By Wade AskewThe Daily Northwestern
Q: What’s your favorite part of wrestling as a sport?
A: It’s fun. You can go anywhere and have fun. You can beat up on some people and get beat up a little bit. And you grow and you learn and have a good time while you’re doing it.
Q: Least favorite part?
A: I don’t do it that much anymore, but cutting weight, by far my least favorite part. It’s almost not necessary because you’re working out everyday, you’re healthy, you’re good anyways, but at the same time you want to be some type of standard that you know the people that you’re wrestling are around your strength and level, so a lot of times you push it like a lot of wrestlers do.
Q: What food do you miss the most when you’re cutting weight?
A: Just about anything. When I was cutting weight really hard before I just wanted ice cream because it’s really fatty and really sugary. So you just want to stuff yourself with something that gives you energy and just ridiculous amount of energy so it would have been ice cream – you just get that taste in your mouth for ice cream. Now when I’m cutting weight it’s not that big of a deal – maybe just a little water or anything like maybe just a little something to put in my stomach and I still feel pretty dang good.
Q: When did you get into wrestling and why?
A: I got into wrestling when I think it was six. We played football – well we first played soccer, me and my brothers – then they pulled my brothers because they were too aggressive for soccer. Then all the football players were like ‘wrestling season’s next, you gonna wrestle?’ and we were like ‘what?’ Then we joined up with them at the same time and I just wanted it to be something that I did even though I wasn’t that great when I started. I didn’t want to quit because it was so much fun for me.
Q: If you didn’t wrestle, what sport would you play?
A: I think I’d want to play either football or – football’s a lot of politics, which kind of annoys me – but I’d really want to play something where you can push people around and you’ve got to fight for everything you get, and football is kind of that sport, so I’d probably play football.
Q: What are the main challenges that two-time All-American No. 3 Phil Davis presents – what’s he good at? What do you expect out of the match?
A: I wrestled him in freestyle during the summer, and he’s kind of lanky, kind of moves well, but I expect to stay in control of the match the whole time and not give him an inch. He’s going to try to play off my mistakes, and what I am expecting out of myself is no mistakes for the rest of the year.
