Anthony Robles won an NCAA wrestling championship on one leg.
You’ll notice it right away … the 2011 NCAA wrestling champion has only one leg.
To those of us who only became aware of Robles this March when he won the title, this seems like an extraordinary, almost superhuman, feat. But for the wrestling cognoscenti, Robles has been a wrestler to watch for a long time.
Robles went undefeated in Arizona high school wrestling in both his junior and senior years. As a junior at Arizona State in 2010, he reached the semifinals of the NCAA tournament, losing to the then-defending champion in the 125-pound weight class. This year, when he reached the finals, he was confronted with Matt McDonough, the current reigning champ.
Robles was a long shot in the match in more ways than one. Arizona State is not exactly a hotbed of collegiate wrestling success. Only one school west of the Rocky Mountains has ever won the NCAA team title. Wrestling champs come out of America’s heartland. Oklahoma State and Iowa have won a combined 57 of the 83 team championships awarded in the sport. Throw in the success of Oklahoma and Iowa State and the four schools have won 72 team championships. Robles’ opponent, McDonough, was representing Iowa, one of those dominant programs and McDonough, a sophomore, had only lost two matches in two years.
Casual observers think wrestling is merely a contest of strength. Strength is just one attribute of a successful wrestler. Technique, flexibility and balance are also needed. Many a wrestler who depended on superior strength came up short against an opponent who excelled in more facets of the sport.
Robles was born with only one leg. He’s spent his life developing creative ways to minimize that handicap. Finding ways to adapt to the sport of wrestling was especially challenging.
Ask a golfer to tee off while standing on only one leg. The result won’t be pretty.
That’s the challenge Robles has at the beginning of every match, where the opponents assume a standing position facing each other. In the usual start, the wrestlers lock arms at shoulder height and grapple for an advantage, trying to throw the opponent off balance. That starting position clearly has Robles at a disadvantage, so he’s had to develop opening techniques that emphasize his speed and flexibility to counter his opponent’s superior balance.
Now ask a baseball hitter to bat without shifting his weight during the swing. You occasionally see this effect in major league baseball, when a batter is fooled by the pitch. He’ll either swing without shifting his weight, or overshift his weight during the swing. The result is a weak popup or grounder. The reason the ball is hit weakly is that the batter lacks leverage when his weight is not properly shifted.
Leverage is also a key in wrestling. Holding down an underneath opponent or reversing an inferior position depends as much on the application of leverage as it does on brute strength. As with a batter in baseball, leverage is best applied with the use of both legs to support the effort of the upper body. Robles has created different techniques using speed and flexibility to apply leverage.
So there were Robles and McDonough, standing face-to-face and waiting the signal to start … Robles on one leg and McDonough in a classic wrestling stance with feet spread apart to provide maximum balance. It looked like a mismatch … and it was. Robles earned a 7-1 decision to become the 2011 NCAA wrestling champion in the 125-pound weight class. In addition to the video clip in this post, you can see the full match here.
As a microcosm of our society, sports never stops showing us different facets of our existence. A one-legged wrestling champion teaches us once again that no odds are too long and no success is so improbable that our heart’s desire is not worth pursuing to an ultimate conclusion.
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Tags: Anthony Robles, wrestling
