Foxcatcher Page 18
The mansion was old and in need of repair. The chalet was new. In addition to the fortresslike steel blinds, it had a kitchen with the most modern appliances available, a fully stocked bar and a nice piano in the living room, a Jacuzzi room, and bedrooms on opposite ends of the place. My bedroom was surprisingly small, and the mattress was too soft. It was like sleeping on a hammock. That’s fitting, because I never felt comfortable in the house. The chalet appeared much nicer, but my apartment was a significantly better place to live.
I moved in prepared to make a quick exit if necessary. Other than my clothes, I took little more than two bags of workout gear with me and a pin collection I had won after winning the ’87 Worlds, with pins from all the countries in the tournament. I rented a storage unit to hold the rest of my possessions, including all my medals and awards. I wasn’t going to consider his place my home, and I didn’t want John to see any of my awards because I didn’t want him looking at them and thinking he had helped me win even one of them.
The timeline is a little fuzzy for me all these years later, but after I had left Villanova and moved onto the farm, Metzger and du Pont had a falling out. Sometime during that period, I was talking on the phone with Hal Miles, a good friend who was head coach at Virginia State. I told Hal that du Pont should have started a freestyle program instead of an NCAA program because freestyle wouldn’t have required following NCAA rules.
I didn’t know until du Pont walked into my office after the call that he was listening to my end of the conversation.
“Should we drop the program?” John asked.
“Honestly,” I told him, “we shouldn’t have started it.”
“That’s it,” John said. “We’re dropping it.”
Metzger left the program in January or February. I was no longer part of the program and only went to Villanova to pick up wrestlers to work out with me in the wrestling room at the farm.
After the season, university officials announced the program was folding because of facilities, which meant the lack of a private wrestling room. I wasn’t around the university after being fired, so I have no knowledge of the university’s role in the closing of the program, but I do know that after du Pont overheard my phone call, he decided the program would be dropped.
The program needed to be put out of its misery. It was never a legitimate program. It was just du Pont and his money. Nothing more, nothing less.
Villanova’s administrators liked du Pont’s money and had been willing to tolerate him for his money. John wanted to have a wrestling team there, so they gave him an office and said he could have a team. But the program was doomed from the beginning because the administrators never gave us a wrestling room. If they were serious about having a wrestling program, they would have given us the Butler Annex. It would have been a minor concession considering the money John had donated to them. They didn’t really want wrestling on their campus, though. They didn’t really want du Pont on their campus, either. Who would? The guy was a disaster.
I get that it must be tough growing up rich, not knowing whether people like you because of your money or because of who you are. But it seemed like nobody at Villanova made any meaningful efforts to put any kind of controls or organization into the wrestling program. The program violated NCAA rules regarding recruiting. They left John alone and he took full advantage.
I felt bad for our wrestlers. I remembered what it was like my freshman year at UCLA when there was turmoil in that program. The mess associated with Villanova’s wrestling program went far beyond what I experienced at UCLA. It had to be stressful for the wrestlers to go through all the crap in the program and then have their wrestling careers yanked out from under them.
I couldn’t remember our record, but I recently came across an old newspaper article that said the program won eight out of thirty matches in its two years of existence. I was surprised to read we had done that well.
We were able to bring some good wrestlers in for the second year. Tom Rogers placed third in conference our second season. Lyndon Campbell wrestled at Cal State Fullerton after Villanova’s program folded, and he qualified for the NCAAs three times there. But even with good wrestlers in place, the program was so bad it was a no-win situation. As far as I know, the rest of the wrestlers’ careers ended along with the program. Fortunately, they were able to stay at Villanova because the university honored their scholarships for up to four years.
With the Villanova program folded, John turned his attention to amateur wrestling. He made his first donation to USA Wrestling that year, for $100,000. He gave another $100,000 the following year. From 1989 through 1995, he donated $400,000 per year.
He became an at-large member of USA Wrestling’s board of directors. His name began appearing in the titles of the US freestyle national championship and World Team Trials. The team’s warm-up suits bore his name. In 1991, John was named USA Wrestling’s Man of the Year, with the picture of a smiling John appearing on the cover of USA Wrestler magazine.
If his goal was to buy access and power, he achieved it.
—
After I moved onto the farm, one of my first orders of business was to do something about du Pont’s hair. He still had the same style as when I’d first met him—parted down the middle with long, gray roots beneath that Ronald McDonald red color.
I kept my head shaved and offered to give him a shave like mine. I offered not for his benefit, but mine. I don’t think he cared how he looked, and I just couldn’t look at that ugly hair any longer.
He agreed to let me cut his hair. I have to say, the new style didn’t look too bad. The shave improved his appearance significantly, but as long as he was on alcohol and drugs, he was always going to look like a bumbling fool.
