By the time Cejudo was a sophomore in high school, he was one of the best wrestlers in the country. The buzz around him was spilling over from diehard wrestling fans to the entire wrestling world. In August of his junior year, he made an unprecedented move that made him the focal point of every wrestling fan in the United States.
“He was recruited by the Olympic Training Center to move from Phoenix to Colorado Springs to live full-time at the Olympic Training Center and focus full-time on freestyle wrestling,” Warner said. “He moved there in August of his junior year of high school and, from there, all he did was wrestle like a maniac twice a day, sometimes three times a day, and by his senior year of high school he was the first high schooler to win the US Open, which is the freestyle national tournament and it’s the qualifying tournament for the World Team Trials.”
MORE CEJUDO: Greatest Hits | UFC 288 Preview | Athlete Profile
Thanks to the move, Cejudo became the first high schooler to win the US open back in 2006. For context, Spencer Lee, Carter Starocci and Keegan O’Toole all came up short of that honor a week ago at the 2023 US Open.
Turning down scholarships to wrestle for Iowa, Iowa State, Oklahoma State and more, Cejudo set his sights on Olympic gold and achieved just that.
“The rarity of someone winning the Olympic gold medal is – there’s only seven every four years and he was one of them and he’s the youngest American to ever do it,” Warner said. “That rarity, that talent is real and we’ve got to recognize that.”
