Morning wrestling practices at Mizzou start before the sun makes its appearance over Columbia, and on one particular February morning in 2017, Tigers coach Brian Smith noticed something unusual on his drive to the Hearnes Center.
“I see this person in the dark and think who’s that massive guy running in the middle of the winter?” Smith recalled recently. “I get to morning practice and J’den shows up. I ask him, ‘Were you just running down Providence?’”
“He says, ‘Yeah, I’m running to morning practices now just to get in an extra workout. I don’t want to leave any doubt for this year.’”
Wrestlers worldwide share their workout videos amid coronavirus lockdown; Watch
Here’s what makes this one of Smith’s countless J’den Cox stories remarkable: These frigid pre-dawn jogs came in the midst of what could go down as the most spectacular 12 months for any Mizzou athlete. The previous spring Cox had gone 33-1 and won his second NCAA championship. The next summer he went to Rio and captured the bronze medal at the Olympic Games. Then, as he made that morning runs to practice, Cox was on his way to an undefeated senior season, a year that ended with a third NCAA championship, an unprecedented achievement for the most successful program on campus.
Through it all, arguably the most celebrated and decorated single year for any Mizzou athlete, he continued to find ways to challenge himself. Finish lines don’t exist on Planet J’den.
“You don’t see that in elite athletes all the time, but that’s what made him elite,” Smith said. “It was like three to four miles from his place every morning. And then we put him through practice!”
That endless quest to secure and surpass the next goal has defined Cox’s brilliant wrestling career, at the high school, college and now international level. From 2014-2017, Cox posted a record of 136-5 for the Tigers. Only two-time national champion Ben Askren won more matches (153) at Mizzou. While Askren twice won the Hodge Award as the nation’s best wrestler — Cox was a finalist his senior year — and the bulk of Askren’s matches were more decisive (91 pins compared to Cox’s 27), Cox has enjoyed more success in the sport post-Mizzou, winning the world championship in 2018 and 2019. Askren, 35, made the 2008 Olympics but didn’t medal then began the transition to mixed martial arts.
(With two spots left, Askren hasn’t appeared in this series yet. Hint, hint.)
On the surface, Cox lived the storybook life for a college athlete. The hometown hero from Columbia’s Hickman High competed in front of adoring fans, tasted unmatched success and became as popular as any Mizzou peer of his generation, the rare athlete from a non-revenue sport to absorb the attention usually reserved for players from mainstream cash machines football and basketball. On a local scale, Cox became an icon.
But there were dark times, too — and not just those early-morning runs.
Near the end of his college career, Cox openly talked about his lifelong struggles with depression. In a 2016 documentary and some select subsequent local interviews, he talked about a traumatic experience as a 7-year-old that continued to haunt him into adulthood. Cox doesn’t discuss the details publicly, but during his freshman year the pain became so powerful, he once walked along Highway 63 and convinced himself to step into traffic and end it all. A phone call from his longtime trainer saved him that day. Cox was soon hospitalized for two weeks.
In a phone interview this week from his home in Colorado Springs, Colo., Cox said, depression “was a big thing for me.” Then he corrected himself.
“It is a big thing for me,” he said.
Now, though, he has the tools to cope. Cox, 25, focuses on his training, his music, his relationships and his wide swath of interests off the mat. He credits Mizzou for giving him the resources to meet his depression head-on. Now, he talks about it freely, hoping someone out there faced with their own challenges can draw inspiration from his story.
“I had to find a way to live a better life off the mat and live a life for me,” he said. “I was tired of where I was as a person. Once I figured that out everything else changed.”
“In today’s society mental health needs to be an issue,” he continued. “Anyone looks at my life and sees the things I’ve done, they see a picture of me and think this guy has everything. Why would this guy be sad? They’d never guess it. This muscular-looking guy is not feeling bad about himself. But that’s not the case. I’ve done great things. I’ve traveled around the world. I’ve gone to the Olympics. I’ve won medals. I’ve won championships. And I’ve done it while I was struggling with these struggles. … It’s something that needs to be talked about and brought to the forefront. If that’s something I can talk about and let people know it’s OK to let it be known how you’re feeling and there’s a way to overcome it and cope with it and you’re not alone … if I can spread that message I’m gong to do it 100 times out of 100 times one million.”
After winning his first national title in 2014 in Oklahoma City, Cox carried a 56-match winning streak into the 2015 NCAA semifinal round in St. Louis but lost to Ohio State’s Kyle Snyder in the 197-pound match. Cox settled for fifth place. He later said he wasn’t wrestling aggressive enough when the stakes were highest.
After the disappointing finish, Cox found solace in a message from Mizzou assistant Alex Clemsen, now the head coach at Maryland.
“He told me, ‘You did everything wrong in a whole year and at the national tournament you took fifth. When you think about it like that, it’s not that bad,’” Cox said. “That gave me a boost. Man, even on my worst day I still took fifth in the nation. He said, ‘Imagine what you’d be like if you gave everything you had toward this.’”
