Hall Of Fame Visitors Can Watch 500+ NCAA Championship Videos

By Mark Palmer
Senior Writer
InterMat
Imagine seeing National Wrestling Hall of Fame Distinguished Members Dan Gable, Dan Hodge, Doug Blubaugh or Yojiro Uetake wrestle ... right before your eyes.

Now you can. No time travel involved. All you have to do is make tracks to the National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

The Hall is home to more than 500 videos of NCAA Wrestling Championships finals matches, including bouts featuring the all-time greats mentioned above. The Hall of Fame collection encompasses matches going back 80 years (starting with the 1937 NCAAs) ... right up to the title bouts from the 2017 Nationals. (The list of videos just grew to include all 10 finals matches from the 1965 NCAAs and the 1971 NCAAs which were recently added to the Hall of Fame's collection.)

NCAA Video kiosk screenHow does it work? Simply go up to one of two kiosks inside the Hall of Fame. You can type in a particular year you'd like to see, then click on the available match-ups. Or you can type in the name of a school or an individual wrestler, and on the kiosk screen you'll see a list of the pertinent matches. The matches you select will automatically appear on the large overhead screen.

The Hall of Fame's system makes it easy for visitors to watch some of the all-time greats in action for themselves. (For instance, the newly-added 1965 Nationals lets you see Distinguished Members of the Hall such as Mike Caruso of Lehigh, and Oklahoma State's Bill Harlow and Yojiro Uetake Obata on the mat in their prime.)

[caption id="attachment_15348" align="alignleft" width="250"]Dan Gable watched a couple of NCAA Championship videos when he visited. Dan Gable watched a couple of NCAA Championship videos when he visited.[/caption]

It's your chance to witness some of the true legends, including Bill Koll, Myron Roderick, Gray Simons, Wade Schalles, Lee Kemp ... along with members of some of the first families of wrestling (the Peerys, the Schultzes, the Smiths, the Brands, the Steiners) ... the most-talked-about matches, including the biggest upsets (for instance, Gable vs. Larry Owings at the 1970 NCAAs) ... and college matches of eventual Olympic gold medalists, including Blubaugh, Terry McCann, and Shelby Wilson of the 1960 Rome Olympics.

Want to settle an argument between friends about who's the all-time best college wrestler from a particular school or era ... or even compare wrestlers from different eras? It's easy, thanks to the Hall's wrestling video library. What's more, you can call up videos from various eras to compare wrestling techniques, uniforms, rules, whatever.

If 500 college championship matches weren't enough, the Hall of Fame expects to someday offer videos with an international flair.

"In the future, we plan to add videos from international events beginning with the Olympics," Jack Carnefix, Operations Director for the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, told InterMat. "We will have medal matches and eventually plan to add all matches involving Americans."

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