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THE TRIALS... 1988
Before the Trials I went to see Rick Tucci, who I felt was the best of our officials. I told Tucci that I wanted a fair shake in my matches. I also told myself that I had to dominate Schultz, so that no bad call could swing the match.
– KENNY MONDAY
could workout and could compete for the Sunkist Kids club. So, I moved to Arizona and began working under Bobby. Fortunately, Eddie Urbano was there and he was a good, tough workout partner for me. I entered the ’84 Trials but did not do well. I tried to get down to 149.5, but that was too hard for me to make, so the day before the tournament started I decided to go 163. I was really too small for 163. I remember losing to Mike DeAnna and finishing 5th. In ’84 I really wasn’t quite ready to compete against the elite guys. The transition from college to international wrestling is huge. It takes a different strategy, different training, a different mind-set. It took me three years to make that transition. For me the ’84 Trials were a great learning experience – I watched the top guys be ‘The Man’; that was exciting and motivating. I knew then I would be ‘The Man’ in 1988 to represent the United States in the Olympics. Things started to fizzle out for me in Arizona. Although I built a very good relationship with the Sunkist Kids leader, Art Martori, I was second fiddle behind Dave Schultz at 163 for the Sunkist team. I wasn’t making the progress I thought I should have been making. Joe Seay found an opportunity for me to return to Stillwater as part of the OSU staff in 1986. I took it and we started building up an awesome wrestling environment there with myself, Mike Sheets, John Smith, and others. Schultz left Sunkist to start working with John duPont at Foxcatcher, so Martori said that even though I was living in Oklahoma, he’d still sponsor me on the Sunkist team. I started training really hard and knew that Carr and Schultz were the guys I had to beat. I lost to Nate at the ’86 National Open, but at 190 Wrestlers At The Trials
Kenny Monday became “The Man” when he beat Dave Schultz to make the Olympic Freestyle team at 163 Photograph by John Hoke, courtesy of Amateur Wrestling News
the World Team Trials in 1987, I beat him, 8-1. I wrestled Dave at those Trials and won a match against him for the first time, although he won two-out-of-three to make the World team. I was closing the gap on him. After those ’87 World Trials, I tried to talk Nate into going down to 149.5 for the Olympics. He said, ‘No, you go down’, and we went back and forth with a little trash talk. Even though we were fierce competitors we hung out together some. I told him that he could beat Andre Metzger at 149.5 and that way we could both make the Olympic team. A couple weeks later, Nate calls back and says, ‘Okay, I’ll go to 149.5.’ I got to go to Russia that year and compete at Tbilisi and some other duals. I went 10-0 against
THE TRIALS... 1988 ten different Russians. My breakout tournament was Tbilisi. And who was there watching me – Dave Schultz, who went along as a coach. I believe that after watching me beat the Russians, he knew he’d have a tough-time beating me. By the way, on the way to Russia, I stopped off in New York primarily to get some advice from Lee Kemp, who was living there at the time. We went to lunch together and I asked him about wrestling Schultz in ’84. I wanted to know where Lee’s head was back in ’84 when he was the established guy, just like Dave was now in ’88. Lee was kind and definitely gave me some valuable insights for my upcoming Trials wrestle-offs with Dave. My training in Stillwater leading up to the Trials was incredible. I think I was in the best training environment in the whole world. We had a great group of guys, shooting for the Olympics and helping each other. We were helping John get geared up to wrestle Randy Lewis and for Mike to face Mark Schultz, as well as my own competition with Dave. The Sunkist people were supporting us and giving us every opportunity to train the right way. It was a good deal all the way around. My biggest disappointment was that Sheets didn’t make the team. That broke my heart because Mike had helped me so much. Let me explain why I was so fearful of John duPont. DuPont was donating big money – $800,000 to $1,000,000 a year – to USA Wrestling at the time and had a huge influence on the sport. He had Schultz training at his Foxcatcher facility in Pennsylvania and he wanted Dave on the 1988 Olympic team. He would exert pressure on USA Wrestling and their Executive Director. There was pressure to appease the guy. I knew it would be tough to overcome that influence. It was a difficult position for everyone. I felt that the biggest variable was the officials and their calls. In my matches with Schultz in ’87 there were some controversial calls that didn’t go my way. I wanted to be sure that this time the calls would be fair. Before the Trials I went to see Rick Tucci, who I felt was the best of our officials. I told Tucci that I wanted a fair shake in my matches. I also told myself that I had to dominate Schultz, so that no bad call could swing the match. Tucci officiated one of my matches against Dave and there was no problem. And I did domi-
nate in the Final Trials in Pensacola, winning 6-1 and 5-1. Those wins were some of the best matches of my life. I was now ‘The Man.’ After I made the team, Dave was very helpful to me in the training camp. We’d work out together and we’d let it all hang out. Coach Douglas kept saying, ‘He’ll try to hurt you, Monday’, but I wasn’t afraid. I was, at that point, so far ahead of Dave that I could dominate him.
1988 OLYMPIC TEAM MEMBERS
Freestyle
Greco-Roman
105.5 Tim Vanni (4th)
Mark Fuller
114.5 Ken Chertow
Shawn Sheldon
125.5 Barry Davis
Anthony Amado
136.5 John Smith (1st)
Ike Anderson (6th)
149.5 Nate Carr (3rd)
Andy Seras
163
David Butler
Kenny Monday (1st)
180.5 Mark Schultz (6th)
John Morgan
198 Jim Scherr (5th)
Michael Foy
220 Bill Scherr (3rd)
Dennis Koslowski (3rd)
286 Bruce Baumgartner (2nd) Duane Koslowski
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The Soviets proved much too slick and powerful in Seoul. While we applauded our two gold medalists, the USSR claimed eight gold medals combined in Freestyle and Greco, plus four more silvers. Kenny Monday extended our threedecade dominance of the 163-pound weight class.
1988 presidential election
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In a battle reminiscent of 1960, an incumbent Republican VP was challenged by a liberal young Democrat from Massachusetts. This time the incumbent won – easily. Many attributed Bush’s victory to Americans enjoying ‘peace and prosperity’ during the years that Bush served under Reagan. THE SCORECARD George H.W. Bush Dan Quayle
426 Electoral Votes 53.4% of Popular Vote
Michael Dukakis Lloyd Bentsen
111 Electoral Votes 45.6% of Popular Vote
Wrestlers At The Trials 191