Foxcatcher Page 17

  Other than du Pont’s presence, the lack of a devoted wrestling room was the biggest hurdle we were unable to overcome. By that, I mean a wrestling room on campus that had ceilings higher than a shooting range’s.

  “Soon” never materialized.

  But then again, “soon” always came from the lips of the guy who also said he wouldn’t be around except to drop in and see if we needed anything.

  I got so fed up with not knowing where I stood that I wrote up a proposal for the program with rules, job descriptions, and a chain of command. I took my proposal to John and asked him to read it, make any changes he wanted, and sign it. He refused. If we had established any structure, he couldn’t have been the dictator.

  As if the writing on the wall wasn’t enough of a message when Andre came aboard, the letterheads he had printed spelled out clearly what was going on. Stacks of letterheads were delivered to our office, and John’s name was at the very top with the title of head coach. Andre’s was right below John’s name as assistant coach. Down at the very bottom of the page were the other assistant coaches—Chaid, Calabrese, Glenn Goodman, Bill Hyman, and me. My phone number was the one listed. In other words, if there was anything that needed to be done, call me, but John and Andre were the marquee names.

  “Did you approve this?” I asked John.

  “No, I didn’t,” he answered.

  Then when the guy from the printer came in to collect for the job, du Pont said he wasn’t going to pay him and the two got into an argument that ended only when the guy got flustered and walked out.

  John smiled when he left. Here was this multimillionaire acting as if he had won some big victory by not paying for stationery.

  It wasn’t about the money with John, even though that’s what people focused on with him. For John, it was about control, and his money gave him control over others.

  I made a deal with du Pont to let me run a wrestling camp at Villanova. Many college coaches today put on camps, and often they have permission to run camps written into their contracts. Camps provide a variety of benefits. They promote your program, they’re a good way to teach your sport to younger athletes, they’re good community relations, and they bring in extra income that can be used to supplement a coach’s salary or be placed right back into the program for scholarships or equipment.

  John hooked me up with someone who he said could put together a camp brochure that would be mailed out to every high school coach and wrestler in Pennsylvania. The guy came into the office and he was disheveled, unshaven, and overweight, and his eyes aimed in different directions. The brochures came out fine, though. Somehow.

  Calabrese, Hyman, and a couple of other friends helped as camp instructors, and we drew about eighty kids. Not bad for a camp’s first year. We made $8,000 in that one week. A week later, du Pont asked me, “What are we going to do about the cost of the brochures?”

  Turned out his guy had charged $7,500. I wound up splitting the cost with du Pont and when all was said and done, we netted only about half of the $8,000.

  Another time, I bought a few office supplies at the student union. They were on my desk when John found out I had made the purchases, and he picked up a paper clip and looked at it long enough for me to stop what I was doing and look at him.

  “Do you know how much this cost?” he asked. “This cost a nickel. You know how much a nickel is?”

  He made a big freaking deal out of a nickel, and then he took some of us on a Learjet to fly off to South Carolina so he could fire the starting gun for that triathlon. Then we got back into the jet and flew home.

  Du Pont would drop thousands, tens of thousands, of dollars in a heartbeat if it would bring him attention, and then he would turn around and nickel-and-dime us just to remind us we were dependent upon him.

  He provided us with meal tickets to eat at a cafeteria across from the field house. Then one day he decided to take them away, no explanation given. The upside, though, was that if he didn’t know we would be eating at the cafeteria, he couldn’t join us for lunch.

  His table manners were horrendous. He would talk with his mouth wide-open as he ate, as though there was nothing in his mouth. Once, I got stuck sitting directly across from him and he was spraying food and spit all over the table, my food, and my clothes. It was so disgusting that I couldn’t touch my food. I got up and left right in the middle of the meal.

  —

  Du Pont’s meddling carried over to the mat. At one dual meet, he sat next to me on the bench. I was shouting moves to one of our wrestlers and John started arguing with me right there in the corner about which moves our guy should be doing and what I should be telling him to do. I looked over at him and let my eyes tell him, You’re an idiot.

  Nothing good happened when du Pont was around.

  He came to a practice on his farm dressed as a cop and started waving a gun around. The wrestlers scattered. I just stood there and looked at him. He was trying to act like a big man. Nobody thought du Pont would shoot, much less kill, another person. Why would anyone with his money, power, and influence risk losing all that to live in a prison cell? John was unstable, but he was not insane.

  What was more disturbing was the wrestling move he claimed to have created. He called it the “Foxcatcher Five.” Basically, it was him grabbing someone’s balls with five fingers.

  His idea came from a story I had told about a match I had in college against Don Shuler. Don and I wrestled five times, and he was the guy I had to beat in the finals of the Olympic trials to make the ’84 Olympic team. Don was one of the few guys to put me on my back in college, and I think he might have been the only person who didn’t lose to me in Oklahoma’s home arena.

  The first time we wrestled was at home, and I was leading 4–0 in the third period. Don reversed me to my back and tried to pin me. He received two points for the reversal and had me on my back getting pinned. Holding an opponent on his back for two seconds was worth two points and three points were awarded for holding him for five seconds.

