By Pablo Di Maria
Los Angeles, CA – When you first hear the words “East Los Angeles” the first few things that may occur in your mind, might be – Mexicans, Chicanos/as, Low Riders and great Mexican cuisine. Nevertheless, besides these matters, there’s also the other side of East Los Angeles. Things like gangs, criminal offense, murder and drug dealing. East Los Angeles is a city where you learn to become an adult at a young age. Many teenagers tend to fall victims of their environment and live a short life span. And then, there are kids like Joe “Gonzo” Gonzales, who didn’t let his surroundings take him down like it claimed so many of his friends.
Joe was born at White Memorial Hospital in the heart of Boyle Heights to Mary and her husband Joe Sr., a foreman in the park maintenance department of Montebello, California. Growing up in Montebello, a small city near Boyle Heights, Joe was a normal kid that played football and wrestled in high school. His friends and he decided to join the wrestling team as ninth graders. In spite of serious injuries that hampered his scholastic career, Joe stuck with the sport. Going into his junior year of high school, Joe was diagnosed with a malformation of the spine that troubled him all year. In his senior year as the post-season was about to begin and having a 30-0 record, Joe suffered a concussion in the practice room that caused him to sit out the post-season and forgo his dream of winning an individual CIF state championship.
“I was distraught that I never achieved my goals of being a California state champion. Even so, during the summer after graduating high school, I traveled to Iowa to compete in the Senior Freestyle Nationals at the Iowa University Fieldhouse (AKA as Fargo), where I was fortunate enough to win the tournament and also win the most Outstanding Wrestler Award,” Joe Gonzales said.
Joe’s parents insisted that he went to college to obtain an education and that’s precisely what Joe did as he enrolled at East Los Angeles Community College to get his physical education degree. Joe’s parents didn’t want him to be another gang death statistic and join the working field rather than attend college.
His East Los Angeles Coaches – Ben Bohlander, Robert Sheppard, and Shiro Aoyama –influenced him 100 percent to pursue wrestling beyond the Junior College level. The coaches changed Gonzales’s life for the better as they instructed him about life and education. If it wasn’t for them, Joe wouldn’t know where he would be today. Gonzales 48-1 record and an individual Junior College state championship in 1976 at 118 lbs. got him a lot of attention from some of the best Division I colleges. After a tough decision, he decided to attend the University of Oklahoma and wrestle for Coach Stan Abel.
“The Oklahoma coaching staff tried to modify my style of wrestling and thus the reason I decided to return back to East Los Angeles and finish my associate’s degree. Even before I wrestled at East Los Angeles, Shiro Aoyama taught me the Japanese style of wrestling –to be slick, quick and create angles during my matches to take down my opponents. “
Joe’s coaches at East Los Angeles College told him that if he wanted to be a World and Olympic champion that he had to be great on his feet. It was branded on Joe’s brain that if he could take down any opponent he faced, he could definitely beat them. Another pointer he received from his coaches was to never wrestle on his knees. Joe went on to compete at Cal State Bakersfield as a college junior and senior, he won 98 of 99 matches and NCAA 118-pound titles in both Division I and Division II (the latter twice). In 1980, as a senior, he established NCAA single-season records for most victories (55), most takedowns (448) and best record (55-0).
Joe recognizes that his workout partners (John Azevedo, Tim Vanni, Adam and Dan Cuestas) made him a better wrestler and helped him readjust his wrestling technique. He also knows that the eight months in Japan training with Yuji Takada (1976 Olympic champion) and other lightweights from Japan, made him master his takedown technique. His wrestling stance was unusual in America as Joe was constantly moving side to side, creating angles to get the takedown. Joe was one of the foremost innovators of the “West Coast Style” of wrestling with the takedown and let him up approach that many kids from California tend to do on their matches.
But like any wrestler, Joe still remembers about his sole loss in college to Gene Mills from Syracuse University. Joe went into the match undefeated and as the No. 1 seed in his weight class.
