I can tell wrestling made him what he is today. The wrestling training stories are incredible. He has a discipline and matter-of-factness that makes for a unique guy. He shies away from nothing that is hard. It’s like he doesn’t feel pain. Reminds me of the character in the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
He marries a little woman. She was a jock too but is 5’7” max. Their offspring were small. Don’t marry a little girl I always told my son.
Wrestler’s kid was phenomenal on the ice. The best kid year after year. That fucking kid worked hard too. How much was nature vs nurture is hard to say but his father was no nonsense and that family breathed competition.
The wrestler bought a place near us on the lake. I will get a phone call telling me he will be at my dock at 4:45am to go water skiing. “Oh, come on”, I think to myself. Can’t show weakness. Fun to punish my son though. Wrestler has been up since 3am for this. The lake is mirror smooth in the early hours before the recreational traffic.
I often can’t sleep the night before either. It’s gonna be intense. I’m not that good. He has a race ski boat. These things are purpose built. Nothing casual here. His little wife is a phenomenal water skier. Watching the huge ex wrestler on skis is wild too. So fucking strong.
We played hockey on backyard rinks with the kids and he could have ended my life with just one check.
Never saw the movies and they have never come up in conversation but I will now.
Madonna before she was a huge star in this one too.
Great movie. Lunatic Fringe is a great song.
the guy sounds like a man's man. the kind of man we all want as a friend. i'm unsurprised he gravitated to you.
Technically Heavyweight in Wrestling was never truly unlimited the limit was 285 at least when I did it. What's scary is they have a heavyweight class for girls now and its a whopping 235. Yikes those chicks must be about the size of Piper Niven or just a bit smaller then that gal in WWE in Nia Jaxx
The whole soundtrack is great, though I think they play the Madonna song 3 times.
Man has NIL changed wrestling.
https://twitter.com/twt/status/1886438162630590606
I have known this kid and his family for about 6 or 7 years now traveling to all these PA wrestling tournaments. My girlfriend’s kids train and camp with them. From Johnstown area. Dad coaches Bishop McCourt. Has two sons. Nice guy. Have always liked him. The junior is currently the top ranked recruit in the country. He also has the second ranked recruit in the country on his team. Kid is basically unbeatable unless he’s wrestling different weight in some weird national or international. I think his record in high school is like 111-0 in PA. He wrestles all over the world at this point.
In PA, pretty much every clinic you are getting coached by a former Olympian or guy who won some national championship at some point. I’ve hung out with these dudes and been to their homes, but they coached at a high school, or college, usually had their clinics where they make money, but it’s a niche sport and they had lives of guys who made $150k a year. I mean I don’t know exactly, but you can ballpark it, and before your ceiling was basically wrestling coach at a college if you were Olympic level. I used to explain this to my girlfriend. Listen, it’s so time consuming and expensive with all the travel and the upside is basically if you are among the worlds best, you might make a 3rd year college graduate salary in tech world.
What a difference a few years makes. Anyone ever around wrestling knows its niche, but where it’s big, it’s religion. And in PA, it’s truly religion.
Anyway, this coach had two kids on his team who were ranked 1 and 2 recruits for 2026. You aren’t allowed to commit until completion of junior year. His son Bo was the top recruit in the country and signed the largest NIL for wrestling ever rumored to be around $5 million with Iowa a few weeks back. OK State was offering more than that. The most. That I know.
I also know he already has 4 NIL deals while in high school where he’s making quite a bit. He’s one of first kids to take the marketing part seriously and Iowa is spending like half their NIL money on him as they view it as a draw to others. The other kid on team signed with OK State. I guess the CEO of Paycom, a billionaire, is a former college wrestler and loves the sport and is spreading money all over for all for Oklahoma schools. But what a different world since I was saying, what’s the upside?
The Penn State people are hating this as half or more of the best wrestlers in the country are from PA and Penn State is at the top of college wrestling winning like 11 of last 13 titles, but now going to Penn State isn’t an auto decision for PA kids. Spencer Lee the silver medalist last Olympics and couple time world champ is close with the kid and family and he went Pa to Iowa, so that trumped the pull of Penn State in addition to the $.