The next two years, Cox lost just once on the college mats, a controversial disqualification against Ohio’s Phil Wellington, when Cox slammed him off the mat and into the scorer’s table, after which Cox wrote his opponent a letter apologizing. That didn’t shake Cox’s focus. He never lost another match in college, winning the 2016 title in New York City and the 2017 title back in St. Louis.
After returning home from the Olympics, Cox was in high demand around Columbia, but sensing his star needed a break from the onslaught of attention, Smith limited Cox’s public appearances and held him out of three January dual matches.
“He was already doing like three or four appearances a week and I finally said he’s going to crash,” Smith said. “He’s a student first, remember. He’s got classes, then practice and now he has to deal with being ‘the guy.’ He just won the bronze, but this was his senior year and I didn’t want to screw it up.”
“I wanted to wrestle but my body was beat up and wouldn’t do what I wanted it to do,” Cox said. “Then I came back and was good as ever. I was fired up, ready to go. … My gas tank was full. My reactions were back. I felt awesome. I just went back on my tear. The only focus was to get a third title and have some fun.”
Cox cruised through the Mid-American Conference meet then the NCAA Championships and crowned his college career with one last victory, an 8-2 decision over Minnesota’s Brett Pfarr — back at Enterprise Center, scene of his setback two years earlier.
“To come back and have a second shot there was tremendous,” he said. “Then to know you only have a two-hour drive to get home is even more awesome. So let’s do this, drive home, get some ribs and celebrate.”
The next quest, another Olympic medal. But he’ll have to wait another year. The coronavirus delayed the 2020 Tokyo Games to 2021, a move Cox didn’t first fully understand. He rarely watches the news and mostly stays off social media. Once he saw the pandemic was serious enough to cancel the NCAA national meet, he figured the Olympics would soon follow.
As always, he met the situation with empathy for those affected more intimately by the virus.
“When you think about it, the pain that I felt for missing the Olympics does not compare to losing a loved one. It just doesn’t,” he said “It doesn’t matter what sport I’m doing. It does not compare what other people are going through right now. It’s hard for me to do nothing because I’m a person of action. I’d rather be helping and I wish I could speed this along, but if they’re telling me the best thing I can do for people’s health is do nothing and stay home, then that’s what I’m going to do. These people’s lives are not less than Olympic gold medals.”
Before the Olympics were pushed back, Cox made the decision to move up a weight class from 92 kilograms to 97, putting him in the same class as Snyder, the gold-medal winner in 2016.
That’s still the plan for 2021.
“This thing is a journey for me,” he said. “It’s not a weight thing. It’s a desire to be the best I can possibly be and push myself to reach my full potential. That’s my goal in my career. I never have a finish line. I’m always striving.”
J’DEN COX Q&A
Q: Of all the things you did in college what were you most proud of?
A: I’m proud of the teams I was part of. I’m proud of the organization I got to represent. I’m proud of dual wins. Proud of individual accomplishments. Proud of winning titles. There was a lot that went into what I did. For me, the coolest thing I got to do through my accomplishments was I got to share it with people. They say it’s lonely at the top. To a point that’s true but at the same time it takes 1,000 people to get you up there. To share my accomplishments with those people and never forget what people have done for you, I’m most of proud of that.
Q: After you win the national title as a freshman what did you expect for the rest of your career?
A: I knew it wasn’t going to be automatic. You know it’s going to take a grind. At the same time it was even harder, but you didn’t know what it would take to win it again. For me, my personal story, I just wasn’t living my best life off the mat in those years. That took away from me on the mat. That’s where growing as a man came comes into play with Mizzou. Once that took place, I took the steps to make sure I was putting my best foot forward as a wrester. But that only came because I was supported off the mat.
Q: After you finished fifth at the 2015 championships as a sophomore, how did you recover from that?
A: My junior year I was very amped up. I had been going through a process of growing as a person, and the first thing that came with that was I was very confident. This was something I give credit to Coach (Alex) Clemsen. He told me, ‘You did everything wrong in a whole year and at the national tournament you took fifth. When you think about it like that, it’s not that bad.’ That gave me a boost. Man, even on my worst day I still took fifth in the nation. He said, ‘Imagine what you’d be like if you gave everything you had toward this.’ With that mindset and on top of that figuring things out off the mat, it was a concoction for something awesome and great to happen and repeat as a national champion. I got to make history and join Ben Askren, as the only two-time NCAA champions from Mizzou. That was really special to be part of that.
Q: How did you have to start living your best life?
A: It’s no secret that depression was a big thing for me. No, it is a big thing for me. That was a struggle. One thing was finding ways to cope with that and deal with some issues from a younger age. I had to look within myself. I had to find a way to cope in a way that was healthier.
In the sport of wrestling the biggest gift you get is yourself. It’s weird because the way you figure yourself out is you give more of yourself. For me when I was able and willing to do more for myself I was capable of giving more of myself to the sport. That’s why you see the fruits of my labor with national titles, with victories and all the work I put in. That was the big thing for me. I had to find a way to live a better life off the mat and live a life for me. I was tired of where I was as a person. Once I figured that out everything else changed, too. I tell kids all the time the way you live your life off the mat will affect you on it. Mizzou did that with me. They helped me get the tools I needed to do that.
Note: The interview was published in SLTtoday.com
