“I know Mark very well, but Kevin and I were truly contemporaries,” Ryan told UFC.com inside the UFC Performance Institute as his team finished up a workout before a Las Vegas tournament in early December.
“When I was wrestling at the University of Iowa, Kevin was wrestling at Ohio State. Obviously, I didn’t know him personally at that point, just as a competitor, but watching him was special. He was one of the few people that when I reflect on my 40 years in the sport of wrestling, I think, ‘Wow this guy was a specimen.’ Kevin was different.”
This description of Randleman is something we’re certainly used to hearing, especially when he was competing on the biggest stages of the sport. But on the humble mats of collegiate wrestling was where Kevin Randleman, the entertainer, was forged.
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“I just remember his athletic ability and watching him win championships through his toughness,” Ryan said. “He was uniquely gifted, but he brought with that gift an incredible amount of hard work, and you could see that when he wrestled. He wasn’t a talented guy who fell back on his talents, he was an incredibly talented guy who worked hard and understood suffering.”
Suffering seems to be the piece that truly sets wrestlers apart — and while it sounds dramatic, when you have to make weight every week for months on end and have to endure the similar grind of a 12-week camp for 40 weeks a year (give or take a few), you learn a thing or two about suffering and how it breeds greatness.