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Yo, yo, yo, yo, we're going to get started. Good morning. Good evening. Good night. Good afternoon.
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You could have been anywhere in the world right now, but your attention is here. Take a moment to be present and recognize that it is now, right now.
Whether you're right now is working, running, exercising, cleaning, laying down, flying,
driving, let's just be grateful we're alive, baby.
Failure can be frightening.
However, as Winston Churchill reminds us, success is all about going from failure to
failure without losing enthusiasm.
This is I Will Not Lose Podcast, where we set out to prove that everything is learned
from failure if we persevere and recognize it as one step closer to success.
I'm your host, Tony Ortiz.
Let's jump right in.
we got a very special guest on the airwaves today is brian peon thank you what's going on man oh not
much not much i've been wanting to visit here and and do this with you so yeah we've been talking
about this for a few months now i'm a rookie this is my getting my cherry popped here
now you've done radio before though no uh no just like basic stuff for you know companies
i've worked for if if i had television would interview me or something like that but no
not really radio this is my first experience oh man it's live it's live so i know people are
wondering uh what the p stands for in my name yeah it's quite an interesting story it's my
initial for for uh patrick but how how it got started it just became an animal of its own to
the point where i've you know won stuff or or been to places where they've announced my name and
people would come up to me and say they said brian i thought there was somebody different i i thought
your name was Pete. I said, no, my name's not Pete. I said, that's an old nickname that just
won't leave me alone. So how it started, there was a guy when I was in high school
who was a very good quarterback and he played football for a neighboring high school.
And his name was very similar to mine. It was actually, uh, Brian Young was his name
and he he was very successful i think he played for northwestern he was a quarterback very good
and but the funny part was because the morning call would screw up people's names left and right
butcher it shout out to the morning call yeah i loved the paper last time i read it
um and uh so they had all the stats of this poor bastard of everything he did in high school
which was incredible he was an incredible quarterback and whose picture do they have
next to it but mine who played for a rival high school didn't even have a quarterback number you
know i was a linebacker i was number 66 oh man so uh it was funny and i put it on my refrigerator
for a while as a joke some of my friends did this a gag but that's kind of how it started because
i finally when wrestling came around that was my gig that was my sport and they had something was
written up in the paper you know i finally got some press you know i yeah yeah yeah beat some
kid and in a tournament and you know it's probably in sixth place the hell if i remember but they
finally had my name and of course didn't they screw it up the same way they had a write-up of
all these different kids that were going to be uh in this next event and and who to look forward to
and they do a write-up about me and they have the picture of the kid from my rival high school they
screwed it up again so i was at my buddy rick's house and i got on the phone and i don't know
what possessed me to do this i guess i was that age and i called up the morning call and i called
him on it and i said my name is brian p younty so it was maybe about a week later they had
like i don't know if it was an apology or what it was they said a correction
the person who was in that in that um in in the last article was brian p and they wrote it real
big yaunty didn't even spell my last name right so it it was an ongoing joke so if i was ever
introducing myself i would just introduce myself as peyote because of that event and i liked i like
making people laugh and so that stuck with me for that reason to the point where i would even
exacerbate it by making sure i'd spell it p e e so it would be extra offensive
for for people to ask me what the hell
yeah it's short for short for peewee now that's great it would have been great if in the correction
they put you and him next to each other like a street fighter versus bout like i met him i did
meet him i met him i was with some friends at a at a bar in one of those dumps in caddy or
northampton and i bumped into the guy and my friend called him out and said hey that's brian
p younty over there he goes oh man he's like cheers and but that was it that's wow that was
short-lived oh man but that's good i'm glad we could finally get you over here we've been talking
about doing a couple stuff you took me out the big disc golfer and you took me out uh a couple
times last year we're gonna go out a week ago this year but uh got that shoulder injury well
plus we both have adhd so we're procrastinators and by the time the end of the day rolls around
it's like ah i think i got other stuff i need to do yeah i was thinking it would be great to do
maybe throw some discs go down to the parkway after this but it'll probably be dark till we
get out of here we'll see yeah it's what one day quarter after seven now but it's about the it's
about the journey not about the destination right if you have not played disc golf i recommend you
at least try it anyone out there who's listening it's a lot of fun and when i first saw it first
