I think as a coach I'm morally responsible, and I think that I need to be. And I think wrestling has created an environment where wrestlers have a certain weight that they want to go down to. David Fleming, a writer and former wrestler, says dangerous weight loss is seen as a badge of honor. Wrestlers would, you know, if they had eaten too much, they would make themselves throw up. There was a rampant use of diuretics.
Laxatives are very common.
It was all these things sort of fostered by the mentally of wrestling. Billy Jack Saylor used wrestling as his ticket to Campbell University. Annette Saylor is Billy's mother. He had gotten up to probably about 235, you know, and was planning on wrestling 190 in college. That's 45 pounds.