Olympic gold medalist Gable Steveson had retired from amateur wrestling and was focused on becoming a World Wrestling Entertainment superstar
Gable Steveson achieved his longtime dream of joining World Wrestling Entertainment, but he never lost his desire to entertain on the amateur mat.
In his early 20s, Steveson seemed to already have done it all in amateur wrestling and moved on. He claimed an Olympic gold medal at heavyweight at the Tokyo Games and won two college national titles at Minnesota. After his second college championship, he left his shoes in the center of the mat symbolizing his retirement from amateur wrestling. After that, he made some appearances with WWE, most notably at SummerSlam in 2021 and at WrestleMania 38 in 2022.
But Steveson still had his foot in the amateur door. He has split his time between training in Minneapolis with Brandon Eggum, his college coach at the University of Minnesota, and the WWE Performance Training Center in Orlando, Florida. Though still with WWE, the urge to try to position himself as one of amateur wrestling’s all-time greats became too much. He now will chase a spot at next year’s Paris Olympics.
“The itch and fire will never go away,” Steveson said. “And I feel like if you ask any competitor, old or young, I think it’s always there. But some people just don’t have the bodies to do it because they’re a little older. But I think me just turning 23, I still had that extra fire and I want to see what I could do. I wanted to test my limits. And so I stayed ready just in case the time came where I could come back.” Continue reading at usnews.com →