[esoxmagnum]

When I was 18, I had won golden gloves 2x and was a brown belt. A wrestler who regularly attended the Iowa summer camp who was also the Illinois champ for his weight class joined our karate classes.

We became good friends, but I soon found out, that with all my skills, this guy could take me down, lock me up, and choke the breath out of me in a heartbeat.

My respect for wrestlers grew infinitely at that point.

He was more of an athlete than I could ever hope to be. Incidentally, he DID go off to join the SEALS, that was back in the mid 80's and was a gentleman through and through.

[DugwayDuke]

"We became good friends, but I soon found out, that with all my skills, this guy could take me down, lock me up, and choke the breath out of me in a heartbeat."

I've known some very good college wrestlers. In the 60's, wrestling was dominated by the Big-8. OU, OSU, and ISU were the dominate teams. One of those teams would win the conference and the national crown. One of my fraternity brothers wrestled for OU at 123. We had another guy in the house that was about 220, solid as a rock. Worked out three times a day, ran 10 miles a day. The 123 wrestler could lock him up in about 10 seconds from a standing start.