“And then when I walked down the street, people would’ve looked and they would’ve said, ‘There goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was in this game.’ ” – From the movie, “The Natural”
By Kyle Klingman, W.I.N. Columnist
Who is the greatest American wrestler of all-time: Dan Gable or John Smith?
This seemingly simple question has plagued me for a little over a decade. Every time I think I have my bases covered, someone comes up with a fresh perspective or an interesting piece of information or a legendary story that forces me to reconsider.
Let’s be clear, for my purposes this has always been about college and post-college careers combined. There have been many other outstanding wrestlers who deserve mention. Lee Kemp, Dan Hodge, Bruce Baumgartner, Cael Sanderson and Mark Schultz are a few of the names that are amongst the all-time greats. But Smith and Gable stand alone at the top.
The debate for me began at my first NCAA tournament in 1995. I was walking around the concourse of Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City where I came upon a booth that USA Wrestling had set up. I thought to myself, “Surely our national governing body will know who the greatest wrestler in America is.”
I nonchalantly asked the person standing there who he thought the greatest American wrestler of all-time was. He walked over to a display they had set and pointed at a picture of John Smith and said, “This guy right here.”
That’s all I needed to hear. If someone from USA Wrestling said John Smith then it must be true.
Oh, how young and naïve a high school student can be sometimes.
One year later, at the 1996 NCAA tournament, I thought I had things pretty well figured out. I argued valiantly for Smith as the greatest of all-time. I found myself in a discussion with some former Iowa State wrestlers who had gone to college with Gable. Every time I made an argument for Smith they replied, “Unless you’ve experienced wrestling Gable, you’ll never know how good he was. Nobody even comes close to Dan.” They pretty much ripped me to shreds.
I started to reconsider. Perhaps Gable was better than Smith.
Slowly, this was turning into an “us vs. them”, our guy vs. your guy, state of Iowa vs. state of Oklahoma, Asics vs. Adidas contest to decide who the greatest wrestler in America is. Things could get ugly if I wasn’t well prepared.
Over the course of the next several years I committed myself to uncovering the truth. I thoroughly researched the careers of both wrestlers. No detail was too small. I asked questions. I watched film. I read old wrestling magazines. I spent thousands of hours with Randy Lewis who has the unique perspective of having trained with Gable and competing against Smith, and who admires both tremendously. I scrolled through microfilm when I should have been doing my college homework. I visited the spots where each wrestler trained.
College didn’t matter any more. This was my final exam. The Gable vs. Smith debate began to consume me.
So here I am today, still just as confused and excited as I was in high school about who the greatest of all time is. The difference is that I have solved some of the answers to the test.
The most important thing I figured out in the process was that my approach was all wrong. I had turned this into a “who would beat who” rather than a “who was better than who” debate. Like boxing, I needed to analyze who the best pound-for-pound wrestler in America was.
Since they competed in different eras, wrestled at different weights and trained for different rules, a mythical match-up is nearly impossible. What makes the Gable vs. Smith saga intriguing is that each approached wrestling in a distinctly different way:
Gable with his punishing, methodical style vs. the smooth and technically-minded Smith; a comparison for the ages.
Each brought wrestling to levels in ways that were uniquely theirs. How could you not get excited to watch this one play out?
So it all comes down to this: Dan Gable vs. John Smith in a wrestling comparison for the ages …
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