Best estimate: Since 1995, I’ve personally interviewed and professionally analyzed the minds of more than 20,000 people. Billionaires. Hollywood A-listers. Heads of state. Prison Inmates. Grieving mothers and widows. And a bunch of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. One of my favorite all-time interviews happened years ago with wrestling icon Dan Gable for RealFighter Magazine.

Woven into Gable’s uber-intense and ever-palpable tone — which seemed to jump through the phone line during our two-hour talk — one word kept popping up: Preparation. 

Here is Dan Gable — whom Hollywood hitmaster and former New Jersey high school wrestler Tom Cruise once called his idol, talking to me about:

Would you have been a cagefighter if the opportunity existed in your younger years? 

And why, shockingly (but in a manner that perfectly illustrates how extreme Gable is about being prepared, he abandoned his master’s degree studies just one class shy of earning his advanced degree. 

Excerpts from the mag story: 

“Today, on those rare occasions when he is not immersed in wrestling matters or delighting in time spent with his grandkids, the 57-year-old legend settles in front of a television to watch a UFC broadcast. Quite naturally, he roots for those who have wrestling backgrounds, and counts Matt Hughes and recent retiree Couture among his favorites.

“From the outside, Ultimate Fighting, it looks dangerous,” Gable remarked before pondering what might have been if he were 30 years younger or MMA had flourished three decades sooner. “I don’t know if I could do that. You know why? I don’t know if I’m prepared, even in the old days. I did grow up doing some boxing, but I’m just so focused on my narrow scope, which is wrestling. I trained to fight a wrestling match. But I haven’t trained to fight anybody who is a specialist in fighting.”

He says all of this in a deep Man’s Man voice that befits his drill sergeant-like, no-nonsense demeanor. Even on the other end of the phone line, Gable’s trademark intensity and tenacity are apparent. So long as the conversation is wrestling, he is as energetic and tireless as he once was on the mat, talking at a fast pace and flexing a swift memory that seems encyclopedic. Change the topic, however, and Gable’s speech slows considerably and he suddenly seems bored. In between portraits of the passionate and passive Gable, a singular theme emerges: The longer Gable talks, the more the word “preparation” surfaces again and again. But Gable’s idea of being prepared is ultra-extreme, as he exemplified while a graduate student. Years ago, having completed all of the necessary course work for a master’s degree in student counseling, Gable was a final exam away from sealing the deal. He was in good academic standing, having earned A’s and B’s in his classes. Then he received his lowest grade yet in a class – a ‘C’. The mediocre score spooked Gable, as did a question he knew would be on the final exam that required him to choose among a collection of theories he found unappealing. “I thought, ‘How am I going go in and pass this comprehensive exam when I just didn’t feel prepared,” Gable explained. “I just didn’t feel prepared, so I didn’t go.”

By skipping the final exam, Gable forfeited the master’s degree.

He later had a chance encounter with the professor who had administered the test.

“Everybody passes,” the professor confided, though much too late to reverse Gable’s academic misfortune.

Minus the degree, somewhat ironically, Gable has been hailed as an expert sports psychologist and shared his winning formula with many Fortune 500 companies. He said it was preparation, or lack thereof, that kept him from being in the corner of Royce Alger when Alger fought in the UFC in the late 1990s. Alger, a two-time NCAA champ for Iowa, posted an MMA record of 3 wins and 2 losses. Only one of his matches lasted more than five minutes. “Royce Alger, he did it for the money,” Gable said. “Had he gotten into the sport more, had he trained more … He basically stopped training and just entered those events. Most of the time, if he got into those fights, he gassed. It made me mad.”

Native Iowan and MMA trainer Pat Miletich, who has produced numerous UFC champions such as Matt Hughes, Tim Sylvia and Jens Pulver, said of Gable: 

“One saying of Dan Gable’s that always stayed with me: ‘It’s human tendency to look for an easy way of doing things, but there’s no substitute for hard work.’”

ESPN Feature Story on Gable by writer Wright: http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/page/Dan-Gable/the-losses-dan-gable

Photo credit: Wrestling Pod