Now if these kids could just get like 2 extra years of eligibility like during Covid. They are never going to want to leave college as anything beyond will be significant pay drop. Hell they are making what the stars of fake wrestling in WWE make.
These kids are already insanely disciplined and the parents straight nuts when there wasn’t any money in it. I can’t imagine going forward. Loudon Swain was born too early.
Not a huge fan of NIL in sports where you’ll make $100 million anyway if you’re great and turn pro, but these kids toiling in obscurity and up doing pushups at 5 AM on the weekend and spitting in cups to make weight, nice to see them get paid.
didn't cut enough weight before tournament. needed 2 more pounds. thought i had nothing left to give. i was wrong. coach made me go into shower room - huge facility- and cut most of them on both sides on hot water for steam, then put me in garbage bags and i jumped rope in the midst of it all until i made it.
later in season- coach was also my math teacher that year. unbeknownst to me i had been mentally absent for a couple of days in class, next thing i know my mom showed up at school late morning with a steak and heresy kisses. he had called her and told her i needed sustenance. tasted as good as anything ever had up until that point. odd story i have never forgotten. still was able to make weight that week, it had no effect.
the miles we had to run in the hallways in those wrestling shoes which had zero support ruined my shins, even to this day.
could go on and on. shit was hard. real hard. made playing /practicing football easy. it's a one on one sport. it's just you.
Whole sport is insane. Many a times the main interstates will be shut down for winter storm and even the pro sports cancelled a few times because of driving conditions and the wrestling tournaments never cancel. Never. It would be like giving in to weakness to cancel.
I recall another time, not bad weather, but I left her place at like 6:05Pm and my GPS said arrival 7:10 PM. I need to be there by 7pm. It is hard to make up 10 minutes in an hour especially when GPS is already figuring 70mph. I had like six little kids in my back seat from their team. Like 4 still overweight, but if they don't get there by 7 and weigh in, they will have to in morning and be so weak they'll be useless. They weigh in that night, they can eat and be 10lbs heavier by next day.
Trying to get six kids and all their shit together, you can be ready to go and you'll still be running late. So I have heat on highest setting, driving straight north at 110mph with six kids in the backseat, 4 sucking on jolly ranchers to spit so they can get down because they have no saliva left at this point. Pure insanity.
My car had so much heat in it I probably lost 5lbs on drive and I am driving 110 and wiping my windshield with my left arm as I steer because it's like a sauna. I am thinking this is the dumbest shit I have ever done in a life where I have done a lot of dumb shit. I slide off road and we are all dead. But this is wrestling in PA. Not a single parent would be mad at me driving 110 with poor visibility. They would only be mad I didn't drive 125 if we missed it. It is so nuts there with wrestling if a cop pulled me over and I said I was trying to make a wrestling weigh in, I think it would be akin to your wife being in labor where he'd say, "oh well, that is perfectly reasonable, let me give you an escort.'
After that weekend I just dropped car off to be detailed as my car stunk, had jolly ranchers stuck to shit all over my back seat and I wasn't about to clean any of it. I am incredibly impressed by the wrestlers and love the 5 minutes of wrestling in between the 2 hour wait until the next match during all these tourneys, but I truly hate youth wrestling. It is miserable. Now that they are moving up into HS it's much better. Most tournaments are in civilization and a lot of duals, but it is truly mind-blowing how fucked up normal is in that wrestling world. You get a bunch of those elite kids though, I think most would breeze through special ops training in the military. They don't gas. They don't get shook. They'll pop 50 pullups and 200 pushups after days of 800 calories, no problem. Running and shit, forget it. Just the most disciplined athletes I have ever seen when you add in that they are doing all of it on calorie deficit.
I recall reading this but missed this part. Someday I will have a beer with you and Druff. Or at least you, Druff will have a soda. But I sure as fuck won't ever take a pic with either of you given I am 5'11 and you're calling a 5'7 girls petite. That is a fairly above average tall girl in my world. My ex wife was 5'7 and in heels, I barely had her by an inch. Druff already looks like a wookie in his pics with anyone. I am frightened how tall your people are. I would look 5'2 in a pic with you two.
Now it all makes sense, pretty sure u all watched these gay wrestling matches right ? this is why this forum turned out like this hahaha !!
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