John had undergone multiple knee surgeries, and in addition to being an alcoholic he was hooked on prescription medication. He would come to Villanova and blame his lack of balance on pain pills he took for the various injuries he had suffered, including both knees and his back. He blamed the knee braces he often wore for causing him to stumble. But he was both drunk and on pills. I don’t know exactly at what point this took place, because I didn’t see it until I moved to the farm, but cocaine became his preferred drug.
It sounds odd to say, but switching to cocaine was better for him. It was like the movie Flight with Denzel Washington, whose character would get drunk and they would sober him up by giving him cocaine. That’s the effect cocaine had on du Pont. After he had been on cocaine for a while, he became more coherent.
While I was living on the farm—and not while I was coaching at Villanova—John asked me if I knew where to get cocaine. I had done coke once or twice at parties before moving to Villanova when someone had given me some. (Coke was too expensive for me to buy.) I told John I knew a guy who had some, and John gave me fifteen hundred dollars to buy some for him. I picked some up, and we did coke two or three times together. The last time I did coke was in 1989. I took too much and my knees buckled and my heart started racing. That scared me enough to get me to stop.
One night, John showed me what looked to be a kilo of coke in a dresser drawer. Because of all he had done for the local police, he had an official badge. I witnessed him using the badge once to get into the Pennsylvania state wrestling championships. He did not have a ticket and, despite all his money, he didn’t want to pay a few bucks to purchase one. So he flashed his badge and walked right on in.
I guess he had even used the badge to get into the police’s evidence vault because the bag of cocaine read EVIDENCE in bright orange letters. John shoved a straw into the bag and took the biggest hit of coke I have ever seen anyone take. It was so big a hit that I feared something bad could happen to him.
“What do you want me to do if something happens, call 911?” I asked him, just in case.
“No,” he said. “Call my lawyer.”
There was never a period when I was
around John that he was not on something, whether it was alcohol, prescription meds, or cocaine.
•
The role John’s mother played in his life received a lot of publicity after my brother’s murder. John seemed to be a mama’s boy. He was the only one of the four du Pont children who didn’t leave the estate to have a family of his own. I didn’t have much occasion to talk with his mother, so I knew little about her personality.
She died in mid-August 1988 at the age of ninety-one. John took over his mother’s decision-making role for the estate, and he seemed comfortable with the step up in power. John changed the name of the estate from Lisiter Hall Farm to Foxcatcher Farm. I had never known anyone to call the place by its official name. Everyone I knew had been calling it Foxcatcher or, simply, “the farm.”
After his mother’s funeral, John had the mansion remodeled. His “awards,” athletic trophies, sports posters, and photos of him with celebrities were given places of prominence over his mother’s mementos.
The death of John’s mother has been frequently cited as a turning point in John’s life. His family members have said that when John’s mom died, his mental condition began deteriorating. I left for the Olympics that September and spent about two months after the Olympics living at the farm before moving away, so that’s not a long period of time. But I didn’t see any change in his mental condition immediately after his mother died.
I did not see anything different about him at all, and he didn’t say much to me about her death. From my dealings with him, it was almost as though her death didn’t happen.
—
The Olympics were to begin in mid-September in Seoul. I was actually ready to retire before then because my association with du Pont had drained the motivation out of me. I was tired physically, mentally, and emotionally. The only way out was to quit wrestling. But I couldn’t quit.
I had won the ’87 World Championship and was ranked as the favorite to win the Olympics and become the first American to win two Olympic gold medals in wrestling since George Mehnert in 1904 and 1908. And 1904 was the first Summer Games to include freestyle, and only the US team had competed that year.
Expectations were through the roof, and if the people who held those expectations could have spent just a couple of days with me when du Pont was around, they would have seen how unrealistic their confidence in me was.
Part of me thinks John wanted me to lose because he had never been a winner and didn’t want me to win. Another part of me thinks John wanted me to win so he could take credit for my success. Whichever was his true motivation, he wouldn’t stop distracting me.
I told him to leave me alone so I could focus.
He didn’t.
I told him I was going to have a T-shirt made that read SHUT UP AND LEAVE ME ALONE. He showed up with a box shortly thereafter. Inside were two T-shirts bearing that statement. One was for me, one for him. What I had intended to be my message to him, he made our message to the world. That demonstrated how John perceived himself: special and above others. In his mind, nothing applied to him, and he was royalty and could do whatever he pleased.
I was as unmotivated as I had ever been going into the Olympic qualifier in Topeka, Kansas, in mid-May. Mike Sheets beat me in the final match on a defensive pin. It was my first loss to an American in five years.
Going into the final wrestle-offs the next month in Pensacola, Florida, featuring the top six in each class, I was seeded second behind Sheets.
In my first match of a best-of-three, I was leading NCAA champion Rico Chapparelli 5–0, but mentally I’d had it. Rico came back and beat me badly, 16–8, and I simply didn’t care. I was done and ready to retire. If being around the likes of John du Pont was the only way I could compete, I could no longer do it. I went back to my hotel room, disgusted that I had allowed myself to be cornered into this seemingly impossible situation with no apparent solution. I destroyed everything in the room that wasn’t bolted down and with my head smashed a mirror to which I had taped the message “No prisoners.” I decided to forfeit out of the tournament, and ordered a ton of food from room service.