time i ever played it i thought this is the dumbest thing i've ever seen
and that was because my friends kicked my ass in it very badly and i don't like to lose i'm a sore
loser so i said that it was uh it was for pussies and then i played with some people who could throw
that thing like two football fields and i said holy man so there is another level to this it's
not just with your buddies losing by you know one to ten strokes and i started to learn you know how
to throw it that far just to try and do that you know i didn't really care about the score and then
once i figured out how to throw it really far then i started caring about the score and then i started
having fun and won a couple tournaments and yeah i was gonna say you were telling me about some
tournaments i want to just go along for the ride i got no no uh will to win a tournament but i would
go just to participate in one that would be real fun yeah and and you can that's probably the most
beautiful thing about it is it's the thing that i was amazed at with it and what made me fall in
love with it i've been doing it 20 some years now is it's such a huge community it's in every single
state like there's so much of it in the lehigh valley but and in pennsylvania alone but we're
literally one of the weakest states for it so you can go to new york you can go to california you
can go to florida you can go to all these other places and they have more courses there than they
do here and every single course is different sometimes it's some dinky little nine hole
course that somebody made behind a school another one will be a beautiful 27 hole course it looks
like a country club and 99 of them are free to play so it's definitely an experience i'd recommend
for anybody oh man free to play it can't be that that's the original the original free to play
you know what uh i just had a thought man if you had a disc golf video game like you remember tony
hawks we had tony hawks pro skater and everybody like the reason why i think that game had
something to do with skateboarding being in the olympics now because it just became so popular
so popular and then around the world everywhere you know what i mean yeah if if there would just
be a bunch of gamers getting into disc golf oh man i don't know i don't know man it got pretty
popular late 70s into the 80s that's when it really kicked in that i saw and remember i had
a good friend of mine from high school went pro and we had a couple kids from my town of katasako
that that went pro is it in the olympics uh disc golf not disc golf i'm talking about skateboarding
oh yeah yeah you did say you're no yeah disc golf is nowhere even near the olympics um it's still
just a small unknown game that just keeps growing rapidly every year but you were saying you're pro
skateboarding buddy from your town yep the kid that got me to retire from skateboarding
danny pencil if you're out there love you brother um he had a i guess they called it a three-quarter
pipe or because it's a half pipe but it's not real big and danny at the time wasn't real big
either shorter than myself and he was a really good skateboarder and i thought i was a really
good skateboarder at but i had only skated on the street and i saw some of these humongous ramps
that guys had and there's no way i would ever even drop in on one of those but so danny's ramp
gave me confidence and i went up to the top of it and he was trying to warn me about how steep the
drop in is he's telling me squat down you know squat down even more i'm like shut up danny just
get the hell out of the way i got this you know i'm street skater brian man i dipped in i thought
i was gonna ride that thing to the other side already contemplating my head like am i gonna
am i gonna try and do you know the 180 when i get up there you know i'm thinking way ahead
i drop in boy i i surfed on one foot on that skateboard for about three feet
kicked that thing up in the air hit my shoulder and my back so hard it knocked so much wind out
of me i mean i sounded like a zombie oh just
danny is laughing but at the same time i can see he has concern in his eyes
probably more concerned like is this kid's parents gonna sue my dad um but yeah oh at least
she got up for it man what doesn't kill you makes you stronger i think i gave danny the skateboard
after that because i know i i definitely hung it up after that i was not skateboarding i realized
that there was danny's level and then there was my level and if i couldn't get to danny's level
i was done i i can i can i can understand that we had actually my buddy johnny's better than me
but we had a we would ride around i have a lot of fun skateboarding now it's a johnny melendez uh
negan williams i think he's out in texas wow no uh trying to think jose sosa i don't know that
anybody went pro danny got sponsored danny was uh kevin cucker danny skated for five borough
was was who made his decks that's dope yeah he was he was a street skater for them competition
street skater you know who picks up decks now my son he got uh he got like a twenty dollar he goes
look at this dad it's had like the american flag on it or something but he's like these are forty
dollar trucks on it i paid 20 bucks for the whole skateboard the deck's probably 40 bucks i can
probably get he's all into seeing what stuff is i wonder what brand it is because i found out
there's a whole hidden market for skateboard decks old school ones okay like literally if
you had an old powell peralta one somebody would give you 650 bucks for it plus huh i've seen like
the old mark gonzalez one go for you know six to eight hundred bucks there it's no joke it's
