A Fan's View of Dave Schultz

I've been a big fan of Dave Schultz, the great college and free style wrestler, ever since I read an article in Denny Diehl's National Mat News in the late fall of 1980 about Dave. Denny's article highlighted Dave's return to the national collegiate wrestling scene. He'd been gone for a while, leaving Oklahoma State, where in the 1977-1978 season he'd been named NCAA freshman wrestler of the year, wrestling mostly at 158 pounds, and transferring to UCLA to join his younger brother Mark. Dave had to sit out a year after this transfer only to have the Bruins drop wrestling after his "sit out" year. So Dave, with brother Mark in tow, went back to the big time with the two of them ending up at Oklahoma, arch rival of the Okie State Cowboys where Dave had started his college wrestling career.

Before I go any further with this, for the benefit of anyone who doesn't know about it, Dave was murdered in 1996 at the age of 36 by his "benefactor" at the Foxcatcher Wrestling Club near Philadelphia, John Dupont, a mentally disturbed individual who had lots of Dupont money.

Dave's death occurred after a great wrestling career in both free style and college wrestling but way, way too early in life for a person as beautiful as Dave was. I use the term beautiful because everything I've ever read about Dave that was said before and after his death by people who really knew him painted a picture of him as a loving husband, father, son, brother, friend and teacher of wrestling fundmentals.

Denny Diehl's National Mat News article that highlighted Dave's return to the college scene concentrated on the fact that at the Bedlam Series wrestling match between OSU and OU that Dave had handily beaten the returning NCAA champ at 158 pounds Ricky Stewart by a score of 10-3. Ironically, as I found out from his brother Mark about a month ago, from a posting on a forum that Mark is currently engaged in posting to, that Stewart, I'm sure unwittingly, played a part in Dave's leaving OSU. According to one of Mark Schultz's posts, Dave had been adament with his OSU coach, Tommy Chesbro, that he wanted to wrestle at 158 pounds in his sophomore year at OSU. Chesbro had other ideas. His plan was to use redshirt freshman Ricky Stewart at 158 pounds and move Dave to 150 pounds, a weight that Dave was not nearly as comfortable with.

As a result, according to Mark Schultz, in one of his forum postings, Dave told Mark to stay away from OSU, which was recruiting Mark and Dave himself left the Cowboy wrestling team, joining his brother at UCLA. Then after sitting out two years and losing a year of elegibility due to two transfers Dave, as well as Mark were now at Oklahoma. This was most certainly OSU's loss since the presence of the Schultz brothers, in addition to Okie State's already strong lineup would have presented a much more difficult team for Dan Gable's "Stormtroopers" to contend with for the NCAA team crown in the time period 1979-1982. Dave was already one of the very best wrestler's in the country and Mark would go on to be a three time NCAA champion.

I found a benchmark of how good Dave was as a freshman just the other night when I found a terrific web site where I could examine his freshman year record in which he went 30-4-1 while wrestling at 158 pounds for all his dual matches except one. The four losses that he incurred were to two time (soon to be three time within several months) NCAA chanp Lee Kemp by a score of 3-1 at 158 pounds, 1979's 158 pound champ Kelly Ward 2-0, again at 158 pounds and then to Joe Zuspann 9-4 in the Big 8 championships where he'd dropped to 150 pounds and finally to the great Mark Churella at 150 pounds in the NCAA semi-finals, a match in which Dave almost pinned the formidable Michigan star Churella in a barnburner of a match finally won by Churella 13-10. Dave then beat Zuspann in a consolation match to garner third place at 150 pounds, a weight he was not as well suited to as he was to 158 pounds.

Ironically I was in the audience at the University of Maryland's Cole Field house when Dave wrestled Churella but had no idea who either of them were until I saw that Churella had won the NCAA crown when The National Mat News came out. Dave didn't show up on my radar until he returned to the collegiate mat scene at Oklahoma and handily took down Stewart in the first Bedlam Series match of that year.

Denny Diehl was so effusive in his praise of Dave after the Stewart match that, although I was a big Iowa fan, Dave became the individual who seemed to me to be the best wrestler in the nation that year and one who became my individual favorite after I read Diehl's interesting article. Dave was on his way to proving how very good he was by ringing up a 29-0 regular season record prior to entering the NCAA tournament. Along the way he stuffed up and coming superstar Mike Sheets of OSU 20-4 in the second Bedlam Series match that year before beating Stewart again 4-2 to win the Big 8 championship.

Dave then bullied his way to the NCAA semifinals where he had a very close match with Perry Shea, winning 6-5, setting up his NCAA finals match with Ricky Stewart.

Dave was leading Stewart 3-1 near the end of the second period of the match when he went for a takedown and Stewart hit Dave with his trademark move a fireman's carry with which he was able to take Dave down and pin him. When I read about it the next day in the newspaper, I was really crushed. How could "The Chairman of the Board" as the media was referring to Dave that year, have been pinned by someone he'd owned all year long?

Recently I've read, somewhere on the internet, that Dave remarked to his coach Stan Abel, after the 1981 finals loss to Stewart, that, "I should have listened to you" referring I guess to Abel's warning about Stewart's fireman's carry.

I've often wondered how Dave felt about losing that match to Stewart. My guess is that he took it in stride since he had always been interested more in international freestyle wrestling than in the folkstyle used in collegiate wrestling. He certainly came back with a vengeance the next year, winning the the NCAA championship the next year in a close match over the very talented OSU sophomore Mike Sheets (who was to go 74-0 in his last two years of collegiate wrestling).

Another thing that makes me think that Dave handled the loss to Ricky Stewart pretty well is that last year I found a picture on the internet that showed Dave and the Oklahoma heavyweight, Steve (Dr. Death) Williams hoisting Mark Schultz up after he won his first NCAA championship (at 167 pounds) about 15 minutes after Dave had lost to Stewart, and Dave looks so happy in that picture that it's hard to believe that that loss to Stewart bothered him that much.

I followed Dave closely through The National Mat News and then Amatuer Wrestling News as he won the 1982 NCAA championship at 167 pounds, the World Freestyle Wrestling Championship at 163 pounds in 1983, Amateur Wrestling News Man of the Year for 1983, the 1984 Olympic Gold Medal at 163 pounds, the Gold Medal in the prestigious Tbilisi Tournament in Russia in 1984 and 1991, (Dave being the only American to win this tournament twice) and 5 World Cup Gold Medals.

The guy was great to root for if you're a wrestling fan but just recently I've run across articles on the internet and Youtube interviews and tributes to Dave that made me realize that he was so much more well respected within the wrestling community than I ever thought he was and I was quite impressed with Dave and his standing within the wrestling community before I learned any of this.

Of interest are some of the things his brother Mark has to say about him. If you're interested in some of Mark's comments about Dave I recommend that you Google "Ask Mark Schultz Anything" to see what his "little brother" has to say about Dave in a forum sponsered by thematforums.com.

Of special interest to Dave Schultz fans is an article from Sports Illustrated that is located in this same forum.

I guess I'll never truly get by Dave losing to Ricky Stewart in the 1981 NCAA finals but Dave sure did.

Take care. :-)