  I was on my back scrambling like crazy trying to get Don off me because three points would have given him the win. He had me in a tight hold and I felt his groin press down hard on the palm of my hand, trapping my hand against the mat. I had to free my hand or lose. I squeezed Don’s balls for a fraction of a second. He yelled and popped off me like a champagne cork. I spun belly down. Don complained to the ref, but the ref hadn’t seen the quick squeeze and instructed him, “Keep wrestling.” The match ended in a 4–4 tie.

  John had a tendency to not pay close attention to other people’s stories, but that one captured his attention. From that, John came up with his Foxcatcher Five. He was overly proud of his “move” and loved to tell people about it, even women. Whenever he would talk about it, he’d laugh and attempt to make a big joke out of it.

  During my summer camp at Villanova, I was sitting on a stage and he came up to me and made a claw with one hand and said, “The Foxcatcher Fiiiiiive.” He moved his hand toward my balls. I stared at him like, Touch me and you’re dead. He didn’t touch me. But he did put his move on other Villanova coaches and wrestlers.

  One wrestler came and told me about John grabbing him. He was nervous about telling me, saying half-jokingly, “Yeah, that Foxcatcher Five. John got me. Ha-ha.”

  I should have reported John to the athletic director. That was another one of my “should haves” at Villanova. The sexual abuse scandal involving a Penn State football coach a few years ago has dramatically changed attitudes toward reporting and disciplining for such abuse. I don’t know what would have happened back then if I had told the athletic director. But if that incident had happened today, post–Penn State scandal, du Pont would have been disassociated with Villanova and his name taken off the buildings before the university president could have asked him, “You understand what I’m saying?”

  That would have abruptly ended du
Pont’s reign on campus. Who knows what else that might have stopped.

  —

  The clock started ticking the night of a party at my apartment.

  We put together a group of female students called the Mat Cats. (Villanova’s nickname was the Wildcats.) It was common for wrestling programs, and other sports in colleges, to have a support group like that. Their basic function was to assist and cheer for the team. They kept score and stats during matches, helped with water, cheered, that type of stuff.

  We recruited seven of the most beautiful girls on campus, took them to the mall, and bought them blouses with a wildcat on the back, Armani shirts, nylons, shoes, socks, earrings, bracelets, perfume, and anything else that looked or smelled good on them. Recruits liked seeing spirit groups like the Mat Cats on their visits to various schools, so they also helped us with our recruiting.

  I threw a party to celebrate someone’s birthday, my World Championship, the recruiting class we had brought in, and probably another thing or two I’ve forgotten about. Basically, we wanted to have a party. The Mat Cats were among the invited guests. Word got out about the party, and some of our wrestlers who were underage showed up. There was alcohol there, but I wasn’t going to kick out the underage ones who showed up.

  It was just a regular college party. It wasn’t really a problem, but Metzger made it into one.

  The next day, I walked into the Butler Annex with Dan. John and Andre were with the team, and Andre was telling the wrestlers they shouldn’t have gone to our party. While I listened, John kept looking at Dan and me with this goofy grin on his face.

  John walked out, and Dan and I followed him. I grabbed John by the arm and said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  John yelled at me, “You back me and I’ll back you!”

  “That’s it!” Dan shouted back. “I’m out of here!”

  Dan was on his way out when I grabbed him and John by the wrists and took them into a locker room and unloaded on John.

  When I had finished, John looked at me and said, “I’m going to ruin your career.”

  That was one time he would make good on his word.

  Du Pont sent me to Oregon on a recruiting trip in December 1987. I spent Christmas at my mother’s house, and on Christmas Day, while we were opening presents, John called me.

  “You’re fired,” he told me. “Don’t come back on campus because the police are looking for you.” Then he hung up. The police weren’t looking for me. He was just trying to scare me to keep me away for a while.

  He didn’t give a reason for firing me and never gave me one after I got back to Philadelphia.

  After I did return to Philadelphia following the holidays, I found out that du Pont had flown the team on a Learjet to wrestle in Puerto Rico. The trip was not on our schedule. The trip also, it was later reported, violated NCAA rules because the team did not wrestle enough times to comply with established rules for such trips. They wrestled only once in Puerto Rico. Basically, it was just a free minivacation for the team, and they wrestled one time so they could try to justify the trip.

  Rob and Dan came to my apartment to tell me about the trip, and they said du Pont had wrestled against José Betancourt, who had competed on the Puerto Rican team at the ’84 Games. José let du Pont win. That got John to apparently feel all tough because he ordered the Puerto Rican coach to pick up John’s bags and put them on his plane, as if the coach was his servant.

  “I don’t care who you are,” the coach snapped at du Pont. “I’m going to kick your ass!”

  That scared du Pont, and he ran to board the plane and told everyone else with the team to hurry up, too.

  —

  John wanted credit. He needed credit to make up for what he had failed to accomplish.

  In 1987, he wrote a book titled Off the Mat: Building Winners in Life. I overheard him dictating some of it into a tape recorder. He was zonked out of his mind, drunk. It was a joke, and what he was dictating made no sense whatsoever. I heard he paid to have the book published and given free to college coaches around the country.