the collector's market oh man you you know the stuff with collector you know i've seen your
disc golf collection man yeah i uh it all started with wrestling shoes was how i got into collecting
that's what you you did i think you tell me again i had and that's part of the reason why i love your
podcast so much. Um, the, I will not lose podcasts because I have the same mentality and I, I, I like
to encourage that mentality and I like others that encourage that mentality, but it was a time
in my life where my business went under and my wife and I were ready to, to move on and to move
to new york to help her with her education um and to make a long story short i was broke and
by the way my wife's internship was in manhattan so those don't go together it was like not only
was i broke but i was just digging my heels into the mountain i was about to try and sprint up
in the next six weeks. So, um, but there was one thing that I really wanted to accomplish before
we went on that journey. And that was, I really wanted to propose to my wife
and I really wanted to get her a ring that was at least one carat or more. And I wanted the diamond
to be clean. I looked into it and there's ways you can cut costs. You know, there's like
manufactured diamonds, all kinds of crap that's out there. And I didn't want that because it
needed to symbolize what I felt for this woman. And also, you know, the, the, the solidity of
my marriage. So I started as a coach when I was coaching at Catasauqua, there were a lot of kids
on the team that didn't have wrestling shoes. And I was tired of seeing kids at practice roll
their ankle because they had to wrestle in their socks or their bare feet which is even more nasty
you know a lot of these hillbilly kids scrapping with one another got some nasty feet so i tried
to get as many cheap wrestling shoes as i could and back in the day it was like all right ebay
and i found some here and there six eight bucks picked up a bunch had them in my cart and just as
i'm about to check out like ah i wonder what my old wrestling shoes that i had from high school
wonder wonder if they got a pair of those i'll see if i can purchase them and dust those old
things off man they didn't have them in my size but they had the exact red white and blue combat
speed adidas pair that i had was selling for 136 dollars some odd cents there was like 68 bids for
it so i knew the guy started at 99 cents because that's what everybody did back then and people
were going nuts for it and then the light bulb went off wait a minute when i wrestled for the
army i knew that the lehigh valley was way more advanced in wrestling than any place else
just just by reputation alone so i knew a lot of the mom and pop shops around us would still have
these old school shoes so i started doing my research started looking up all the old pairs
i could think of that i might be able to get my hands on and they were selling for three to five
hundred dollars a pair oh shit so i went to every single sporting goods store that i could find
and i said do you have yeah these shoes are nice i like what you have on the wall
i'll take that one i'll take this one if it was old enough but most of the time i would ask them
do you have anything older like some old stock in the basement because i i need these for kids
you know for for the wrestling this guy snake oil sales dude so they would say oh yeah i'd go down
there and i would say what do you want for them you know because they're already cracking jokes
as you're going down the steps what do you want for them eight twelve a pair maybe those i would
say 20 you know and then they look at you like you know trying to see are you gonna take it yeah
i would just look at them i would politely say that's a fair price i'll take all of them and i
would lay my credit card down and that those store owners especially back then when you know
sporting goods stores were still alive they were dying so you know you got a guy that's coming in
to throw six hundred dollars down eight hundred dollars that's a great sale in that business for
them so it was a win-win in that regard but lord knows i never went back and said hey yeah can i
get some wine so i always made sure that i bought out as much stock as i could because those business
wouldn't be around that long but yeah i raised well over i think i made 14 to 16 000 bucks
in a time of about eight months of just selling off shoes that i found and then
say the numbers again you said 14 000 yeah well probably 14 to 16. um and that was in about six
to eight months and that was because there was a seasonality to it especially when i got a big
chunk of them so i was literally photographing and sawing through 30 pairs that i would list a day
yeah and then had my own ebay store and then kicked it to the next level which i realized
was easier on me because then people could email me and then people could make at that time that's
what you had to have in order for people to make an offer to you like a best buy offer and
i cleaned out all those shoes to the point where we could even before we left to live in manhattan
we had some money to help us but also could join the family to go to the beach for a couple days
and you know do little things here and there and still pay still pay the bills oh man i'm
I'm a hustler. I will not lose.
I'm a hustler. This is, I will not lose investment advice and career.
That's, that's good, man. This is a,
I think somebody will definitely be able to gain from that because I'm just,
I'm doing the math there. I mean, that's most and most,
that's more than you could make waiting tables some places.
