John Smith is one of the greatest wrestlers of all time. In his time he managed to win two olympic gold medals in freestyle wrestling (upto 62kg category) and several World Championships and Pan American Games. He is the only american wrestler to win gold medals at two non boycotted Olympic games.
He was brought up in Oklahoma and wrestled throughout highschool. He then went on to wrestle for Oklahoma State University with a record of 154-7-2.
Smith began coaching as far back as 1991 with a lot of success, particularly worth mentioning are his 5 NCAA wrestling team titles one in 1994 and the rest from 2003 to 2006.
All this dedication to wrestling ended up facilitating his first ever presence at a brazilian jiu jitsu class some time in the past.
He ended up stopping by at Edge Hoboken on a lesson thought by former World Series of Fighting middleweight champ David Branch.
John Smith can now be quoted with saying:
“I noticed how conditioned your forearms have to be. There’s a lot of grabbing and flexing. I like the elevators. I think in wrestling in general we’ve lost last 10, 15, 20 years those elevators. Exciting stuff.”
While his presence at a grappling class might not amount to much it’s fascinating to consider that a decade or two ago the thought never would’ve crossed his mind. This is how far the expansion of BJJ has reached.
John Smith also had the pleasure of coaching many names you might recognize. Among them Daniel Cormier, Johny Hendricks and Randy Couture.
