American athlete Mark Philip Schulz is an Olympic champion and two-time world champion. Freestyle Wrestler, he is an honorary member of the US National Fighting Hall of Fame.
He and his older brother Dave Schultz, who was also a wrestler, won gold medals at the 1984 Olympics. Dave and Mark are the only American brothers to win the World Cup and the Olympics.
Childhood
Mark Schulz, whose biography dates back to October 26, 1960, was born in Palo Alto, California. Mark's parents were Dorothy Jean Saint-Germain (née Rich) and Philip Gary Schulz. He was their second son: first-born Dave was 17 months older. The boys attended local schools. Mark was very interested in gymnastics and began to actively engage in it at school.
Carier start
Schultz Mark at the end of school entered the college of Palo Alto, where he trained with Ed Hart. At first he participated in gymnastics competitions, winning the Northern California All-Around Championship among his age group. However, a year later he moved to Ashland, Oregon, where he moved into the struggle. But after one semester, he transferred back to Palo Alto. Mark Schulz (photo below) won the district and state freestyle wrestling championships.
Schultz joined UCLA, and his first fight ended with a score of 18-8. After college, he entered the University of Oklahoma, speaking for which for the next three years (1981-1983), he won 3 NCAA Championships. Schulz performed in the under 177 category for the first year, and in the finals he faced two-time NCAA champion (1980, 1981) Ed Banach. Banach was preparing to become the first four-time NCAA champion in history. However, Schultz beat him with a score of 16-8. Eyewitnesses call this battle one of the best, if not the best, NCAA finals of all time. The following year, Schultz remained undefeated and set the maximum number of wins in a row. At the University of Oklahoma, Mark was awarded the title of "Big 8" as the best student athlete. At this time, his brother Dave also won the competition, but in a larger weight category.
Olympic Games and World Championships
In 1984, Mark and Dave Schultz both won Olympic gold in wrestling competitions, as the Banach twin brothers once did. The following year, Mark won the World Cup, where he faced competitors from all countries of the Eastern Bloc who boycotted the 1984 Olympics. In the final of the planet's first-born, Schultz Mark won with a score of 10-5. This athlete is the only Olympic champion to win the 1985 World Cup. And his brother Dave was the only Olympic champion to win the 1983 World Championship. The Schultz brothers have won more NCAA, US Open, World and Olympic titles than other wrestling brothers in history.
When Schultz won another gold at a world-class competition in 1987, he became the first Olympic champion to win the title of best fighter in the world twice. In 1991, Mark Schulz, Lee Kemp, and John Smith were listed in the Guinness Book of Records as "the most titled freestyle wrestlers." At the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, he finished sixth.
Mark Schulz - mixed martial arts fighter
Eight years after the break, in 1996, Schulz became the first Olympic gold medalist to enter mixed martial arts. Mark began to speak in the UFC, because in addition to freestyle wrestling, he was engaged in Brazilian jujitsu. In the same year, his brother Dave was killed, and Mark replaced him in the UFC. In the first battle, he came face to face with Canadian Goodridge. Schultz Mark won the battle due to a stoppage of the fight by a doctor due to a serious dissection in the opponent. For this fight he received $ 50,000. After Mark Schulz (the photo below is the athlete’s last fight) began to gain popularity among both young wrestlers and UFC fans, as a result of which he began more and more often to conduct professional fights, including title ones. As a result, he won about 5 championship belts in different versions, after which he decided to end his career as a professional wrestler. After many great fights, he became one of the greatest fighters in UFC history, however, he received a large number of injuries. The back was especially damaged.
At the end of his career, Schultz became a wrestling coach at Brigham Young University.
Coaching career
Schulz Mark was an assistant wrestling coach at Brigham Young University from 1991-1994, after which he was appointed chief mentor. One of his best students was Rixon Gracie, who in 1993 moved to America from Brazil. Like his coach, he was fond of jujitsu. After a long speech at the UFC, Rickson is one of the greatest mixed martial arts fighters of all time, and he can be confidently called a “fan” of jujitsu, as he uses this technique more often and effectively than anyone else. Although, it is worth noting that Gracie did not have a black belt for this type of martial arts, like Schulz did.
In addition, Schultz had several more students whose names are familiar to fans of freestyle wrestling, mixed martial arts and jujitsu, which he also conducted separate trainings on.