Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Columnist Ron Kantowski: Wrestlers welcome on Las Vegas mat

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.

If you're going out to the U.S. National Wrestling Championships at the Las Vegas Convention Center this weekend, don't make the same mistake I did and take a right turn upon entering the north exhibit hall.

If you do that, you'll find yourself in the middle of Car Care World Expo, and although the first thing you'll see will look a lot like wrestling, it's probably just a Buick salesman trying to get to know his secretary a little better.

The real deal is two doors down on the left. More than 2,000 competitors representing 46 states will join Olympic luminaries such as Kerry McCoy, Cael Sanderson, Toccara Montgomery, Dremiel Byers and Rulon Gardner for the amateur version of Wrestlemania, which runs through Saturday night.

The big boys with the stars and stripes on their uniforms spent much of Thursday weighing in and munching power bars, but there still was plenty of action as the Veteran and Western Junior Regional Freestyle wrestlers hit the mats.

And boy, did they ever hit a lot of mats. There are 20 official ones and even a handful of unofficial mats off to the side, on which I saw one guy trying to get his date (I assume) into near fall position.

Everywhere you looked, there were two guys in singlets groping and grappling and rolling around. It had to be the most body contact witnessed under one roof since Mike Price went on his last recruiting trip for Alabama.

While I'm sure there was a lot of technical stuff going on, I think you have to be from Iowa or Oklahoma to understand it. Until I was 16, when one of my buddies who couldn't shoot baskets (we even checked his birth certificate to verify he was born in Indiana) went out for the wrestling team, my concept of the sport was based on Moose Cholak, Dick The Bruiser, Baron von Raschke and whatever foreign objects they could smuggle into their trunks.

I promise, that will be the one and only reference to that kind of wrestling in this column, although I did find it interesting that the referees in amateur wrestling still check the competitors for foreign objects before turning them loose.

But you don't have to be Greco or Roman to admire the strength and agility of the competitors. Everywhere you looked, there were bulging biceps and neck muscles wound like telephone cable. And no matter which way you turned, there was a guy who could kick your butt in about 5 seconds. It was like being in the men's room at halftime of a Raiders game.

So not knowing exactly what I was looking for or at, I decided on a new goal. I would spend the afternoon looking for a couple of wrestlers who didn't look so tough.

I had just about given up when the public address man announced that Joe Aiken and Sonny Boyd were squaring off in a veterans match on mat 4. Aiken is 63, Boyd 69. I made my way toward their mat, thinking I might challenge the loser.

That may have been the worst idea since somebody told Hulk -- er, Bruce Baumgartner -- that his mother wore Army boots.

Neither one of those guys sported an ounce of body fat, although Aiken, who won the match, confessed that he used to. He said his wife Carol is to cooking what The Rock -- er, Dan Gable -- is to wrestling.

Aiken, who said he was a mediocre wrestler at Division III Pacific Lutheran in the mid 1960s where each of his four sons wrestled and/or coached until the Lutes' program was pinned by Title IX, said he shed 65 pounds, going from 215 to his college wrestling weight of 150. He wanted to show the kids he coaches in a youth wrestling program in his hometown of Bremerton, Wash., what can be accomplished through hard work, will power and determination.

He described his daily workout, but to be honest, I got winded before I could write it all down.

"I'm a little guy," Aiken said, when asked what drew him to the sport. "Wrestling does not discriminate against height or weight or even gender."

Aiken also said there's something about the one-on-one nature of wrestling that attracts guys like a magnet.

"In football, if you make a mistake, there 10 other people who can help you cover it up," he said. "In baseball, there are eight other guys; in basketball, there are four. But if you make a mistake in a sport like wrestling or boxing or fencing or judo, it will cost you.

"It's just you and your opponent, and the Lord Almighty."

While wrestling will develop your biceps and quadriceps, Aiken said it also will strengthen the muscle between your ears. He said the mental toughness he developed through wresting has served him his entire life, from his days as an Airborne Ranger in Vietnam to his current job, working the shipyards in the environmental safety department for the Department of Defense.

"I work in compliance, to make sure that OSHA doesn't get involved," he said.

Of course, dealing with a guy like Aiken could be an occupational hazard onto itself.

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