Yeah. It got scary there for a second, just because of, you know,
tax implications and things like that. But at the time,
i was just at the time i was liquidating my or or closing my um my corporation that i had my s
corporation and so because of the way that i was closing the business i didn't take much of a tax
hit on it either and was able to kind of plead poverty a little bit on it oh shit so that that
worked out to my advantage better than i had hoped that's nico where do you get the like uh
how do you recognize opportunity i guess i have an eye for demand um and i can
and don't get me wrong you know we can all think of of our failures in life where we thought
something was a sure thing but it's all about how accurately you learn from that lesson and then
apply it moving forward. So I've always been able to recognize something that's very similar to
something else and saying, well, that last thing was successful because of X, Y, Z. And if I can
match that X, Y, Z with this future thing, like disc golf discs, which I just discovered people
were really holding onto and really held a lot of personal value to specific ones and specific
ones that were theirs. And, and it's something you lose all the time. So, so that there's your
demand. And I started to see the demand around me. So then learning the lesson that I had learned
previously from the wrestling shoes, which was a gift from God, Allah, Buddha, whatever you believe
in karma um it was a gift that was given to me so i'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth
i just started grabbing those discs and throwing them in a rubbermaid container and
keeping them in storage first in my basement then in my mother-in-law's basement then in a storage
locker then and just kept collecting them and then lo and behold go on ebay the most in-demand
ones were the early ones that they made back in the day because people like to hang them on their
wall or they like to throw them and you can't find that exact plastic and that exact design
ever again than those years that it was made so it created a whole collectability market that is
scarcity it's ridiculous yeah i was surprised so give me just some numbers there it doesn't have
to be the most expensive disc you've ever sold if you don't want to throw it out there but i don't
mind saying that so i know people are listening wondering so how much is a disc go for now a lot
of the people that i deal with um they're collectors also so i always give them i always
lean to give them favorable deals um because they'll they'll keep buying from me and so you
take care of those guys um but online if if it's on an auction then let the wolves feast
uh the most expensive disc that i've sold was two thousand dollars
that was for a piece of plastic that was made in 2015 that was valued at that amount and right now
if you go on ebay and you look up disc golf and you see what pops up as far as equipment discs
and you sort that to the highest price and your eyes will pop out of your head and it's because
this game goes all the way back to the 70s and it became extremely popular in the 90s
now to the point where since the late 90s to today they play for over two million dollars
a year in a professional league so some of you are going to try disc golf now
yeah well listen somebody's going to try to make that disc golf game
it's been made out there programming there's a couple of their disc golf games yeah a couple
apps for your phone too oh man yeah i'll have to check it out i mean there's nothing on tony hawk
level i'm gonna give you that that game but gets major prop especially for music wise oh yeah that
that's what made that game more than anything yeah the soundtracks were ridiculous on those
shout out to uh beat of the month podcast they did a video game music and tony hawk got uh
got featured in one of their trivia tournaments or one of the i think it was superman from tony hawks
but uh yeah man that's that stuff's iconic it's so psychotic um but definitely want to get out
there it's got to get a little bit warmer i don't want to i mean i used to i used to run in really
cold weather and i would love it and i just i don't know if i was young i don't know what but
i'm just not in that mindset anymore like i i will not lose but i will also not run
outside in 26 degree weather and i used to scrap with people in a sweaty padded locker
so if i did that as a wrestler and and stuck to it i can be comfortable in just about anything but
i too i'm a fair weather disc golfer and a fair weather outside person too there's no reason then
suffering you know suffer just for the hell of it 50 layers just to say you did it well you said you
uh wrestled in the army yes you want to talk about that a bit yes um i did freestyle and greco-roman
I wrestled at Catasauqua for a little while, was decent. I wasn't great. And I left early. I remember just, the coaches that I had, they were great coaches, legendary coaches, but they were kind of slowing down and were done with it.
and i wasn't seeing the same effort with the team that i was put through as a freshman sophomore and
junior and i was my junior year which is the year that i would have been the best when i was the
strongest fastest and was crushing kids at every camp um i dislocated my knee and i had to sit the
whole season out. But I will go on record saying I did letter that year because snake oil salesman
Brian was so good. I had beefed up about man, 25, 26 pounds. So all they would see the smoke and
mirrors they saw the kid who they remembered who was pretty scrappy a year ago at 119 who now weighs
like 140 pounds and he's got pecs and you know he's he's looking like a beast the kids would
remember me who were on the the teams that i that i was on prior to that they probably shift matches
and yeah and that's great i got four fits yeah and it was bad like i had a this creaky knee
brace on and it was like as i'm walking out for them to raise my hand but yeah at the end of the
year i had a better record than most kids on my team because they were they weren't so solid that
year and uh but yeah and then uh then my senior year you know they they were kind of done with it
and they were supporting one kid who was a good friend of mine um who was a sophomore and i
supported him as well um but i'm like i don't need to be going through these practices anymore if
you're really only coaching that kid because i'm coaching that kid too you know on the side away
from practice and all of that and i kind of lost my luster for it but then when i was in the army
uh i was going in a different direction you know just looking for something that that had structure
to it you know where i could build a career and my whole family has been in the military
throughout history my grandfather was a colonel and uh i was kind of at a crossroads where like
Like, I don't know what I want to do because my original job was on tanks and they had some, they had a wrestling room right after basic training at, at my base at Fort Riley.
