Mat Awareness

Tune in to hear the crazy story of how "Sebby The Sloth" blew up in the wrestling world last year. By listening, you'll also get to know the behind the scenes guy, Lenny Merkin, who is a Greco phenom himself. He shares some great stories about building up Sebby, like how he turned a prize he got at a fair into an international wrestling icon, and also shares a bunch of his interesting stories from traveling overseas in the midst of his Olympic redshirt the past year. Check it out and please leave a rating and review if you enjoy it. Thank you listeners!

Nate Jackson is a great guy doing so many different great things and I sincerely enjoyed having him on. For those that don't know, he's a current senior level athlete at the NJRTC, a wrestling coach at Princeton, and had a successful college wrestling career himself finishing with two All American honors and over 100 wins. Anyways, we talked about the actions he's been taking with BWA as a response to what is currently going on in the United States, and how everyone can serve in helping fix our countries problems. We also talked a lil wrestling, training, matchups, ya know all that good stuff! I hope to do another podcast with him sometime and dive into his wrestling career a bit more, but thought that this was necessary to talk about right now and I wanted to get it out there ASAP. 

BWA Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bwassociation_/

Huge S/O to Nate for coming on and doing his part to make this world a better place for everyone. Now let's do our parts with him. (me included!)

On this episode you will learn about Nazar, and the struggles he faced to get to where he is today. He came from Ukraine not knowing much English, and ended up winning 3 national titles for UW-Oshkosh, and made it look easy. This conversation really humbled me and made me grateful for how easy my life has been, and I am very excited to share it with you guys. Enjoy the show!

Donald McNeil suffered a spinal injury during a greco match in the summer of his sophomore year. To put the severity of the injury into perspective, roughly ten thousand people suffer from an injury like this each year, and only 77 come out with fully recovered. After his injury, he was hearing terms like paraplegia tossed around him in the hospital. In this episode, he elaborates on the injury, the rehab process, and what it felt like having wrestling success after such a life changing event. One of the most inspiring wrestling comeback stories I've ever heard. Be sure to give this one a listen.

I talked with Jude about everything from what it's like knowing David Taylor on a personal level to how he grew the HMA podcast (with Sam Herring) into something huge at just age 15. Super cool interview and we covered lot of fun topics, check it out and please leave a review if you liked it. Thanks!

Go check out his stuff @ hmawrestling.com!

Eric Barnett is a 3X Wisconsin state champion from Hortonville High School (high school record of 185-3), and is currently the 125 pounder for the Wisconsin Badgers. Eric was very successful early on in his career so he talks a lot about what he did to stay motivated and make sure he didn't end up burning out. He also talks a lot about his transition from high school to college, and gives some great advice and insight for kids that are planning on wrestling in college. I really enjoyed catching up with Eric and think you'll enjoy what he had to say as well.

Check out my interview Cam Sykora! He was a 5X Minnesota state champ, and went on to wrestle for a year at SDSU , before transferring to NDSU. At NDSU he was a 4X NCAA Qualifier, and most recently was the 2020 Big XII Champ at 133 pounds. It was awesome getting to know Cam a little bit and hear him reflect on his career, be sure to give it a listen!