Hal Miles came to my room. He was the only person who had come to Florida solely for my benefit, and we had a long, serious talk. He told me I needed to quit thinking about the refs. Refs didn’t like my style. I defended myself with an almost impenetrable defense and then exploded on opponents, and for some reason, refs were always hard on me because of that. I was angry and depressed that night, and Hal listened to me as I poured my heart out. I told him it felt like everyone and everything was working against me. He told me that he was there for me and what the rest of world does shouldn’t matter to me.
“God gave Mark Schultz a haven where you can go and the world can’t touch you. That’s the mat,” he told me. “You make the world pay. You let the world know that once they walk out on that mat with Mark Schultz, their ass is in your world and you will decide who lives and dies. You’re the best in the world.”
“What do you expect from me?” I asked Hal.
“Be the type of man who is on his death bed and if the ones you love needed you to take a deep breath, get up, and go do what you’ve got to do, you would do it and then come back, lie down, let it out, and die. But don’t you dare die until you do what you’ve got to do. If you can’t do that, then you ain’t a damn man!”
I got up off the bed and Hal ran out of the door. The intensity in my room was thick. But more than anything he told me, it was his letting me know that he was there for me, whether I won or lost, that straightened out my thinking.
I unretired before telling anyone other than Hal of my plans. But with a loss to Rico, the only way I could get a shot at Sheets for the Olympic team spot was to beat Rico two straight the next night. I overhauled my wrestling philosophy for those matches. If that was going to be my last competition in my home country, I would wrestle for the first time the way I wanted to and damn the refs. I would attack my opponent’s groin and turn the matches into real fights with no regard for potential calls by any referee who might have it in for me.
If this is the way I’m going to be remembered by Americans, I thought, then they’re going to remember me for the explosive violence I could put behind my athletic ability and for the creative technician I had become.
I pinned Rico twice, once with one second left in the match, and went to the scales.
I was twelve pounds over the weight limit!
I had enjoyed too much of the room service during my brief retirement. I had only ninety minutes to make weight. Sheets followed me to the scale, made weight, and must have figured he would make the team by forfeit.
I’ve never heard of anyone dropping twelve pounds in ninety minutes. I puked up the first pound and a half. Then I put on four layers of sweats and ran around the arena for twenty minutes. I knew I would have to do more to lose the weight, so I dragged a stationary bicycle right in front of the arena’s doors so everyone would pass by me as they exited. A small crowd formed around me, including wrestlers who started rooting for me. I was riding the bike like a madman. Dave was right there beside me the entire time, encouraging me, pushing me, sticking ice up my nostrils to cool my airways without my taking in any liquids.
With ten seconds to make weight, I got on the scale. Someone told me they saw Sheets at a restaurant, and when he learned I had made weight, he spat out his food. That was the most weight I had ever lost in so short a time.
I swept Mike the next day by scores of 6–2 and 13–1, with the score of the final match proving to myself and the wrestling community just how good I had become. Dave lost in the 163 finals to Kenny Monday, a three-time All-American at Oklahoma State who would go on to win gold in the ’88 Olympics. Andre lost the 149.5 spot to Nate Carr, a three-time NCAA champion from Iowa State and eventual bronze medalist in Seoul.
Bruce Baumgartner and I were the only Americans from
the ’84 Olympics to qualify for the ’88 team. Coach Jim Humphrey said he would be disappointed if our team didn’t leave Seoul with five gold medals. He was counting on me to win one of those. We won only two, and I placed sixth. I retired after the Olympics. I quit before they were over.
I won my first five preliminary matches, including victories over the second-, fourth-, and fifth-place finishers at the previous World Championships.
I started by beating Alexander Nanev, my opponent from that stupid dual du Pont had set up, 4–0 despite injuring my right knee. Then I took care of Reiner Trik. The match was stopped with more than a minute remaining and me leading 16–1.
On the second day, Andrzej Radomski of Poland and I were tied 0–0 after the first period, but I turned it on to defeat him 8–1. Then I pinned Victor Kodei of Nigeria at 1:41. The pin came after I had jumped to a 5–0 lead. That night, I pinned East German Hans Gstoettner at 2:02 to move to 5-0 in the tournament.
On the next-to-last day of the 1988 Olympics, on the last day of my wrestling career, I lost 7–3 to the Soviets’ Aleksandr Tambovtsev. Necmi Gençalp of Turkey would be my opponent in the semifinals. With just the one loss, I still could have wrestled back for a chance at the gold medal.
But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to do it.
I had always said that it would be important to end my career with a big victory. That’s why as a senior at Oklahoma I couldn’t stand the idea of not winning the NCAA championship in my last year as a collegian. But on that day as I contemplated how I could live the rest of my life if I didn’t go out a winner, as a two-time gold medalist, there was only one scenario that seemed worse than losing.