About Mark Schultz

Mark is known for his ability to improve fast. As an elementary school student, he held 20 of 25 school fitness records. He started gymnastics at 14 and two years later was Northern California All-Around Champion. He started wrestling in the 11th Grade and sixteen months later was California State Champion. In college he went from unranked to 2nd after winning the Great Plains. Then he won the NCAA Wrestling Championships three times and was voted the "Outstanding Wrestler" by unanimous decision. Mark was the youngest medalist on the Olympic Team and took Olympic Gold seven years after starting the sport. It may be the fastest rise to an Olympic Wrestling Title. Mike Chapman, Editor of W.I.N. Magazine, named Mark to America's All-Time Olympic Freestyle Team saying quote "Schultz may have been the most physically gifted wrestler in American history. He had it all... strength, flexibility, quickness, and great athletic skills. And when you got him riled up, get out of the way!"

"Hello everyone. A lot of you have wondered how I got into submission grappling. Well one day I got this call from some guy who said "the best Jiu-Jitsu fighter in the world is in town, do you want to fight him?" I said "what are the rules?" The guy tried to intimidate me by saying "There are no rules!" I didn't know what to think. Were we going to gouge each others eyes out or bite each other's throats out. Thinking it might end in disability or even death for one of them, I said "O.K., tell him to meet me in the BYU wrestling room a week from Thursday". When the day arrived, I walked into the BYU wrestling room and saw a latino looking guy with the front of his head shaved and the back of his head he had a long braided pony tail. He looked like the muay thai guy in "Kumite". He was sitting on his butt scooting into BYU Head Coach Alan Albright, trying to hook Alan's feet with his feet. Alan just kept pushing him away. So I walk in and he comes over and says "Are you the guy". I said "yep". Then he said, unlike the caller who said it was "no rules", "What I do is punch, elbow, knee, head butt, but we're not going to do that today. We'll just roll around and try to get each other in submission holds, and if one of us gets caught, we tap out". Relieved there wasn't going to be a homicide that day, I still didn't know any submission holds and I spent a lot of energy trying to invent new moves on the spot. After about about 20 minutes of me being on top of him while he either had me in the guard or I had him in a cradle, I tapped out from a triangle choke. I asked him to go again and he tapped me out again after about another 20 minutes. I was stunned. All the years of training and I had never learned these moves. Lucky for me, I picked wrestling as my sport so the transition would only require learning some new positions and moves from those positions. The mat sense and conditioning would be the same and wrestling takedowns were better. I asked him his name and he said "Rickson Gracie", who was perhaps the most skilled Jiu-Jitsu expert in the world. There was also a student of Rickson's in the wrestling room that day named Pedro Sauer. One day I asked Pedro if I could be his student. He said yes. So I took Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu from Pedro for 4 years. Lucky for me, Pedro was one of the best Jiu-Jitsu instructors in the world. Then I got another call from a guy named Walt Bayless who had a gym in Salt Lake City called "Walt Bayless' Combat Jiu-Jitsu". It turned out Walt was an expert in Combat Wrestling, Jiu-Jitsu and Sambo and was 6'3" and 235 lbs of nightmare and perhaps the toughest man I've ever grappled. After I pretty much figured out the game, I studied technique on my own from a gigantic video library I made of no-holds-barred fights. Then I trained a lot of full-contact with Mike Bolster, BYU's Heavyweight Wrestler. Mike actually played perhaps the most important aspect of my technical improvement, since he was willing to go full contact with me on an ongoing basis for several years. At age 35, with four years of submission training under my belt and eight years after wrestling my last competitive bout, I came out of retirement to win the Ultimate Fighting Championships.

NCAA and Olympic rules focused my attention towards conditioning and staying on top, but killed the incentive for learning joint locks, bone-on-bone moves, or chokes. So now I guess you could say my style is a combination of the best Takedowns of Wrestling, the best submission holds of Jiu-Jitsu and Shootfighting, the best punches of Boxing, and the best kicks of Muay Thai. After 10 years, I think this style is as good as any in the world. Many thanks to my coaches and friends.

However most of all, I must give tribute for who I am to my beloved brother Dave, who I miss, but will see again, for making me who I am. He taught me the hard way, which is best, to learn fast. He pushed me harder than anyone has ever pushed me and for that I am eternally thankful. He taught me no one can stop you from doing anything you want. And all it takes is a willingness to sacrifice your life.

Mark Schultz