And they had a wrestling room that was connected to the main gym, the old gym.
And I went in there and because somebody told me it existed and I watched these guys scrapping back and forth.
And I heard him run in their mouths about this kid was a state champion.
This kid over here was a regional champion.
This kid was that.
And I looked at my buddy and I said, you know, I thought I was putting wrestling in the past, but these guys suck.
And I'm about to have a field day.
I'm going to start dunking these dudes left and right.
Like, watch this.
man i went out to the car i got my gym bag out of my 1991 honda prelude
got my gym bag out threw on those red white and blue adidas and i thrashed these kids
and because i had wrestled freestyle a little bit in high school they had a team um that uh
um that the late Tossie family and uh John Togus used to run um rest in peace to all of them
rest in peace uh and it was called Talon and it was a a great team back in the day where we used
to wrestle freestyle against other kids other schools and also other countries um so I had
experience with it and I just kept tearing kid after kid after kid and then they had a post
tournament. And by the time the post-tournament came around, they had a kid at my weight class
who was already on the all army team years prior, had had an injury, went back to a regular unit,
and then was just practicing down there. Well, it just so happened he was in my weight class.
So not only did I continue to beat those kids, I beat him. Now he was no cakewalk. He was no
cakewalk at all right yeah and very experienced you know somebody who's done international
wrestling is they're like a brick to go against offensively defensively you know i had a lot more
tricks in the bag against him but offensively they're like a brick they're very good at hand
fighting they're very hard to shoot against they're very hard to grapple with what weight was
this at i at that point would have been about 160 like one and it went in kilograms and god if i can
remember what half of them were um but but that gives you that gives me an idea yeah it was about
160 pounds is where i was i'm gonna say it was a shade under that like 154 which would have been
a college weight um and yeah i so i beat him and then after that was invited to go to fort benning
um wrestle for a bit and wrestled in a couple events here and there and then they had the
armed forces tournament which i won and then i came back and it was kind of like i was done with
it to be honest with you i separated my shoulder real bad in the army yeah well no it was it was
because of wrestling another side story um i came back ran into an old high school buddy who was
running his mouth who played fullback at lafayette college and his frat brothers thought that he
couldn't be beaten and he was a big man definitely 50 pounds more than me at the time i see where
And yeah, you know, stupid alcohol and stupid testosterone.
And I wrestled that kid on the fraternity floor in the basement.
And I guarantee you the Fiji house will not forget because that place was rocking.
They set us up like, like it was King Kong Bundy versus Hulk Hogan or John Cena versus whoever, wherever the hell he used to beat on.
They were going nuts.
And all I remember was waking up on that nasty ass Fiji floor, having no idea how I got there
and why my shoulder was killing me because I had slept on it.
So woke up the next day.
My buddy was sore.
He told me I hit him with a bunch of freestyle moves and he had called it quits.
And then I was hanging out with some of his friends and then, you know, I fell asleep on the floor apparently. So the whole plane ride home shoulder was killing me. I get to practice. I can't even do one pushup and I would lead the team in PT and in pushups and sit ups all the time in the PT score.
