RPW Coach Dan Chandler<\/p>\n
Wrestlers, says Dan Chandler, have always been million-dollar athletes in a $100 sport.<\/p>\n
He was one himself, beginning as a high school wrestler for Anoka (Minn.) High School, who went 33-1 his senior year and becoming an NCAA Division I qualifier for the University of Minnesota.<\/p>\n
Then he began excelling in Greco-Roman competition.<\/p>\n
“I’m 6-foot-1, and I’m mostly legs, and (in folkstyle and freestyle) I had a hard time defending my legs,”\u009d Chandler said. “I can actually wrestle harder and have more movement in Greco because I don’t have to worry about my legs.”\u009d<\/p>\n
As a Greco specialist, he claimed 12-time national championships, became a three-time place-finisher in the World Championships and was named to the United States Olympic Greco teams in 1976, 1980 and 1984.<\/p>\n
“When I was competing,”\u009d said Chandler, now a coach of Real Pro Wrestling’s Minnesota Freeze, “we always talked about baseball, football, basketball — how you can take it to the professional level and how (the athletes) can make a lot of money.”\u009d<\/p>\n
He recalls the days of the former Soviet Union and hearing the stories of Russian wrestler who, when they rose to the top international level, were treated like rock stars. <\/p>\n
“We used to say that if they lived in the United States, they wouldn’t be wrestlers; they’d be in the NFL or playing third base somewhere,”\u009d Chandler said. “Good athletes go where the money is.”\u009d<\/p>\n
Even high school athletes consider the possibility of continuing in a sport, he pointed out. “We lose a lot of good wrestlers that way.”\u009d<\/p>\n
That concern was instrumental in Chandler’s decision to take on the duties of a RPW coach — in addition to his role as state coach for Minnesota USA Wrestling\/Minnesota Storm, where Wednesday night Greco practices have been a staple since 1985. A volunteer with the US Olympic coaching staff since 1988, he also served as the head Greco coach for the 2000 Olympic team.<\/p>\n
Chandler calls Real Pro Wrestling “an exciting concept,”\u009d from the artwork and the mascots to the hybrid of freestyle and Greco-Roman rules to the angled setting and the platform that increase the intensity of the action.<\/p>\n
“That tells me of a total carry-through on everything,”\u009d he said. “I like the things Real Pro Wrestling has done.<\/p>\n
“And they’re making it sexy,”\u009d he added. “Wrestlers have the best bodies, and RPW is capitalizing on the physique. We don’t tend to talk about that, but it could be a good draw. People like looking at good-looking people of both sexes.<\/p>\n
“And kids watching just might think, ‘If I go out for wrestling and keep doing my pushups and pull-ups, maybe I could look like that.’ “\u009d<\/p>\n
Chandler thinks about those youngsters and about former wrestlers such as Michael Foy, who won multiple national Greco-Roman and Freestyle championships (and qualified for Olympic teams in both styles) and Stephen Neal, two-time NCAA champion and world freestyle titlist who is now a starter for the NFL world champion New England Patriots — even though he never played college football..<\/p>\n
Then Chandler considers the potential of Real Pro Wrestling providing financial support and a future for the nation’s top grapplers.<\/p>\n
“If we did have that opportunity,”\u009d he said, “think of some of the great athletes we could keep in the sport.”\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RPW Coach Dan Chandler Wrestlers, says Dan Chandler, have always been million-dollar athletes in a $100 sport. He was one himself, beginning as a high school wrestler for Anoka (Minn.) High School, who went 33-1 his senior year and becoming an NCAA Division I qualifier for the University of Minnesota. Then he began excelling in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B7Di-gG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}