Rulon Gardner

Some of these you may not.

Like, I don't know if anybody out there remembers Rulon Gardner.

Do either of you guys remember Rulon Gardner? Mm-mm.

Yeah, the great wrestler.

Well, he pulled off the greatest upset in the history of wrestling.

He beat Aleksandr Karelin, who had won three straight gold medals with the Soviet national team and then the Russian team, and then Rulon Gardner, this kid from Utah, beat him.

Beat him in the Olympics.

And, um, it was no chance, never gonna happen.

Good afternoon, gentlemen.

Just wanted to, uh, weigh in on your subject and say it's gotta be Rulon Gardner from the '96 Olympics.

Oh, that's the wrestler, right?

No, i- or, or was he the shot putter?

Mm-hmm.

Um, you know, uh, trained freestyle quite a bit with, um, Rulon Gardner, but even a, just a tad bit, you know, with, with him in the Greco.

But, you know, he went over, towards the end of my career, he started to go heavily into the Greco.

Mm-hmm.

And both of them were on multiple teams.

But, yeah, like you said, Dan Gable – Olympic gold medalist, Rulon Gardner, was an All-American in Nebraska.

One of the biggest upsets in wrestling history.

Absolutely.

And I hooked up with a friend of mine, Jeff Funicello, who was on the Greco team for the U.S. And his coach was Roman Rakowski, this old Polish world champion who defected and moved here.

And he's the one that coached Rulon Gardner when Rulon beat Alexander Karela.

there's a picture at the end of that when he runs over and this old man lifts him up.

That's Roman.