Tonight, Thursday, Jan. 13, 10pm Eastern, the MTV program “Made” will feature wrestling. The one hour show focuses on taking a polar opposite kid that wants to be the opposite of what he or she is, and gives them a coach to make it happen. Today’s episode will feature a wrestling coach coaching a kid, a dancer, who was tired of being picked on and bullied by classmates.
As much as i hate WWF, Angle was a gold medalist in the olympics, I would say this at the least qualifies him as a "real wrestler". He didnt suddenly forget a decade of amateur wrestling.
The coach was Gene Mills, another forum-member at UG wrote this about him (coach Mills):
You youngins may not remember Mr. Mills, but he was a 2 time NCAA champ from Syracuse and is a member of the Wrestling Hall of Fame. I was lucky enough to have him as a coach at Stroudsburgh Wrestling Camp back in 1981 and he was nothing short of awesome. Believe me, the kid on MTV wasn't being at a disadvantage by having Gene Mills instead of Kurt Angle as a coach.
A little history lesson for y'all:
WHEN YOU look into the record book, Gene Mills' mind-boggling statistics appear as if they are a misprint: 1,356 career wins, 46 losses, 1 tie and 886 victories came by fall.
His collegiate record of 144-5-1 with 107 falls, two NCAA championships and four All-America honors tops the historical accounting of wrestling at Syracuse University. Within those statistics are five records verified by the NCAA. Mills was a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic freestyle. Unfortunately, due to the United States boycott of the 1980 Games, he never had the opportunity to prove himself as the best 114-pound freestyle wrestler in the world.
His international record, however, exhibited his capabilities. Mills reeled off 82 consecutive victories, captured two World Cup Championship gold medals and pinned two Olympic medalists and a two-time gold medalist at the 1980 World Super Championship in Japan. In 1980, he was also tabbed as the "Outstanding Wrestler" at the prestigious Tblisi Championship after pinning each of his opponents.
Mills served as an assistant coach at his alma mater for 16 seasons, helping to lead the Orangemen to a record of 147-81-4 during his tenure. He was inducted into the greater Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame and the EIWA Hall of Fame.
Today, he stands out as one of the world's best wrestling clinicians, combining his dynamic personality with instructional and inspirational videos in presentations throughout the world.
That was the best "Made" I've seen - good job by the kid to keep fighting in his first match and not get pinned.
Seeing Mills brought back alot of memories from high school wrestling, since our coach centered our team style around the Mills Series and I can still hear his voice yelling, "Mills it, Mills it" in the back of my head.
I was also hoping they could convince the goober football player into a closed door wrestling match with the kid - that would have been funny.
Jesus, reading that record Mills is a freakin stud. And to think I used to worship guys like John Smith and the Brands.
I'm sorry I missed half of that episode, I'll have to Tivo the replay. Might bring back some good memories, cause though I wasnt as bad off as that kid, I went from nerd to multi-letter nerd-athlete in the course of one brutal year of jumping head-on into track and wrestling. It just about killed me but I can honestly say that the 2-3 hours of pure shit I went thru every day for wrestling practice completely changed my life. It's like shock therapy for those with self-confidence problems, partially because of the fact that it is not a team sport on the mat. Ultimate accountability lies with you and you alone. That's something you dont ever get to such an inescapable degree, in any team sport.
If that kid sticks with it it'll change him permanently too. I'd love to see him come back after a solid year or two of training a hard ass and smoke the football guy. I"m biased because the footballers used to give us static for "not being real athletes" in HS... until we formally invited some of them to come out for the team and try some practices on their own, after much smack about how it would be easy, the starting QB, one of the starting LBs, and one other guy came out. They couldnt hack it and quit after about 3 practices worth of them gassing by the time we got halfway thru practice and getting worked over even by some of the JV guys. My favorite was that one of the 220-230lb freshmen who was a chubby bastard but worked his ass off (almost like the kid in Made) because he really wanted it, had really started to adapt after a month, and he was watching one of the LB's that was talking so much trash gassing out in spin drills and muttering under his breath "jesus, these guys are pussies". Seeing the kid born again hard was a beautiful thing. He later got his frustration at being the freshman JV crash dummy out during live wrestling, by completely wrecking that same LB with hard crossfaces and breakdowns, the only things he knew how to do well. The LB left that day looking pretty ragged and said wrestling sucked and he never came back, it was beautiful.. the fat dorky kid made him his bitch for like 20 min. straight and it obviously killed his ego.
Sorry I digress... you gotta love wrestling stories...
Down below is the link to an interesting Gene Mills interview that I received the link to just the other day. Its so strange cause I put off listening to it til wednesday night at the end of the interview he says hes gonna be on the mtv show "Made" the next night. So it was cool listening to the interview then seeing him on tv the next day.