JOHNSON
“I took up wrestling because I was tired of, honestly, being punished for people’s lack of dedication in football. I would go to football practice and the next thing you know, kids are in the bathroom smoking weed. And then the coach would come out and be like, ‘Ok, you guys run gassers all day.’ And I was like, this is BS.
On the football team, I was the smallest guy on the team. When I made tackles, I would jump on people’s back and call the teammates to help me, jump on me and take the guy down. I would jump on their backs, wrap my legs around them, and they’d be hopping away, and the rest of the team would kind of jump on me.”
BENAVIDEZ
“In high school I was always, especially in football, kind of the rebel on the team. My goal, my heart was in wrestling, that was my commitment. I just did football for fun. And if anyone knows high school football, it’s kind of like a cult mentality. We were state champions two times, so everyone took football real serious at my high school. And I was just kind of like, hey, I just like to go to practice, and the games are fun. It was like a pickup game for me.
I remember a long time ago, all the team gets there and (was told) ‘Hey, we’re getting cleats today, matching team cleats.’ I go in and the coach is like,’What the hell do you want?’ And I’m just like, ‘I’m a size 8,’ or whatever. And he’s like, ‘You ain’t getting cleats, you haven’t done jack for us. No fundraisers, you haven’t been to practice.’ So he basically told me I couldn’t get cleats, and I’m lucky that I’m even on the team. So to spite him - our team colors were red white and blue and everyone had black cleats – I went out and got like these bright orange cleats that he hated and wore them to practice everyday.
I was standing on the sideline, anyway. I played football and I really enjoyed football. But once I got into wrestling and realized like, hey, it’s just me out there, I’m too small for football, I get to go against people my size, I fell in love with it … Let’s get this straight, they didn’t seek me out to play football. I just kind of went in and was like, hey, let’s have some fun, I’m here to play. And I guess in high school, you can always make the JV team and sit on the bench, but they can’t just tell you hey, you can’t play. So they didn’t really have a choice.”
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