Notebook: Wrestler takes gold on road

By BRYCE MILLER

Gannett News Service

ATHENS, Greece - Cael Sanderson and his Olympic wrestling gold medal, it appears, will be making a road trip.

Representatives of "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno want to book Sanderson this week, USA Wrestling spokesman John Fuller said.

Sanderson plans to do the show, Fuller said.

``It's just find-the-date thing,'' he said.

Sanderson won a gold medal Saturday at 185 pounds, beating Korea's Eui Jae Moon, 3-1, at Ano Liossia Olympic Hall.

The Ames, Iowa, resident finished with the only American gold in the three wrestling disciplines of men's freestyle, women's freestyle and Greco-Roman.

Sanderson, who normally is modest and low-key, already started trying out potential material for the show.

After winning the gold, he joked about pressure from his family, suggesting that he had a strategy to keep from being locked out of his house if he fell short of a gold medal.

``I placed a spare key, actually, so if I lost I could get back in,'' he said.

Greco-Roman star Rulon Gardner, who won a bronze this week, said the amount of attention he received after his gold medal in Sydney four years ago was staggering.

Sanderson said he's not ready to consider being an ambassador for his sport.

``I'm not too worried about that right now,'' he said. ``Right now, I'm going to enjoy this and take some time and hang out with my wife a little bit. That's about it.

``Everything else, I'll start worrying about that later.''

After the whistle

ATHENS, Greece - Russia's Buvaysa Saytiev and Murad Gaidarov of Belarus got into a fistfight just inside the tunnel at matside after Saytiev's 3-2 freestyle wrestling victory on Sunday.

Punches were thrown after Saytiev won the quarterfinal match at 163 pounds.

Neither wrestler appeared seriously injured, and Saytiev later won the gold medal.

More extra-curriculars

ATHENS, Greece - Earlier this week, it was announced that Greco-Roman champion Karam Ibrahim of Egypt was talking to WWE officials about joining professional wrestling.

It sounds like American shot put Olympian Reese Hoffa could be next.

USA Wrestling spokesman John Fuller, who helped Ibrahim connect with the WWE, said representatives contacted him hoping for assistance in getting a contract offer to Hoffa. The 6-foot, 295-pound thrower from Evans, Ga., finished 10th in the shot put on Aug. 18.

Hoffa already has some on-the-job training: He made track and field headlines a couple years ago when he wore a Mexican pro wrestling mask while competing at a meet.