and also it was i was really tenacious with those tests because it helped you get promoted and
things like that and i could not do a push-up and my shoulder was killing me and they said you need
to go see doc so okay i go in this room there's three trainers in there and that's what they were
they were docs you know medical doctors for the army but more like a sports trainer kind of kind
were like were they mds real cheap no no no ain't nobody floating an md in that room
it was specialist jones and pfc larry eyeballing you up and also got one finger on the
the manual they got in basic training oh man and uh they all three of them look at me
and this is how obvious it was to everyone except for myself apparently
and i said it's out what do you mean it's out i go like you know i'm out for the match or
what are you what are you saying there no he goes your shoulder it's out we can see it it's
it looks like you have a broken collarbone i'm like no it's not my collarbone i said
and i can rotate it and they're like no no no no and i'm sure it's just crunch crunch crunch
crutch shoot so it was one of those moments where one guy gripped me up like we were about to arm
wrestle and the other guy kind of went underneath and they just rotated my elbow just a little bit
and it went well boom popped into place and holy god that was the most pain i had felt and also the
pleasure at the same time because it was released and i got it oh man and i was thinking man
that was like a six to eight hour flight with layovers i had with this thing my god so um
i stopped wrestling um because the army was terrible at medical procedures and somebody
who was on the boxing team a guy named hog was his name a very good boxer uh he showed me the
explorative surgery that the military did on him and he had a scar that was humongous
and he said you get out of here he goes it's just a dot here and a dot there to fix your shoulder
he goes these people don't know what they're doing oh shoot so i got up said i'm not wrestling
anymore which is odd for somebody who just won the championship but then i went back to fort
Riley. And then I helped train a bunch of guys and I really fell in love with coaching and all
the guys that I trained ended up in the finals, um, for this, uh, the post championship, the same
one that I had won previously to get onto that team the year prior. Um, they had all made it to
the finals. None of them won, but they all made it to the finals and none of them expected to get
there and the the shame of it was the one guy who didn't get to compete was my boy uh chief
uh very large native american who wrestled in the heavyweight division chief got so good
from me practicing with him i could not score a point on that kid and i was an armed forces
champion so for me to just teach a guy and him to pick it up that fast he was an extraordinary
athlete well wow chief you know ended up for some disciplinary reason um he he wasn't allowed to
wrestle in the tournament and which was you know some trumped up charges of a sergeant that didn't
like him because chief was the kind of guy to tell you to go pound sand um yeah he didn't get
to wrestle in that tournament but he was the best wrestler i ever met as far as training and
competed against so he is who got my red white and blue combat speeds oh man he brings it back
to the combat speeds yep there's a there's a funny ending to that to the whole thing um there are
some wrestling shoes today that sell for a lot of money but adidas the company caught on to it
they realized, wait a minute, we can't sell the shoes that we got now for 60 bucks. They're just
rotten on the shelves, but there's people paying a thousand dollars for these pairs of wrestling
shoes. We're going to keep our eye on this. And I noticed the shift change all in one year. And
thank goodness it was when I had sold my last pairs. Adidas re-released all the old shoes that
they used to make and a lot they weren't the same exact style some of them some of them damn near
were but it was like a newer futuristic style that i'll be honest with you i'd rock them
they were cool yeah but because they had taken that nostalgia away from it to where to the naked
eye you couldn't really tell so much of the difference unless you really looked at it or
really were a collector and nobody really cared about that no that's when they reprint stuff i
mean i think it's like that with pokemon cards like they you can get stuff that's not first
generation but it just makes the other stuff crazier wrestling really is when you think about
the wrestling shoe thing it really is a very unique market because when you play any other
sport there's 10 million different accent items you can add and don't get me wrong i've seen it
in wrestling too a guy will have like a bright neon colored knee pad or something like that but
that's it let's look at the other crap you gotta wear when you wrestle there is nothing flattering
about the wrestling singlet a singlet that's disgusting it's like a go out here you're
going to be a cirque de soleil performer today and and the earmuffs like i understand the protection
because you know i've seen what the dog-eared gremlin people look like when their ears get
all boxed up cauliflower yeah but i mean you can't tell me in all this time that somebody
didn't dream up a better design or system than the crap that they've been rolling he's got it on
that uh that trophy i got i think he's wearing those big ones they they got a little bit better
they had like the um but i didn't like those ones i preferred the older designs that fit more like
these damn earphones like these earphones are slender compared to that yeah no and then it
stuck around and i had long hair when i wrestled so uh i think for i think my my final year and uh
yeah i would go i would get it braided right before a match like an ass pay my like i would
work overnight to get my hair braided to go and wrestle like i i was living i was living two lives
at the same time i should not have been working in high school but uh anytime high school maybe
but not 10th grade i had coaches i don't know why maybe that was the way caddy coached um
they would encourage you anytime you wrestled somebody that had long hair,
teach them a lesson that use it as a weapon against them. Um, and I'll never forget the
first year I was at districts. Um, I was wrestling against this kid who was really good. I mean,
I really, it, it was immediately in the first period. I realized that this kid was better than
me. I was probably about to get beat and go home early. The referee stops the match. The kid's
kicking my ass pretty good. And he blows the whistle and he goes, ah, I can't have this kid
with his long hair like this. He's going to have to cut that or you're going to need a shower cap
or something like that. And his coaches were like, well, we don't have anything like that.
