Lloyd Keaser

Lloyd Weldon "Butch" Keaser (born February 9, 1950 in Pumphrey , Maryland ) is a former American wrestler . He was world champion in 1973 and silver medalist at the 1976 Olympic Games in lightweight free style .

Career

"Butch" Keaser grew up in Baltimore . He attended Brooklyn High School and then the United States Naval Academy . He had already started wrestling at school age, which he continued at the Naval Academy with coach Ed Peery. He wrestled exclusively in free style.

In 1970 and 1972 he won the championship of the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association (association of university wrestlers in the eastern United States) in welterweight. At the USA Championship of the University Sports Association NCAA, Keaser took 4th place in 1971 and 3rd place in the lightweight in 1972. His breakthrough came in 1973 when he became the USA Lightweight Amateur Athletic Union Champion. He was then used at the World Cup in Tehran , where he immediately became world champion with six wins and one draw against the Soviet athlete Nasrula Nasrulajew . Lloyd Keaser was the first African American wrestler to become world champion.

In the next few years he was 1974 military world champion of the CISM (military sports association, in which the NATO countries and some other western states were organized) in lightweight and won the title at the Pan American Games in Mexico City in 1975 .

Keaser drove to the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal and won six wins there, but was defeated in the decisive battle for the gold medal by the Soviet defense artist Pawel Pinigin just on points.

In 1977 Keaser took his leave of the Marine Corps as captain. After further training, he took up a position as an engineer at IBM in Baltimore in 1985 . In 1996 he was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame for his services to wrestling .

International success

(OS = Olympic Games, WM = World Championship, F = free style, Fe = featherweight, Le = lightweight, We = welterweight, back then up to 62 kg, 68 kg or 74 kg body weight)

• 1973, 1st place , World Championship in Teheran , F, Le, with victories over Josef Engel, Czechoslovakia , Markku Yli-Isolato, Finland , Joseph Gilligan, Great Britain , Chan Ho-Sung, South Korea , János Kocsis, Hungary and others. Tsedendambyn Natsagdordsch , Mongolia a . a tie against Nasrula Nasrulajew , USSR ;

• 1974, 1st place , CISM military world championships in Rome , F, Fe, ahead of Ahmadi, Iran and Di Mauro, Italy ;

• 1975, 1st place , Pan American Games in Mexico City , F, Le, ahead of Clive Llewllyn, Canada a . Pazo, Cuba ;

• 1975, 10th place , World Cup in Minsk , F, Le, with a victory over Petrone Androne, Romania a . Defeats to Mehmet Sari , Turkey and Pawel Pinigin , USSR;

• 1976, silver medal , OS in Montreal , F, Le, with victories over Kari Övermark, Finland , Yasaburo Sugawara, Japan , Mohammad-Reza Navai, Iran, Gerhard Weisenberger , FRG , José Ramos , Cuba and others. Doncho Zekow , Bulgaria a . a loss to Pawel Pinigin

swell

• 1) Div. Issues of the specialist magazines "Athletik" from 1973 to 1975 and "The Ringer" from 1976,
• 2) Documentation of International Wrestling Championships of the FILA, 1976

Web links

• Lloyd Keaser's profile at the Institute for Applied Training Science
• Lloyd Keaser in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Portrait of Lloyd Keaser (English)