Dave Schultz.
I think he’s been the most important person to influence wrestling.
Dave Schultz was shot in the head at point blank range by John DuPont. It was a murder by perhaps the richest person in the US ever to commit a crime of this nature. It was totally unprovoked. Except for one thing, Dave was good, and John was evil. There’s no other explanation to it. It’s as simple as that.
The story of Foxcatcher farm is filled with mystery. Winning gold medals in wrestling and making a life out of it seem to be in line with drug use and swinging. The first half of that story comes from the people who were there and the videos and newspapers and everything else left behind. It’s obvious that Foxcatcher produced top wrestlers. The second part seems to come from someone who heard it. Everyone in the community just seems to know. Perhaps it’s because it wasn’t all that long ago. People who are close to these elite level athletics hear about it sooner or later. But, if you asked, maybe the people who were there would open up about it. I never asked that question, so this is what I’ve gathered through a vision of what I heard.
Everyone who talks about Dave Shultz talks with incredible reverence. They always seem to be incredibly honored to have known him. He’s the person to quote, the person to copy, the person whose footsteps you want to follow in. Dave was good, that is certain. And that is something everyone who knew him would agree on.
But a room full of jurors don’t get to meet or know a dead man. And it is certain that the lawyers of John DuPont were going to keep him as far away from doing anything that may portray his true character. So all the people who knew Dave had to hide whatever these mysteries of Foxcatcher were in order to see an evil man burn in prison. That’s why we have prisons right? Not to see people helped and returned to society, but to protect us from evil. One evil gets passed onto another and another. It gets changed in someone who was corrupted and it destroys people and communities. John DuPont was pure evil.
Fortunately for the world, John DuPont died in Prison this year, 15 years after he committed this atrocity. If only we could have seen him put in prison before he committed the crime, just for being a monster, perhaps that would have saved the world of wrestling.
Their story seems to mirror another story in Olympic history, that of Alcibiades and Socrates. Plato, the student of Socrates, was an Olympic wrestling champion. Alcibiades, on the other hand, bred horses that competed in the chariot games. Alcibiades, the son of aristocracy, was noted for the evil nature he had, as is mentioned in Thucydides’s history of the Peloponnesian war. But more than anything, Plato’s symposium seems to reenact a pretty good idea of what good vs. evil looks like. Evil wants to control. Good springs outward like a fountain, bringing life to everything around it. It’ll set you free.
Drugs are not evil, sex is not evil, money is not evil. Even anger and violence are not evil. They have a time and place, but they need to be controlled. If they control you, you are bound to do evil – to your body, to your spirit, and to the world. It is your will that will do good, when it is in control.
When Dave Schultz was murdered, it was like wrestling itself was killed. Consider this: at the time, Jim Scherr was CEO of USA Wrestling. Jim trained with Team Foxcatcher and was close friends with Dave Schultz. In fact, he and his brother moved up weight classes so Dave and Mark could both make the Olympic teams with them in 1988. That’s only one person. Dave affected everyone. Lots of people’s lives seem to fall apart when Dave died.
USA Wrestling signed John DuPont on (as a source of influence) only a little bit after it’s inception. It had that influence of corruption trying to control them since their birth. If you want to see the results of something like that, look at a child who’s been abused. Usually he or she has a bundle of issues. But it’s also true that the twisted and gnarled tree that grows to be the strongest. This organization still exists, it still has these flaws from years of growing out of shape stuck inside it. Perhaps it can become stronger than ever. However, changing employees will not change the organization. In fact, the organization is much bigger, so it will shape and twist people into a character that blends with it’s own.
Something’s wrong in USA Wrestling. Everyone keeps saying that. And I don’t think it has anything to do with marketing or selling wrestling on any level. I believe it’s a deep emotional problem, something that needs to be overcome in a non-traditional way.
Wrestling is growing. More people love it. There is so much good that can come from it. But so much was lost when Dave Schultz was. People seem to think he will never come back. I promise, just do good – learn what is good and nurture it – and his spirit’s still here. I don’t think he ever really left. I never met him, but the more I hear, the more it seems like I have.
Tags: Dave Schultz, Good vs. Evil, Organizational psychology, USAW, Wrestling
