Early Life and Amateur Wrestling
Hager has been wrestling since the age of five, and wrestled in high school with Danny Hodge's grandson. He is good friends with Hodge, and grew up living two blocks away from him in Perry, Oklahoma.
Hager was a two-sport athlete in high school, in addition to being class president as a sophomore and junior. Hager was the No. 5-ranked 215-pounder by Wrestling USA. He won the 215-pound division of the state wrestling championship as a junior after being a runner-up as a sophomore. Hager then joined the Junior National USA wrestling team as a heavyweight during the summer of 2000. A two-time All-American Scholar, he also had 45 tackles and six sacks in three games before breaking his ankle as a junior. He recorded 75 tackles and three fumble recoveries as a senior, helping Perry post a 10-3 mark.
The University of Oklahoma recruited Hager as a two-sport athlete. He played football and was the second-string defensive tackle behind National Football League players Tommie Harris and Dusty Dvoracek. Due to his high-school wrestling background, he was asked to join the wrestling team as a heavyweight in his sophomore year, and switched over full-time. During his junior year, he was introduced to Jim Ross, who was then World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)'s Head of Talent Relations, through former OU defensive tackle Dusty Dvoracek, Hager’s close friend and college roommate. Ross encouraged Hager to contact him after graduating. At the 2005 NCAA Division I championships, he lost to University of Pennsylvania's Matt Feast in the second round, and did not place. As a senior in 2006, Hager had a seventh-place finish in the NCAA championships and also defeated the eventual heavyweight national champion, Dustin Fox from Northwestern. He was named an All-American, while also setting the record of 30 pins for most pins in a single season.
In 2006, Hager graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a Bachelor's degree in finance. Following his graduation, he had a job with a firm in Dallas, but was offered a contract with WWE the day he was scheduled to start.
Read more about this topic: Jack Swagger
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, amateur and/or wrestling:
“Probably more than youngsters at any age, early adolescents expect the adults they care about to demonstrate the virtues they want demonstrated. They also tend to expect adults they admire to be absolutely perfect. When adults disappoint them, they can be critical and intolerant.”
—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, I, ch.4 (1985)
“I have lifted the veil. I have created life, wrested the secret of life from life. Now do you understand? From the lives of those who have gone before, I have created life.”
—Edward T. Lowe, and Frank Strayer. Dr. von Niemann (Lionel Atwill)
“The true gardener then brushes over the ground with slow and gentle hand, to liberate a space for breath round some favourite; but he is not thinking about destruction except incidentally. It is only the amateur like myself who becomes obsessed and rejoices with a sadistic pleasure in weeds that are big and bad enough to pull, and at last, almost forgetting the flowers altogether, turns into a Reformer.”
—Freya Stark (1893–1993)
“There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)