Rich Lorenzo (RL)-It was an honor to work with two of the best heavyweights in the U.S. at that time. It just so happened that they were on the same team. Even though, as a coach, you love to have depth and competition I can't tell you that it didn't hurt to see these two guys battle each other every week for a starting position. Both loved the sport and were very into it. It brought a lot of attention to the Penn State Wrestling program in the late 60s and early 70s to have these two guys on the team both of them were outstanding wrestlers. I remember one time I came down to the practice room to officiate one of the elimination matches between these two and there were about 2-300 people there in the hallway and sitting on the mat waiting to watch the match. We had to call practice off and we had to delay the match. Before their elimination matches at Penn State these guys had competed earlier in the junior nationals.
Anyway, it was really interesting to get to know both of them whom I consider my very closest friends. The competition between them was really tough and probably made both of them as tough as they were. I think it's hard for many people to comprehend that there could be two guys at heavy weight who were so evenly matched. At heavyweight there's usually a distinction between two guys and there's usually not that level of endurance and mental intensity that both of them displayed. I think the key factor was mental patience. Both visualized being national champions and both paid the price and it was a matter of who was going to earn it on a given day like a game of chess, and that’s basically what those matches came down to. If Dave had an edge it was the patience to realize what he was capable of doing in that battle situation and he just stayed with it. He didn't risk going out of context and that was a successful strategy.
Dave Joyner(DJ)-Ira is awfully tough and he was probably the best heavyweight I wrestled. That includes Wojciechowski, whom I didn't beat, but that match could have gone either way. Maybe you're right in that I was a little more patient, but if that was the difference that's all the difference there was. That seven overtimes match started at 4p.m. and we finished at 4:53 so the total length of the match was 53 minutes with 29 minutes of actual wrestling. We did have a lot of endurance relative to what normal heavyweights would have. Every time Ira and I would eliminate it was always very close and the matches lasted at least a couple of overtimes, except for one time when I barely won in regulation.
RL-Coach Koll and I had sat down and we talked to Dave and Ira and we told them that we were not going to decide who was going to wrestle the weight class. At that time there was what was known as a "referee's decision". It stipulated that if you went into overtime and at the end of the overtime it was even, then it was up to the referees to decide who the winner of the match was. We told these guys that they were just too close for us to make that decision and that we were leaving it up to them and they both were comfortable with that. They preferred that. The year that Dave placed 2nd in the nation (1971) in the National tournament was the year that Dave and Ira went 29 minutes in an elimination match to see who was going to wrestle in the post season tournaments. I remember one lost 12-14 pounds in their longest elimination match and the other lost 10- 11 pounds. In any case, the next year Ira redshirted and Dave didn't come out for wrestling until late after the football team played in a bowl game in January. At the same time they had moved the NCAA tournament up a week so Dave had about five weeks of training for wrestling to get ready for the tournament.
But I look back at those elimination matches between Dave and Ira and I think back on all my experiences as a coach and I realize that I never had another rivalry that was so close and so intense in all the years that I coached. I had some good ones as, for example, when Jimmy Martin wrestled off with Kenny Chertow, but that was only one or two bouts and that was it. With Dave and Ira there were two solid years of this. It was an honor and a pleasure to watch two young men make that type of commitment and go. Looking back on it I think it helped both of them in their careers immensely because after that I don't know how much tougher anything could get.
DJ-If it taught us anything it taught us persistence. We weren't just leaning on each Other. We were really going at it. Outside of elimination matches we trained and worked out together and so we knew each other's style better, perhaps, than any two wrestlers ever knew each other, and that was part of the reason why we were so close. The one thing that I would point out and something that I've felt really good about is that with all that competition and all that intensity even in college Ira and I remained very good friends. We would go out for pizza after practice and the elimination matches and whatever happened stayed in the wrestling room and it never interfered with our relationship. Although I was fortunate to win more, when you think about Ira what a strength of character it showed in that there's a guy that wasn't threatened by the situation. He was very comfortable in his own skin and confident in himself and that was shown by the fact that we always remained such good friends. I think that's a real comment on our friendship but also on Ira's integrity and the kind of person that he is.
RL-In all that wrestling I never saw either one of them get angry at each other, but I never saw their intensity level go down one bit either: two tremendous people and two great competitors.
