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having coaches like Anatoly and Momir (Petkovic) and Ike (Anderson) who believed in me. A big part was the envi- ronment. There were guys like Kevin Bracken, Jim Gruenwald, Matt Lindland and Travis West, a lot of guys that in their college career felt they underachieved based upon their skill sets. People want- ed to prove, I can be a World champion, an Olympic champion, I can take this to the next level. It was a situation where you had to be mature enough to keep your eye on the prize,” he said. Dantzler made five straight World
Teams, from 2002 through 2007, in a weight class with top challengers includ- ing Keith Sieracki and Darryl Christian. The high-level competition pushed Dantzler to continue to improve each and every year.
“It helped prepare me for international competition. Darryl was also a resident at the Olympic Training Center. It wasn’t any secret that we didn’t like each other. We had fights in the wrestling room. At the same time, it never spilled over to the hallway or the dorms. Knowing the guy across the hall is just coming from the weight room or finished a run, it makes you do more. You want to go grab the dummy and do 1,000 reverse lifts on the dummy. It heightened my competitive- ness and my drive to be number one in the world. When your competitor lives with you, you never rest,” said Dantzler. Right in the middle of the time Dantzler was competing at his highest levels, he also started his own private business, a technology company called TCLogiq, which specialized in doing background checks for his clients. He was able to get his company off the ground and running, while still focusing full time on his Greco- Roman training and competition. “I started the business in 2004. I saw an opportunity because my background was computers. When the dot-com crash came along, I got into HR. I saw the HR need did not meet what was available technology-wise. I was able to do it partly because I didn’t know I couldn’t do it. I didn’t put any limitations on how tired you have to be to work. I kept pushing it. I had good mentors in John Bardis and Jim Ravannack. I picked those guys brains on how to do things. The biggest part on anything is you don’t know what you don’t know. When I got into situations where I didn’t know, I was able to ask guys like that,” said Dantzler. Dantzler’s top placement at the World Championships was his fifth place in 2006. He was also a member of the his- toric 2007 U.S. Greco-Roman World
T.C. Dantzler’s dynamic, exciting style of wrestling enabled him to become a fixture atop the Greco-Roman ladder for a number of years. John Sachs.
Team in Baku, Azerbaijan, which became the first and only U.S. Greco team to win a World Team Title.
“I remember those two days we won
the World Championships. We really did- n’t talk at all, we didn’t mess around. After that last practice and weighins, we knew that if everybody did their job, we would be World Champions. I remember walk- ing the hallways and seeing Harry Lester, Brad Vering, Justin Ruiz go out to wres- tle. We stayed in this little room, we’d go in there and sleep and not talk. That was the mentality of the team. The year before, we placed third. That year, we wanted to show we could win it. We didn’t go in with a team perspective. We felt that if everybody does their job, we will win this tournament easy. We didn’t win easy, but we did win that World Championship with all the teams there,” said Dantzler. Perhaps his most amazing perform- ance was at a Final Olympic Qualifying event in May 2008, where he had to go to Rome, Italy and earn our nation a spot in the 2008 Olympics at his weight class. Dantzler went 3-1 in the event to win a bronze and qualify the spot, beating 2006 World champion Vladimir Shatskikh of Ukraine in the quarterfinals, and a big win over Ahmed Abdelsadek of Egypt in the bronze-medal bout.
“I had always felt I could beat those guys. I never felt anybody in that weight was better than me, or that I had to wres- tle a perfect match to win. I hadn’t put together a complete tournament. Momir (Petkovic) worked a lot with me mentally. He would call me at 3:45 in the morning,
and say meet him at the incline at 4:30. About the fifth time he did it, I told Momir to call my wife, because she doesn’t believe I am going to the incline at 4:30. I need you to write me a note or talk to her. We’d then have practice at 8:00. Momir kept telling me I had to be ready for any- thing. Momir played a strong mind game with me leading up to that qualifier. I felt that if I did not qualify that weight class, it was because my soul left my body, because I was going to give everything I have. I felt nobody could beat me,” said Dantzler.
Dantzler put together a great 2008 sea- son, winning the Dave Schultz Memorial, taking a Pan American Championships silver medal, and powering through the U.S. Open and the U.S. Olympic Team Trials.
“That year, I really wanted to push myself and spread the gap between myself and the competition. Keith Sieracki was right there. We didn’t like each other. Now we are close friends. That year, at the Dave Schultz, I wrestled two tourna- ments, both 74 kg and 84 kg, within two days. I wanted to take myself to a level mentally or physically, that I had done everything possible. I created situations for training I didn’t do previous years,” he said.
At the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China, Dantzler dropped his only match to Peter Bacsi of Hungary, 1-5, 2-2, 0-3. He was not able to wrestle back when Bacsi failed to reach the finals. Bacsi went on to place fifth at the Beijing Games, and is still competing, winning a World title in
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