Schulz Mark - wrestler and coach

American athlete Mark Philip Schultz - Olympic champion and two-time world champion. A freestyle wrestler, he is an honorary member of the National Hall of Fame of the US Fight.

He and his older brother Dave Schultz, who was also a wrestler, won gold medals at the 1984 Olympic Games. Dave and Mark are the only American brothers who could win the World Cup and the Olympic Games.

Childhood

Mark Schultz, whose biography dates back to October 26, 1960, was born in Palo Alto, California. Mark's parents were Dorothy Jean Saint-Germain (nee Rich) and Philippe Gary Schultz. He was their second son: the firstborn Dave was 17 months older. The boys attended local schools. Mark was very interested in gymnastics and began to actively take her to school.

Carier start

Schultz Mark attended the school of Palo Alto, where he trained with Ed Hart. First he participated in gymnastics competitions, winning the Northern California championship in all-around among his age group. However, a year later he moved to Ashland, Oregon, where he went into the fight. But after one semester, he transferred back to Palo Alto. Mark Schultz (photo below) won the regional and state championships in freestyle wrestling.

Schultz joined UCLA, and his first fight ended with a score of 18-8. After college, he entered the University of Oklahoma, speaking for the next three years (1981-1983), won 3 NCAA Championships. The first year Schultz performed in the category up to 177 pounds, and in the final he faced the two-time champion of the NCAA (1980, 1981) Ed Banach. Banach was preparing to become the first four-time NCAA champion in history. However, Schultz won him with a score of 16-8. Eyewitnesses call this fight one of the best, if not the best, NCAA finals of all time. The following year, Schultz remained undefeated and set the maximum number of victories in a row. At the University of Oklahoma, Mark was awarded the title of "Big 8", as the best student athlete. At this time, his brother Dave also won in competitions, but in a larger weight class.

Olympic Games and World Championships

In 1984, Mark and Dave Schultz both won Olympic gold in wrestling competitions, as the twin brothers Banach once did. The following year, Mark won the World Cup, where he faced rivals from all countries of the Eastern Bloc, who boycotted the 1984 Olympic Games. In the finale of the first game of the planet Schultz, Mark won with a score of 10-5. This athlete is the only Olympic champion who won the World Cup in 1985. And his brother Dave was the only Olympic champion who won the world championship in 1983. The Schultz brothers won more NCAA, US Open, World and Olympic titles than other brothers in history.

When Schultz won another gold on a world-wide debacle in 1987, he became the first Olympic champion to win the title of the best wrestler of the world twice. In 1991, Mark Schultz, Lee Kemp, and John Smith were listed in the Guinness Book of Records as "the most titled free-style wrestlers." At the Summer Olympics in 1988 in Seoul, he took sixth place.

Mark Schultz - wrestler of mixed martial arts

Eight years after the break, in 1996, Schulz became the first Olympic gold medalist, who switched to mixed martial arts. Mark began to perform in the UFC, because in addition to freestyle wrestling, he was engaged in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. In the same year, his brother Dave was killed, and Mark replaced him in the UFC. In the first battle, he collided face to face with Canadian Goodridge. Schultz Mark won the fight because of the stoppage of the fight by the doctor because of a serious dissection from the opponent. For this fight, he received $ 50,000. After Mark Schultz (photo below - the last fight of the athlete) began to gain popularity among both young fighters and UFC fans, as a result of which he began to conduct more and more professional fights, including the title ones. As a result, he won about 5 championship belts in different versions, after which he decided to finish the career of a professional wrestler. After many great fights, he became one of the greatest fighters in the history of the UFC, but at the same time received a large number of injuries. The back was severely damaged.

At the end of the career of the fighter, Schultz became a wrestling coach at Brigham Young University.

Coach career

Schultz Mark was an assistant wrestling coach at the University of Brigham Young in 1991-1994, after which he was appointed chief mentor. One of his best students was Rixon Gracie, who in 1993 moved to America from Brazil. Like his coach, he was fond of jiu-jitsu. After a lengthy performance at the UFC, Rixon is one of the greatest fighters of mixed martial arts of all time, and he can be called "a fan of jiu-jitsu" because he uses this technique more often and more efficiently. Although, it is worth noting, Gracie did not have a black belt for this type of martial arts, as in Schulz.

In addition, Schultz had several other students whose names are familiar to fans of free-style wrestling, mixed martial arts and ju-jitsu, some of the training sessions he also conducted.