and they're like like how much do we need to take off and he he said you just need to cut like by
the length of the neck and this kid had this long rat tail i'm pretty sure he was from lee hyten
and he had this long rat tail and he takes a look at me takes a look at the ref and goes cut my hair
are you shitting me this is good luck for states i'm a track athlete you can have this wrestling
crap good luck kid shakes my hand rips off the velcro things throws him at the referee and just
peaced out and i'm like i hope to be that guy one day yeah i hope to not give a damn about this so
much that i could just peace out and walk off my career off the mat like that i don't know if i
would have made that decision man if you're listening i want to know who you are yeah
mystery man from lee hyten you're probably running a successful car dealership the username is going
to check out in the comments it'll be like good luck rat tail yeah rat tail e245 after hearing
In my prior story, now he's going to want a rematch in front of family and friends.
Ay, ay, ay.
Oh, man.
No.
I don't even know.
There's a lot of guys I couldn't even shout out from matches.
I just don't remember.
Well, I remember the names like yesterday of the kids that were really good.
The kids that put the wood to me.
There's one kid from Northampton.
his name was ryan gumlock and he was he was a class act he was very good but just his his
technique was damn near unbeatable and i know it's not unbeatable because unfortunately he never won
a state title he placed third um but he was every year his record was like 52 and 1 52 and 2
so the guy who beat him was whoever the guy was that made him not become the state champion
yeah or in the running for it and but he was one of the best that i ever ran into
but there were lots of names you know lots of great kids lots of great kids on my team
and i'll tell you some of the greatest kids the greatest wrestlers were the guys who weren't the
state champions some of the greatest coaches uh shout out to randy cruz at bethlehem catholic
high school um one of the greatest coaches and i remember him back then and he like me
had a flair for that's a really cool move i want to learn it and then i want to teach it to this
dude over here because it'd be really good for him he had that compassion to spread it and i found
that that was the poison that actually hurt a lot of people in that sport too is the people who were
too selfish with it who were trying to you know keep all their own secrets in their own bags so
they could make sure that they would win the bout out to be on the team well you're cutting yourself
short buddy because yeah you might be able to make the team but guess what now we're all gunning to
teach him a move to beat you next time so no i i understand i i understood that even then that
And sometimes the best coaches aren't, you know, I mean, don't get me wrong.
There's great coaches that had the record and stuff, too.
But I got to coach with a lot of great coaches, too.
I mean, there were so many.
Coach Crowell at Nazareth did some camps with him, helped him out when he was in between when he before he went to Nazareth.
he uh he was helping a lot of the teams up at banger high school how i somehow got wrapped
into helping some people and he was he was a fun person to learn from uh uh coach togus uh from
parkland he was a he was a legend my my high school coach mike connor from katasakwa he was
another one but there you go uh greg strobel uh who was the head coach at lehigh for many years
that man, every time I was around him, he was one of those coaches that never said much.
Like when he, when he would coach and he coached legendary teams at Lehigh,
the wrestler just had to look at him when they needed advice. And he knew the answer like that.
And I never met a coach like him. I remembered I was at banger and it was a night where coach
Crowell wasn't there. It was just Greg Strobel. And he had retired from Lehigh. He wasn't their
coach anymore. And there was this one kid who was struggling against this other kid trying to pin
him. And the other kid kept getting out. And Greg Strobel saw this kid get him again. And he watched
him fighting, watched him fighting. But this time the kid would not give up. I mean, he's just
hold him on with everything he's got and i came over and i said listen if you keep doing that
you're going to run out of gas a trick i want you to do is take your fingers and dig them into the
mat like claws and you can hold his leg that way and you can hold his his head and his shoulder
that way and greg strobel saw that and he came running over and he goes better yet now take your
fingers and crawl them to one another and i watched this kid just wiggling his fingers
locked it up like it was nothing pin the guy flat that was all he said he did like an about face
he knew it was gonna work before the kid even moved a digit turned around and sat down
and just kind of looked up and went uh yeah and i'm like man there there are people that are that
talented that have just seen it all yeah they see something they see something we don't see
i gotta shout out uh tommy derhammer yes derhammer my coach and uh very can't can't
Shout him out without Birch.
B. Birch.
Ah, Billy Birch.
Billy Birch, yeah.
I'm familiar with both of those gentlemen.
Yeah.
Billy Birch wrestled two people from my high school.
Brad Lauer and Joe Stofko.
