Steve Mocco is what you would call a cult of personality — mostly of New Jersey personality — but personality all the same. There are very few single-named icons in the world, and in the case of the wrestling community, the number of single-named monikers is even rarer. 

If anyone in the wrestling know says the word "John" and moves on with their sentence, you can rest assured that you're in for a story about John W Smith. Same thing with the name Cael. Gable was included on this list until a certain Minnesota heavyweight came into the forefront of the collective wrestling consciousness. 

One thing you could ask yourself is why is Mocco included on that list? If you’re stacking up world or Olympic titles he falls short. Cael has an Olympic gold medal, John rattled off six straight. Even the youngest of the group, Steveson, who has three age-level world titles. Mocco does boast a Pan Am Title as well as a Yarygin title, but his stats don’t really compare to that of the others on the one-named list. 

What was is that made Mocco such an endearing character in the wrestling? Allow me to shed some light on the subject. 

The Bear

If you ask around (and I did), Steve Mocco was given the nickname "The Bear" by his original club coach, Ernie Monaco, from The Edge School Of Wrestling. If you spend any amount of time watching Mocco wrestle it’s pretty easy to see that the epithet fits. He actually swatted people’s heads as a bear would. Don't believe me? Start here.

I'm not proud of the number of hours I’ve spent searching things like "Gorilla fights a crocodile," but that number (which will remain unuttered) makes for a level of expertise that I’m not willing to completely admit. Do you know what the biggest difference is between the way humans fight as opposed to animals? We, generally speaking, have regard for or own well-being; animals do not.

The thing that I think made Mocco most frightening isn’t that he would swat people’s heads the way that he did. It was the fact that they inevitably retaliated he wouldn't move out of the way. He wouldn’t try to stop himself from being hit back. He wouldn’t even wince. Do yourself a favor and watch this match with Mocco. The opening sequence says it all. Mocco leading with his face in a brutal hand fight, and the Iowa State wrestler trying to evade.

Big-Move Potential

Hand fighting alone doesn’t win wrestling matches; you have to have a way to score points, or better yet, put people on their backs. 

Mocco had a judo background and one of his best takedowns was a foot sweep. His ability to manipulate peoples’ weight to make the leg he was sweeping lighter or heavier depending on his will was astonishing. There were so many intricate details that went into getting a heavyweight’s foot off the ground that people were in awe of it even while it was happening. Take that, add in the fact that the going from the neutral position to pinning someone is the wrestling equivalent of a knockout, the anticipation of that move would heighten the drama in the match as it was going on. You knew that the foot sweep was coming; it was just a matter of when. 

Check out just how much technique was involved in doing a foot sweep from a collar tie. 

The Lore

The timing of a character like Mocco was perfect. When Mocco was coming up the internet was in its fledgling stages. There wasn’t much footage of Mocco before college and that only added to the lore that was Steve Mocco. The stories of him running through workout partners at Blair Academy was legendary. The way that it was told to me is that Coach Buxton would bring in Blair Alum to wrestle with Mocco in practice. At any other school that would be one thing, but at Blair academy where every single athlete that comes through the program is being groomed to compete at a Division I level that takes on a whole new meaning. Just imagine the list of former All-Americans and DI starters that Coach Buxton recruited. All of them would be against the wall at one point or another. 

My favorite Mocco stories come to us straight from Iowa City. The story goes that even at an elite program like Iowa’s, Mocco would run through workout partners. One time there was a coach and two non-starters sitting on the wall in the Carver-Hawkeye wrestling room. Coach Tom Brands, an assistant at Iowa at the time, surveys the room and Mocco was standing in the middle of the mats with his hands on his hips and no one to wrestle with. Then from across the room Coach Brands hears three-time NCAA champion Lincoln McIlravy scream at the top of his lungs: "HEY MOCCO! If you keep breaking all your toys you’ll have nothing to play with.”