Paying the price

Matt Ghaffari turned down fame and fortune as a professional wrestler to pursue Olympic gold.

By JOHN ROMANO

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 22, 2000

Pride has its price. In Matt Ghaffari's life, it goes for about six figures.

It is Ghaffari's choice, if not his wish, to be heavily in debt. To hold three mortgages on his home and to wonder where he will borrow the money to pay next month's bills.

Ghaffari's vocation is wrestling. So is his passion. Which is why, after he won a silver medal in the 1996 Olympics, he passed up the chance to make hundreds of thousands as a pro wrestler.

He says he has two contracts from pro wrestling organizations laying around his house in suburban Cleveland. They already had his schtick figured out. The native of Iran would be a "good guy" known as The Muslim. Sounds trite? Ghaffari thought so too.

Given the choice of exchanging his pride for a better lifestyle, Ghaffari chose to be poor. At 38, he remains an amateur Greco-Roman wrestler who begins competition today at the U.S. Olympic trials in Dallas.

Meet a man driven by gold, not cash.

"We give the image to our kids that you have to be muscular and a loudmouth and you have to paint yourself to be a wrestler," said Ghaffari, who moved with his family to the United States in 1977, before the revolution in Iran. "I think that's a bad image for wrestling."

Asked if he was at least tempted to sell out to the World Wrestling Federation, Ghaffari was quick with his answer.

"Not one bit," he said last month at the Olympic media summit in Houston. "Having four kids, I don't want my kids, your kids, any kids to see me desecrate the Olympic medal by hitting people in the head with a chair or spitting on them.

"If I can't watch it, and I don't let my kids watch it, I don't want to have anything to do with it."

To understand how strongly Ghaffari feels about this, you must recognize what he is willing to give up for it.

He has undergone surgery 14 times in his career: nine operations on his right knee, two on his left, two on an elbow and one on a shoulder.

By his own admission, he is about $185,000 in debt. When his twin daughters were born after Atlanta -- the second and third of his four children -- Ghaffari knew he could not afford to give up another four years of income to prepare for 2000 Games.

So he retired for 18 months and worked for a finance company to save money so he could return to wrestling in 1998 and take one last shot at the Olympics.

"It's not easy," he said, "to tell your kids they can't have in-line skates or a new bike because their dad isn't working."

This passion is no surprise to anyone who watched Ghaffari in 1996. At the peak of his athletic career, the crowning moment of all his work, Ghaffari cried while receiving his silver medal because he had fallen short of rival Alexander Karelin, whose podium was a little higher and whose medal was gold.

Ghaffari's obsession with Karelin is understandable, if not a bit unnerving. He has wrestled the Russian 23 times. And 23 times Ghaffari has lost.

Ghaffari had a chance to beat him at the '93 World Championships, but the match was stopped when he broke Karelin's ribs. He lost one match 2-0 and another 3-1. In the gold-medal match in Atlanta, Karelin won 1-0.

Their rivalry has gone beyond the simple lines of competing athletes and competing countries. Where they once had a nodding acquaintance, Ghaffari says now they rarely speak.

Karelin, 32, has wrestled for more than a decade without losing a match in international competition. He is a national hero in Russia, and he does not let Ghaffari forget it.

"He said to me, "How did your life change after Atlanta?' " Ghaffari recalls.

"I said, "What do you mean?'

"He said, "Well, they gave me a star. I'm a two-star general now. I have a hotel and casino. Did your government do anything for you?' He knows how to demotivate you.

"He calls me grandpa. He knows how to get under my skin."

There are rumors that Karelin is suffering this year from a back problem and may not compete in Australia. Ghaffari has heard the talk but pays it little mind.

He will have enough trouble reaching Sydney himself.

Although he finished second at the World Championships in 1998 -- behind Karelin, of course -- Ghaffari is not a lock to be the U.S. representative at 286 pounds. Technically, he is not even a favorite to make the team.

Ghaffari lost to Rulon Gardner at the U.S. Nationals in April, giving Gardner the top seed this weekend. That means Gardner gets a bye to the championship. Ghaffari must wrestle today and Friday in the challenge tournament, winning two matches per day. Along the way, he could face world team member Dremiel Byers, who beat Ghaffari three times in 1999.

Should he survive the challenge tournament, Ghaffari will have to beat Gardner in a best-of-three series Saturday.

Ghaffari has acknowledged the possibility that he will not make his third Olympic team. He says no matter what happens, he will not allow the last two years of work to be wasted. Even if he loses, he said he will go to Sydney to be a coach and a workout partner for whomever defeats him.

"My wife asked me once, after 14 surgeries would you do it again if you got the chance? I said absolutely," Ghaffari said. "The finished product is not winning the silver in the Olympics. It is the everyday battle to get up and go after your dream and work hard for it."

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.

Headlines

Americans Lose in 1st Round of Davis Cup

---