Onitsuka tiger mexico 66

He was an original Marlboro Man, a cigarette model whose built-for-Hollywood persona played out on big-city billboards and inside magazines across the country. 

But that’s just a chapter to the Bill Farrell story. 

He played football in college and he was a wrestler, too.

He took up the sport at the age of 26 and, incredibly, placed sixth at the World Championships six years later before going on to coach one of the most decorated Olympic freestyle squads in American history. 

But that, too, is just a fraction of Farrell. 

These days, he’s perhaps best known in the wrestling community as the namesake of the tournament that begins Friday in New York, where Olympic hopefuls gather for the Bill Farrell International. 

Still, though, athletes, coaches and spectators pass through the tournament each year without ever fully grasping Farrell’s massive impact on the sport.

Perhaps the sim