Oct 13, 2017
Episode 10 of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame's LEGENDS
podcast features the introduction speeches and acceptance speech
from 1979 inductee Joe McDaniel.
McDaniel passed away in 2011, but archives unearthed at the
National Wrestling Hall of Fame have given us his voice from that
Honors Weekend.
He was destined to be an Olympic champion, but the Games of the XII
Olympiad were engulfed in the holocaust of World War II. So Joe
McDaniel had to settle merely for recognition as the outstanding
wrestler of the world.
Three times he was a National Collegiate winner for Oklahoma State
University, each year leading the Cowboys of coach Edward C.
Gallagher to the team trophy. As a 118-pound junior, he was voted
outstanding wrestler of the 1938 tournament, an honor won a year
earlier by his roommate, Stanley Henson. Three times he reigned as
National AAU champion, twice as a collegian when the Cowboys also
won team honors, and again in 1941, two years after graduation.
McDaniel's only serious exposure to international competition came
at the close of his junior year, in a 1938 European tour climaxed
by a tournament at Stockholm, Sweden, among the leading wrestling
nations of the world. He was undefeated in 12 bouts and scored an
overwhelming victory over Odon Zombori of Hungary, winner of the
Olympic gold two years earlier.
Despite a three-year hitch in the Air Corps and seven years as
field representative for a major steel firm, McDaniel never has
been far from the sport of wrestling.
After a year of high school coaching and another at Maryland, he
returned from the war to coach 11 years at Syracuse University,
leading the Orange to a fourth place national finish. In 1963, he
moved to Wyoming, coaching two years in high school and eight at
the University.
His career turned full circle in 1973, when he returned to his home
town of Sulphur, Oklahoma, to serve as high school coach. In 30
years of coaching at all levels, his record was 257 victories
against 105 defeats.
In recognition of his great achievements as a wrestler and his long
years of service to the sport, Joe Clark McDaniel is honored as a
Distinguished Member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
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