SMITH, John William

(b. 9 August 1965 in Del City, Oklahoma), wrestler who achieved international domination of the sport during a career that featured six consecutive world championships and two Olympic gold medals, and was also a successful coach at Oklahoma State University.

Smith is one of four brothers who have made significant marks in the world of amateur wrestling. Sons of Lee Roy Smith, director of data processing at the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, and Madalene Smith, an obstetrics nurse, they grew up in the town of Del City, not far from Oklahoma City, and each of them wrestled for Oklahoma State University (OSU) in Stillwater. Although Lee Roy, Pat, and Mark Smith each amassed considerable credentials in terms of victories and championships, their brother John—the second son in a family of twelve children—is clearly one of the greatest wrestlers ever to compete. For a period of six years, from 1986 to 1992, Smith dominated the sport at an international level to an unprecedented extent.

Smith's success began at the local high school, where he achieved 105 wins against only 5 losses and won individual state 4A championships in his last two seasons (1982–1983). Ten years later, at the end of his incredible athletic career, Del City High School named its gymnasium the John Smith Field House and honored its distinguished alumnus with the unveiling of a life-size sculpture.

Following in his older brother Lee Roy's footsteps, Smith went to OSU, where—wrestling at 126 and then 134 pounds—he achieved considerable success in his first two years of intercollegiate competition, attaining a second-place finish and All-America honors at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament in his sophomore season. That success notwithstanding, he sat out the 1985–1986 college season as a "redshirt," a college athlete who is kept out of varsity competition for a year in order to extend eligibility. Still, Smith was anything but inactive as a wrestler, and during this year achieved the first of many conspicuous successes in the freestyle wrestling community by winning his first national title in that competitive context and by taking home a gold medal from the Goodwill Games in Moscow. Not yet twenty-one years old, Smith defeated European champion Khazer Isaev, one of the Soviet Union's best wrestlers.

During his intercollegiate hiatus, Smith refined his skills and developed a "philosophy of motion" that featured an unorthodox style characterized by quickness down low. In the 1986–1987 season, Smith began a competitive run that remains unequaled. His season-opening collegiate bout that year was his last defeat at OSU; there followed over his two remaining seasons a string of ninety consecutive victories, two Big Eight Conference and NCAA individual championships, and his designation as Outstanding Wrestler at the 1987 national tournament. Graduating from Oklahoma State with a B.S. in education in 1988, he completed his intercollegiate career with an overall record of 154–7–2. Moreover, during those two years at Oklahoma State he won a gold medal at the Pan American Games; his first world freestyle championship, the second of what were to be five national freestyle championships; and—most significant of all—the gold medal in the 136.5-pound class at the Olympic Games in Seoul, Korea. And much more was yet to come.

The next four years brought Smith a staggering number of accomplishments and honors, culminating in his second Olympic gold medal at the Barcelona Games of 1992. He was the first wrestler from the United States in eighty years to win two Olympic championships. That 1992 triumph also represented an unprecedented sixth straight world title (the Olympic competition counts as the world-championship event for the years in which it is held) a truly remarkable demonstration of sustained competitive excellence. In addition to repeated national and Pan American freestyle championships, Smith earned several prestigious individual awards. In 1990 he was presented the "Master of Technique" award, which honors the best technical wrestler in the world, by the Federation Internationale Des Luttes Associees (FILA), the organization that governs international wrestling. He also received the 1990 James E. Sullivan Award, given by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) to the nation's top amateur athlete, the first wrestler ever to win that award. Moreover, he was the 1991 FILA Outstanding Wrestler of the Year and won the 1992 Amateur Athletic Foundation World Trophy, an accolade given to the best athlete in a given geographical region, the first North American wrestler ever to receive that award.

The end of Smith's competitive career by no means signified the conclusion of his involvement in and contribution to the sport of amateur wrestling. Indeed, his accomplishments as a coach have been most impressive in their own right. In 1992, after a year as interim co-coach in a difficult period involving various NCAA regulatory violations during the tenure of the previous Oklahoma State coach, Smith became only the sixth true head coach in the long and proud history of the OSU wrestling program. When Smith took the team to a national championship in 1994, only his second season fully at the program's helm, one of his championship wrestlers was his younger brother Pat, who in his final season achieved an unprecedented fourth straight individual national championship. Throughout his coaching career at OSU, Smith has won numerous conference championships, achieved high place finishes in team standings at the NCAA tournament, and developed numerous All-America wrestlers, including some national individual champions. He has also been active and extremely successful in coaching freestyle wrestling at the national amateur level. Among other accomplishments, he coached the U.S. team to a gold medal in the 1999 Pan American Games; and he served as co-coach of the U.S. team in the 2000 Olympic Games at Sydney, Australia.

Smith married Toni Donaldson on 16 December 1995; they have three children.

It is no wonder that in 1996 Smith was honored at the Atlanta Olympic Games as one of the 100 Greatest Olympians, or that in 1997 he was inducted as a Distinguished Member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. Competing with the best in the world in a grueling sport that requires physical strength and skill, mental toughness and agility, and extraordinary self-discipline, Smith demonstrated a consistency of excellence that dominated international wrestling for a remarkable period of time. His numerous championships and his many awards and honors, some of them "firsts," remain eloquent testimony to the nature of his athletic achievement. Most significant of all might be his overall record as a wrestler. Beginning with his high school career in Del City, and concluding with his second Olympic gold medal in Barcelona, Smith competed in 458 wrestling matches. He won 436 of them: more than 95 percent of the total. In international freestyle competition, he won exactly 100 bouts—and lost only 5. That he has continued to enrich the sport in the years since his competitive career ended, only underscores his status as one of the world's greatest athletes.

For information concerning Smith's family background and wrestling career, see Bob and Doris Dellinger, The Cowboys Ride Again!: The History of Wrestling ' s Dynasty (1994), which discusses the impressive wrestling tradition at OSU. Shannon Brownlee, "How Low Can You Get?," Sports Illustrated (14 Mar. 1988), provides useful biographical information, some commentary on Smith's unusual wrestling style, and a hint of the international success that was to follow. The most complete and succinct account of Smith's achievements may be found at the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and in the annual wrestling media guide published by the Media Relations Office of the Athletic Department at Oklahoma State University.

James R. Kerin, Jr.