Welcome to the show, folks. This is wrestling change my life. Here we go.

And I always ask myself two questions. Have you given 100% in your preparation for tonight?

We can adore anything and adapt and pivot and change.

Wrestling gave us that ability. I would say nothing in life has impacted me

or the things wrestling has taught me in terms of self-reflection resilience. Stop this.

Some guys have it, some guys don't. Adversity, 100% how to pick myself up and be a man after I failed.

And everything that is shaped my life and where I'm at today would not be there without the values

and basically the lessons I've learned through the sport of wrestling. For me wrestling,

saying a life to this, it allowed me to focus and channel my energy.

We're fortunate if you wrestled because if you wrestled, natural talent helps,

but it's 5% of the ingredient. It pales in comparison to heart and technique and effort.

It humbled me, taught me humility. Nothing can humble you more than wrestling.

I think it's the learning to adapt, right? You learn how to adapt, you learn how to solve problems.

If I look back my time, that's good wrestling. If you give me one thing more than anything else, it's mental toughness.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Wrestling Change My Life podcast. We just witnessed

a thunderstorm here in Chicago, but we're hanging in there. Thank you so much for tuning in today.

My guest is the great Dan Russell. Dan was a four-time NCAA Division 2 champ for Portland State.

He hated Pat Smith, his first collegiate loss in Pat Smith's first collegiate match.

Dan Penn Pat, they went on to wrestle four times. Dan won three of those, but Pat won

where it mattered at the 1990 Nationals. We talk about that as well as a number of other

points in Dan's career. Hope you enjoy it. As you can imagine, this was recorded in part

for a research on the Smith Brothers. We're releasing an audio documentary this January called

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