Westie101
Ohio Wrestling Site: Did having faced John Smith at the age of 16 impact your decision to wrestle at Oklahoma State, where Smith was at the time an Assistant Coach?
Fried: I think that having wrestled John, I really wanted to learn what he had. Oklahoma State had won it in 1989 (Fried’s senior year). They had such a good team, but the interesting thing for me was that all ten guys on the team had unique styles. There was no set Okie State style that they followed…and they had John Smith and Olympic Gold medalist Kenny Monday in the room.
Growing up, there was kind of a mystique about Oklahoma wrestling. I wanted to be a part of that, but I really wanted to be a part of what Gable had built also. I had a personal battle going on in my head. I wanted to wrestle for Gable, but then again, there was John Smith becoming almost as good as Gable was or maybe better…..and at the same time, the door at Iowa was closing on me. So although I was sad that I didn’t go to Iowa, I was very happy I was going to Oklahoma State. I really couldn’t lose, but if I had to do it over, I would have looked harder at my opportunities to go to an Ivy League school. They just weren’t solid enough when I was leaving high school. They are now.