“It was my fault for not wrestling smart enough versus Gene. I made mistakes during the match that cost me the victory. Victories are great, however, you always remember the losses.”
At the end of the match versus Gene, many of his peers went up to Joe and told him that they believe the referee made a bad call that resulted in him being behind in the match and eventually losing it. Many wrestling fans don’t know that Joe and Gene met earlier in the year in the West/East All-Star Classic were Joe won the match, 11-9. Gene redshirted the next season since it was an Olympic year in 1980. Joe went back to the drawing board and trained to get ready for international competition.
Joe’s International career literally began in 1982 when he won the 1982 World Cup held in Toledo, Ohio. His win over his USSR opponent helped the U.S. win this event for the second time ever, the final score was (6-4). The victory was witnessed by 6,000 flag-waving fans according to the book “Encyclopedia of American Wrestling.” That same year, Joe took third at the World Championships in Edmonton, Canada, at 114.5 pounds. But his most impressive tournament win, came when he won the prestigious 1982 Tbilisi Tournament held in the country of USSR. The great Dan Gable once told a reporter “This is the toughest tournament in the world. The Olympics are nowhere near as hard.”
Joe went into the Tbilisi tournament with the mindset that he could win the tournament and he did. He became the seventh American to win event for the U.S., previous winners from the U.S. were Don Behm (1971), Dan Gable (1972), Ben Peterson (1973), Russ Hellickson (1974), Wade Schalles (1976) and Gene Mills in 1980.
“It was the most memorable tournament win in my career. The fact that most weight classes had up to 20 registered USSR athletes in it, made the win more special for me. In 1982 I was the only foreigner to win the tournament.”
Now, Joe is a Physical Education teacher at Carr Intermediate Middle School in the city of Santa Ana, California, in Orange County. He is married and has two sons, Joey (six-years old) and Jake who is five. Joe would love to see both boys follow his footsteps and take up the sport of wrestling in the near future.
“If they don’t accomplish anything in wrestling that’s okay. I simply want them to feel what the sport of wrestling teaches you. To be tough, never quit and to not be afraid of hard work. That’s a dream of mine to see them wrestle and learn life experiences.”
As far as how can we help California become a better wrestling state, Joe reminds us that bringing college programs back to California is the key to better our state. With the lack of Junior College programs in California, most of our wrestlers stop competing after high school.
“We in California are so tough and populated with great wrestlers that don’t experience the chance to further their wrestling careers in college. They don’t have a place to go like I did back in the 70’s. The Junior college system had almost 70 programs when I wrestled in it. Now days we are down to only 20 teams. We need to improve this situation together. However, despite the bad situation we’re doing all right, but we can do even more with more college programs. FILA also took away my weight division (114.5 lbs.) and Tim Vanni’s (105.5 lbs.) weight class. It didn’t help those smaller Hispanics and Asians that tend to be smaller in stature. They become discouraged and leave the sport.”
Joe is still giving back to the wrestling community by teaching wrestling at the Orange County Grappler Academy helping out those that have the will and desire to become great in the sport of wrestling. Hopefully in the near future we will see Joey and Jake dominating the mats of California just like their father did.
Joe Gonzales International Accomplishments
1980 and 1981 AAU National Freestyle Champion at 114.5
1982 Freestyle Toledo (OH) – 114.5 – 1st (World Cup)
1982 World Championships (Edmonton, Canada) -114.5 – 3rd
1982 Tbilisi Tournament – 114.5 – 1st (7th ever U.S. wrestler to win it)
1983 Freestyle Toledo (OH) – 114.5 – 2nd (World Cup)
1983 World Championships (Kiev, USSR) – 114.5 – Participant
1984 Freestyle Toledo (OH) – 114.5 – 1st (World Cup)
1984 Olympic Participant – 114.5
1985 World Championships (Budapest, Hungary) -113.5 – 4th
1989 World Championships (Skopje, Poland) -114.5 – 5th