Lost to one, beat the other.
And your coach, Der Hammer, back when I had a trophy and awards business,
i designed his coach of the year award oh yeah for district 11 um which for the last time i saw him
and talked to him at a deer fundraiser for basketball he uh he told me he loves it and
he still has it has his head gear in it so yeah that's nice i remember lasering it in my living
i don't think i saw i don't think i was at the deer of wrestling reunion last year i have to
check that out this year it's like something i like to stick a part of but a bunch of those guys
are still getting together that's cool that you know we i i went to katasakwa and we used to
practice with them every single year we would go over there quite a few times and scrap with them
and i think you said you really didn't do that did did you practice with caddy at all were they
still coming over there not caddy we were practicing with um not saukin valley what's the
other new saukin valley the blue and white southern lehigh not southern salisbury salisbury
that's the one yeah i always get salisbury those three that you just said i always get those mixed
up they're like some shade of blue it's a small town but um no we would go with salisbury we did
central a few times um we would go up to uh penn argile my coach der hammer took us around some
day he would you know and he'd say this sat only on like a saturday we'd go and do something or if
it was before something i think the farthest we went was penn argile uh becca becca we would go
over and train at becca and uh is it sal was salad becca at that time i want to say i was
training with crivalero yeah um i can't remember if he was still with the old guard of coaches yet
or if that was when sal came over there i don't know we'll have to check i go back if i could
go back now like i document everything podcasting but i have three albums that are nowhere to be
found if you're listening to this or if you tag somebody who has my first album i just thought
about that somebody probably we sold like 200 copies my senior year somebody has it stored
somewhere in an old cd case or something i just need it can have scratches on it i'll put it out
with the with the scratches i just want to put it out digitally i want to play it for my son
but um i think we can start landing this plane soon man yeah um one thing you you kind of talked
to me about earlier that i'm sure we'll elaborate on in a future episode but the new the new uh
collectible thing um beyond you know disc golf crap which is something i discovered is definitely
cryptocurrency yeah and and that's a topic that not enough people are diving into and i'd like
to do like an entire podcast episode with you so you could title it as that too to get the yeah
seo for it but uh cryptocurrency is definitely a a lucrative future thing and until you learn
the technology um that then uh if you're a skeptic like i am especially with investments
um you're kind of flying blind and just throwing money in different directions but when you
understand the technology and what the future purpose of it can be you're at a ground floor
of investing that is literally pennies on the dollar so if you're looking for anything out there
to help you to enhance like maybe you got started with a retirement plan late in your life and i am
not licensed or authorized to give this advice so you know what do you mean man this is i will not
i'm not and and you're always supposed to say that so yeah if you lose your ass doing this
because you made stupid decisions go pound sand but no i i mean it like of of all of the
opportunities that are out there it's a 100 time to 300 time uh whatever value of what you're
putting into it and and there are people that are losing a lot of money because guess what we ain't
doing with it like we're not we're not really trading with cryptocurrency yet but the advantages
are so steep versus the disadvantages and it puts so much money back in people's pockets
and takes the crooked banks out of it and i don't mean banks period we always need banks
um the crooked banks the ones that are charging you fees out the wazoo for every breath you take
with your money cryptocurrency was kind of the pirated way away from the banks many years ago
um and it's grown in momentum so much that the united states we are 12th in line
as far as popularity growth and everything there are entire countries that are using this as
currency and have been and that's why new currencies continue to come out that support
different markets so you'll have to do your own homework on the ones that work but if there's
anything if if anyone's out there seeking um an opportunity to to make some money in a future
investment every single one of the apps that sell these things will cash you out instantly so it's
one of the most low risk things that i've ever gotten into but also the most lucrative as far
as investments go and i know my man tony here has started to do it no absolutely and i did what you
said which was research and um i'm not even all the way in there's still more research that i want
to do got a foot just to be able to watch something and and check it out but um definitely
something i want to check out and this is coming from the guy that made sixteen thousand dollars in
seven or eight months realizing an opportunity with something like wrestling shoes and
disc golf so uh discs reselling discs so yeah again this is not advice nobody comes here
for news or advice or anything like this but i think it was great to have you on to find out
who you are thank you let the guests know about it you're definitely welcome to come back when
you have i know there's some other things we've talked about off camera that johnny's phone
we got going on i want to be here to witness this thing
absolutely absolutely but um let's see i don't have my notes up with the exit so i'm going to
completely wing it man this is i will not lose stories of success learned from failure to support
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