  He asked me to write the foreword. I reluctantly wrote one but made sure not to give him credit for anything I had achieved. Years later, I read the foreword. My name was on it, but it wasn’t what I had written because it gave credit to John for my success.

  I had never considered the possibility of someone creating awards to be presented to himself. Being around John gave me plenty of opportunities to see how he pulled it off.

  He had me speak at one of his awards banquets. I wasn’t going to say anything that would make John look good, so I got up and talked about winning my Olympic gold medal and kept the subject focused on me rather than John. I tried to be as funny as I could about myself and had the room laughing.

  I was followed to the podium by a guy I didn’t know who had been sitting next to John. Apparently, John had anticipated some of what I would say and had hired this guy to come in and say things that contradicted my speech. I wanted to get up and punch the guy out when he said, “Winning a gold medal means nothing.”

  One of the funniest stories about John’s “awards” involved the Citizen/Athletes Foundation he created. No one I knew of ever figured out what the Citizen/Athletes Foundation was created to accomplish. Other than a special night and award for John, of course.

  I didn’t even like the name of the foundation. I wasn’t a citizen/athlete. I was all athlete!

  Du Pont had pens, stationery, cuff links, shirts, ties, and pins made up with the foundation’s name on them. For the big banquet in Washington, DC, he hired a professional football player to deliver the keynote address.

  The important people were given seats up front. The Villanova wrestlers and coaches sat at the back end of a narrow hallway. Technically, we weren’t even in the banquet room. But we could see the football player as he spoke, and it was comical listening to him move from story to story trying to make a point coordinated with a subject that had not been defined.

  The player would have been just as effective if he had stood up there and read us the back of a cereal box. I wondered what was going through his mind, other than, I just have to get through this to collect my check. Not that it mattered anyway. The whole event was a ruse to give du Pont another of his own awards and boost his name in public.

  After the football player, another guy got up to present du Pont with his award. I’ve never attempted this, but it must be difficult to, with a straight face, say good things about a man who was receiving an award he had made up for the sole reason of giving it to himself. From the way the guy struggled with the presentation, it looked difficult.

  When du Pont received the award, I didn’t clap. I just sat there and stared at the farce of a scene. Du Pont thanked a billion people no one had heard of and tried to sound like a wrestling expert.

  At the end of his acceptance speech, he addressed us in the back of the room/hallway. He obviously had been drinking and paused several times to try to create drama. Then he blurted out, “Practice tomorrow at seven A.M.!” Of course, he wouldn’t be there. He would never get up that early for practice.

  He walked around the room after the ceremony, stumbling often, going from one guest to another, sometimes accidentally spitting in their faces, so he could receive congratulations that were as fake as his latest award.

  CHAPTER 14

  Protest at the Olympics

  Moving to Villanova was supposed to bring the stability I had been looking for since finishing my college career. But now I had lost my job, and being around du Pont was sapping my will to compete. Getting away from du Pont’s influence was my best bet to win gold at the Seoul Olympics, but I couldn’t for financial and training reasons. Things were going so badly for me that even a normally routine procedure to fix my eyesight went terribly wrong.

  My nearsightedness had contributed to my loss a
t the 1986 World Championships because I was unable to see the scoreboard after FILA had changed its angle to the mat. I had thought about getting eye surgery to eliminate the problem. John had fired me but I still had health insurance, and I thought that would be a good time to have the surgery.

  But the procedure didn’t fix the problem. I was still nearsighted and had slits in my eyes for nothing. I was taking painkillers for the severe pain. But I was having to think about my future at the same time, too. There was no chance of finding another college job that time of the year. Plus, the trials for the World Championships were a few months away. I was in great shape and probably more confident than I had ever been in my career. I couldn’t afford to let this opportunity slip.

  Joining the military became an option again, but basic training would run through the trials and I didn’t think the military would let me skip out to compete in them. Yet my money wouldn’t last long enough that I could keep training without income.

  I went over to John’s house. He was drunk and babbling incoherently, then started freaking out and yelling and screaming. I couldn’t tell what had him so upset, but he kept asking, “You understand what I’m saying?” “You understand what I’m saying?” “You understand what I’m saying?”

  I told John that I didn’t care if I coached at Villanova anymore, I just wanted to keep working out with Dan Chaid. John said he would think about it, and I went back to my apartment.

  John started calling me every day.

  “You can stay,” he’d say. “But you have to move onto the farm if you do.”

  That didn’t make sense. He had fired me from Villanova but wanted me to live on his farm? Rent-free?

  He kept offering, though, and even told me that if I would trade in my Camaro, he would replace it with a Lincoln Grand Marquis. Financially, I had few options. Not having to pay rent would alleviate a big financial burden. So about three or four weeks after getting fired, I moved out of my apartment and into the chalet on his estate. John’s mother lived in the mansion and he lived in both the mansion and the chalet, but he spent more time in the mansion. I assumed—I hoped—he would stay in the mansion more when I moved into the chalet, but he didn’t.