The Story of the only Texan to ever win an NCAA Division I Wrestling Championship — Bob Johnson

Reprinted with the permission of Amateur Wrestling News
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by Jay Hammond

Bob Johnson of Oklahoma State may have been the shortest 177-pound champion in the history of the NCAA tournament. The Amarillo, Texas native won back-to-back titles at that weight class in 1961 and 1962 for the OSU squads that won team titles for coach Myron Roderick. Johnson is a rather unlikely looking champion in the group photo of the 1961 individual champions — he is wearing horn-rim glasses and shorter than everyone else in the back row except for teammate and 157-pound champion Phil Kinyon.

There is a good reason why Johnson was the same height as Kinyon — he started out the 1961 season at the same weight class as Kinyon! As a sophomore in 1960, Johnson had started for the Cowboys at 157 pounds and compiled a 14-3-0 record. He finished second to Sid Terry of Oklahoma in the Big Eight tournament and was eliminated by Bob Marshall of Purdue at the NCAA tournament. Kinyon, who was the alternate to gold medalist Doug Blubaugh on the 1960 Olympic team, had enrolled at Oklahoma State in the fall of 1959 after four years in the Navy. Kinyon’s addition to the varsity roster at the start of the 1960-1961 season presented Roderick with the “problem” of finding spots in the lineup for four outstanding wrestlers, Kinyon, Johnson, NCAA runner-up Ronnie Clinton and All-American Bruce Campbell, in three weight classes (157 through 177). Roderick could not move one of them up to 191 pounds, since Bob Thompson, a newcomer like Kinyon, had premiered at that weight class by routing defending NCAA champion George Goodner of Oklahoma 12-4 in the first Bedlam dual.

During the dual meet season, Kinyon wrestled the majority of the bouts at 157 pounds, while Clinton, Johnson and Campbell alternated at 167 and 177 pounds. Johnson was the odd man out at the Big Eight tournament as Kinyon, Campbell and Clinton won individual titles at 157 through 177 pounds. However, Thompson was upset at 191 pounds and quit the team. Roderick then inserted Johnson at 177 and moved Clinton up to 191 in the Cowboys’ lineup at the 1961 NCAA tournament at Oregon State.

At Corvallis, Johnson was seeded fourth at 177 pounds, but his way to the final was eased when top-seeded Jim Detrixhe of Lehigh was upset in the first round. In the finals, Johnson faced Wayne Baughman of Oklahoma, who had lost 6-5 to Clinton in the Big Eight finals. Johnson used three takedowns to top Baughman 9-5. Said Baughman of Johnson, in this book Wrestling: On & Off the Mat, “Of all the wrestlers I’ve ever wrestled, he (Johnson) was the toughest. With all the others, there was a split second of hesitation between their initial penetration and their follow-through, at which point I at least had the opportunity to counter. With Bob, there was never any hesitation or break. It was almost one continuous motion.”
Johnson is the only Texas high school wrestler ever to win a Division I NCAA title. There was very little high school wrestling in Texas in the late ‘50’s, but Johnson caught Roderick’s eye when he won the Geary, Oklahoma high school tournament in 1958. He defeated defending Oklahoma State high school champion Tim Haws of Edmond in the semi-finals and then pinned Baughman in the finals.

Roderick particularly liked the powerfully-built Johnson’s quickness and athleticism, which made him well suited to the “take ‘em down and let ‘em up” style that the Cowboys were using to dominate collegiate wrestling. In fact, after Johnson won an NCAA crown in 1961 at a weight class above his normal weight, the NCAA Wrestling Committee took the radical step of reducing the scoring value of the takedown. Beginning with the 1962 season, the first takedown would be worth two points and all others one point. The rules committee claimed that the change was an effort to produce more “mat wrestling.”

Thus, Johnson faced the challenge repeating as NCAA champion in 1962 with his primary scoring technique substantially devalued. The Cowboys lineup in 1962 was settled since Campbell had graduated. Johnson wrestled just one bout early in the dual meet campaign at 167 pounds and spent the rest of the season at 177. The new rule did not bother Johnson and he was untested until late in the dual meet season when OSU took on Colorado.

In that dual, Johnson nipped Dean Lahr of Colorado 8-7 in a wide open match. Although Lahr was a just a sophomore he gave the Cowboy all he could handle. Lahr would later win two NCAA titles, the 1964 Olympic trials and place twice in the World Freestyle Championships. He proved to be the major impediment to Johnson winning his first Big Eight title and second NCAA crown. Johnson scored a pair of narrow victories over Lahr in the tournament finals, winning 9-8 in the Big Eights and 3-2 at the NCAAs on a late takedown.

Johnson finished his career with a 45-4-0 record, losing just one bout in his final two seasons with the Pokes. After graduating from Oklahoma State, Johnson, who was in the Army ROTC while at OSU, entered the Army as a second lieutenant. He wrestled for a couple of years while in the Army and retired from competitive wrestling in 1964. Following the 1965 season, NCAA Wrestling Committee ended the four-year experiment with a devalued takedown, originally prompted in part by Johnson’s success, and every takedown in a match has been worth two points since the start of the 1965-1966 season.

Jay Hammond is the author of “The History of Collegiate Wrestling”, available for $49.95 from the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater at 405-377-5243 or info@wrestlinghalloffame.org.