Anatoly Petrosyan has been with USA Wrestling for over 16 years as one of the most dedicated, hard working coaches in our country. He has coached our Greco-Roman wrestlers at the United States Olympic Resident Program located in Colorado Springs, Colorado with great success throughout this time period.

The many athletes that have benefited from Anatoly’s expertise include Matt Ghaffari (Olympic silver & world sliver medalist), Rulon Gardner (Olympic and world champion), Matt Lindland (Olympic silver & world silver medalist), Justin Ruiz (world bronze medalist), Joe Warren (world champion), Brad Vering (world silver medalist) and Adam Wheeler (Olympic bronze medalist) to name just a few. Without a doubt Anatoly Petrosyan has been a tremendous asset to our Greco-Roman wrestling program.

Anatoly is of Armenian decent. He was brought up and trained in the former Soviet Russian wrestling system. Before coming to the United States 19 years ago, he lived and coached wrestling in the country of Azerbaijan.

How ironic it is that our U.S. Greco-Roman Team won our first World Championship Team Title ever in our long history in 2007 in none other than Baku, Azerbaijan.

Not only has Anatoly been a great coach but he has been hilarious as well throughout his career.

I remember one practice when one of our resident athletes said to Anatoly that he could not practice on this particular day due to a break out of mat funk (impetigo or herpes) that he had acquired on his face. Anatoly, in front of the whole team, said something like “herpes…what is this herpes? This is nothing. This is normal stuff.” Then Anatoly proceeded to rub his own face on the infected wrestler’s face. “See…this is nothing! Let’s start practice.” Anatoly said.

Two days later when Anatoly came to practice with a full break-out of funk on his own face, he then admitted, “Okay…if you have the funk…you can miss practice.” To this day the team still has a good laugh about this incident.

There is another incident that stands out in my mind. This incident took place in a practice where we were scheduled to do a “grind match”, which is a two hour non-stop wrestling match. Rulon Gardner was in a spunky mood as he often was; when he challenged me two go the grind match with him. He said, “Fraser, You and I…let’s go today”.  My quick response to Rulon was … “I’ll go with you and I’ll kick your butt, big guy”!  Rulon then replied, “I’ll bet you $50 bucks that I can score 60 points on you in one hour”.  Now, this ticked me off a bit. He challenged me in front of the entire team and people were now egging me on saying, “come on coach, you going to take that?”

I may be a bit older but I still am competitive and now my competitive juices started to flow. I paused for a moment and then barked out; “let’s make it $200 chubby!” Now Rulon stopped to think for a moment. You have to know something about Rulon Gardner…when it comes to money, he is very cautious. He does not like to lose it. However he loves to win it. Then he said, “You’re on!”

Now of course I had NO intention on really going with him on this particular day. I was just giving him some smack talk. However, I looked over at him as he was warming up and I noticed that he was really serious.  I could tell he was in his more determined competitive mind set as he kind of glared at me from a distance.

So I immediately walked over to Anatoly Petrosyan, who was in charge of the practice, and I said, “Toly…whatever you do today, DON’T let Rulon and I wrestle. When you see us about to start wrestling, stop us and tell Rulon that you want him to go with someone bigger. Do not, I repeat, do not allow for us to wrestle, please!”

Anatoly agreed not to allow us to wrestle. He did not hear the bet we had made, but that was irrelevant in my mind.

So, now it is time to start the grind match. I am on the mat facing off with Rulon acting like I am anxious to start wrestling. Rulon, of course, is licking his chops. He is ready and anxious to put a huge whipping on me. Then, just as planned, Anatoly steps in-between us and says, “Rulon…I don’t want you to go with Steve Fraser. I want you to go with someone bigger today”. Rulon then says, “No Toly, I want to go with Fraser today”.  Toly again says “no”. Rulon says, “Coach Fraser wants to go with me, please let us go”. Toly again says “no”.

By this time I start to back away stating, “Hey… Anatoly is the boss here; maybe we will go some other time”. As I continue to walk away Rulon is getting enraged. Now Rulon starts pleading with Anatoly… “Please coach, please let us go today. I will give you $50”! Anatoly now hesitates for a moment but then says “no”. Rulon says, “come on coach, I will give you $100, please just let us wrestle!”

All of a sudden Anatoly says “okay! $100. You can wrestle Steve Fraser”.

So, I immediately go to Anatoly and whisper “Toly, why? Why did you allow this? I thought I told you NOT to let us wrestle!” Anatoly then whispers back to me, “Don’t worry…I will split the $100 with you and give you $50.

Twenty eight minutes and 60 points later, Rulon is $100 richer, Anatoly Petrosyan is putting $50 in his pocket and I am licking my wounds!

Anatoly Petrosyan has been a wonderful coach and friend to all of us.