Dan Gable on Losing His Final Match "I Needed That Loss"

What's your organ experience? Nobody thought I was going to lose, except for one guy. One guy actually said I can beat him, but he didn't tell me. He forgot to tell me. So I didn't take him for granted. I took him for granted. And so I always went through routines, warming up, getting ready, mentally. We weighed in five hours before a match. From then on, you ate and drank a little bit. And then focus, focus, rest, focus, focus. I was doing interviews with Wide World Sport right during the national finals. And I wasn't a talker. Like I could talk pretty good now because I learned to talk. But at that time, off the mat, I couldn't talk to anybody. And so when they put a mic in front of me and they wanted to know about, hey, can you just say this, say, hey, I'm Dan Gable. Come watch me next week on Wide World of Sport as I finished my career, 182 and 0. And I hadn't wrestled the match yet. And so I was supposed to say that. But you think I could say that? Hell no, I couldn't say that. I kept stuttering, not saying it. And they kept doing it. So finally, after about 15 takes, they wrote it out on big cards. And so I took about seven takes with that one. I think I got it done in about 22 takes. But then when I got it done, it wasn't good either. They just finally said, oh, that's good enough. Get out of here. So I turned. I'm on deck. I'm on deck. So they already went through the 118, 126, 134. I was 142 at that time. So 134 is just wrestling. And I always warmed up for a good 45 minutes to an hour. So I hit a quick warm up and went out in that match. And I didn't realize there was somebody that actually thought they could beat me. And even though before I always did the routine, I went through it. But I'll tell you what, you skip once, you're vulnerable. For the only time in my life that within a minute into the match, I could hear the crowd. A minute into the match, I could feel how I felt. And I was feeling tired and weak. I mean, I never knew how you felt in a wrestling match until the match was over. And once it was over, yeah, sometimes I felt good. But sometimes I felt weak and tired. But I didn't show it because I didn't think about it. I didn't know it. But the one time he didn't prepare and the guy thinking that he could go with you. And he could. You know, you take on everything. So you take on way more than just your opponent. And so I talked myself into wrestling after minute one. I kept saying, I got to keep going. I got to keep working hard. And so I got an early lead, just a quick first takedown. But I kept feeling how tired I was. And I kept hearing the crowd. Why do you think you were so tired? Because I didn't warm up. I was doing talking. I was not focusing on my match. Concentration. No warm up had that much of an effect on your conditioning. I used to be a pretty well, even today as you get older, you notice how if you don't warm up and you hit something really hard, you get exhausted. Now, it's probably kind of like that. Usually what I did for warm ups is probably within a half hour of my match. I would get match heartbeat rate up and go for three or four minutes that way. So not get real tired. But then after that, you'd probably have a little drink and get ready to go. What would you do for a warm up? You had a very specific routine? Pretty much. Pretty much, you know, stretching and jogging and then actually wrestling. Actually wrestling pretty hard. And to where you would actually sweating good. And then I actually got to the point where if I had a lot of time before my match, I would actually go take another shower. But usually when you were the fourth guy out or something, you just kind of stayed loose. But you didn't really. And then right before your match again, you might get your heart rate up again. Because your heart rate didn't really go down below 100 probably. And you need it in a wrestling match is probably going up to 170, 180, you know, stuff like that. But you wanted to have your heart rate up to your match pace heart rate for not seven or eight minutes because that you're going to be not going to recover quickly enough. You still be tired. You want to be tired. So you'd get it up there and spike it up and down for two or three minutes and hitting some really good execution of wrestling holds. We do hand fighting, a lot of hand fighting, and that hand fighting can really can get that heart rate up and pushing and shoving and hitting some live techniques where the guy was letting you do it. But you're doing it at live pace and you do some sprints and do some tumbling gymnastics, tumbling. But in this match, no warm up at all. When I got done with the 20 second take of the of the of the and I was the I had that match to warm up. So I probably had 10 minutes instead of my normal 45 minutes or so. But I thought I was still ready. And but it was something out of my control, actually. And it took took me over. But I did talk my way into because I got ahead. But then I got real far behind. I mean, I was behind by six points. And then I got ahead by two or three points. And that was right towards the end of the match. And then there was a flurry. Could have went either way. But the referee went his way. And that's the way it is. I mean, it's just it's just that's called. Does that haunt you to this day? Oh, of course it haunts me. But guess what? I needed that loss. I really did. That loss took me to unbelievable heights that I would have never had without that loss. What's unbelievable is if you ask the guy that beat me, Larry Oings, he said, if I had to do it over again, I might have lost that match on purpose or not even on purpose, just because I didn't know how to handle it. I wanted to be an Olympic champion. I wanted to be a world champion. But when I won that match, there was so much hype. I didn't know how to handle it. He said he even broke up my marriage. He was married again. That's what he claimed. Spotify is absolutely free. You don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes. You just need to search for the JRE on your Spotify app. Go to Spotify now to get this full episode of the Joe Rogan experience.