Legally Blind Wrestler Insists That He Is Neither Different Nor Special : Victor Hakopian Is Hard to Pin Down

What matters to Victor Hakopian is that he is a very good wrestler. What is important is that he can bend an opponent’s body, subdue an opponent’s mind, by using his strength, knowledge and will.

What he is proud of is his 39-8 record at 148 pounds this season at Canyon High School. And the fact that he leads Canyon, the No. 1-ranked team in California, in pins with 28.

That is important and real.

The other things--the questions that bore him, the sympathy he doesn’t want, the handicap he doesn’t recognize--are only distractions, treated with the same disdain as the bleeding hearts who would dub him different or special.

Being different only brought the laughter of grammar school kids who made fun of his crossed eyes, unaware that Hakopian’s eyes had undergone surgery more than 10 times before he was 8.

Being special only allowed people to make excuses, and tell him what he couldn’t do. Protecting the blind boy, lest he try something and (gasp!) fail.

But Victor Hakopian isn’t blind, as he will tell you with considerable force. He is legally blind. He can see shapes and shadowy outlines. He can read books through the use of an enlarger and can watch television.

It was television that introduced Hakopian to wrestling.

“I’d watch professional wrestling on TV and I thought it was great,” he said. “I got all excited and started practicing flying body slams. I decided then that I’d go out for the wrestling team at school.”

That was last school year. Hakopian was a sophomore attending La Mirada High. When he showed up for the first day of practice he was shocked to find that high school wrestling took place on a mat, not in a ring. There were no tag teams, and wrestlers were not allowed to bash each other with folding chairs.

“I was kind of bummed,” he said. “I thought it was going to be just like Channel 9. But I figured I was there so I might as well try.”

Which is something others would have preferred he didn’t.

“I was scared at first,” said Tamara Hakopian, Victor’s mother. “I really didn’t want him to do it. Wrestling is such a tough sport, especially for someone with Victor’s problem.”

Hakopian was born without an iris in either eye, which made them extremely sensitive to light. For five years, starting at age 2, his life was a cruel merry-go-round of doctors’ offices and operating rooms, always with the same result--disappointment.

There were monthly visits to San Francisco with his mother for a year and a half. Visits that produced little except to put him behind a year in school.

The doctors experimented on Victor, but all that came of it was a buildup of pressure on his eyes. By the age of 7, Victor Hakopian had developed glaucoma.

The doctors gave up. Hakopian wound up with a left eye of limited vision and right eye that was practically useless.

“My goodness, there were 10, 12, I don’t know, maybe more operations,” said Harry Hakopian, Victor’s father. “I guess I lost count. And, after all of it, the doctors told us there was nothing else they could do. Victor’s condition was not curable. Glasses, surgery, nothing. That was the end of it.”

Tragic and final as it sounds, Victor says he was relieved when it was over, eager to make the transition from medical guinea pig to neighborhood kid.

He played sports around the house with brothers Edward and John, who distinguished themselves in high school athletics.

By the time Victor got to high school, he was looking for a sport to call his own. Then one Saturday morning, he turned on the television.

“A lot of people were worried about me when I first went out for the team,” he said.

The fears were seemingly confirmed when Hakopian was pinned in 30 seconds in his first match.

“It sounds weird, but I loved it,” he said. “I knew right then if I worked at it I could be good at it.”

And there started Hakopian’s quest. He began tackling friends and relatives on the living-room rug and slapping them into the newest hold he had learned. He lifted weights and ran four to five miles at night .

“Some people wanted me to quit, but you’ve got to risk it once in a while,” he said. “I remember there were five or six other students at La Mirada with vision problems. They’d ditch class and make some lame excuse about their eyes, knowing people would feel sorry for them. I didn’t want that. There’s no reason for anyone to feel sorry for me.

“Sure, I wish I could just pick up a book, sit back in a chair and read without a machine to help me. Sometimes I wish I could just jump in a car and drive away. But I can’t. OK. But there are a lot of things I can do. No one is going to stop me from doing them.”

In wrestling, not many have. He was seeded fourth at 148 pounds in the Southern Section’s 4-A divisional championships at Edgewood High School. He lost Friday night to Ed Rucker of

Loara, 8-3, and will wrestle in the consolation bracket today.

He got there by placing second in the Century League championships. Hakopian transferred to Canyon after his family moved to Anaheim last summer.

Earlier in the year, he placed fifth in the Five Counties Tournament, considered second only to the state championships in terms of competition and prestige.

His success has not surprised Gary Bowden, Canyon coach, but Bowden admits that he was a bit “apprehensive” about coaching someone like Victor.

“I knew that he had problems with his eyes,” he said. “And I guess I was worried more about how I would react.

“But when you meet Victor you realize that pride is his motivating force. Wrestling is his outlet to channel a lot of his desires. He’s not self-conscious of his eyes, and he won’t let it get in his way. That puts you at ease pretty quickly.”

Hakopian, a junior, says his wrestling has improved immensely from the days at La Mirada when he tried to maul opponents. Where he once relied on nothing but strength, he has learned to rely on technique.

As far as his ability has grown, so has his reputation. And so theories on how to beat Hakopian have been popping up. Harris Oishi, Canyon assistant coach, has noticed a recent tendency for Hakopian’s opponents to stand and use his lack of vision against him.

“Once Victor has someone in a hold, he doesn’t really need his vision,” Oishi said. “He can feel for holds.

“But when the two wrestlers are apart, that’s where he is vulnerable. His opponent will attempt to get out of his vision and shoot into him. Because of Victor’s vision problems, his reaction to something like that is going to be slow, and that’s where he can get hurt.”

But, at least on one occasion, the subject of Victor’s eyes has proved an advantage. Bowden remembers an important match in which Hakopian’s opponent, having heard of Victor’s prowess, had worked himself into a rage.

“This guy was going crazy, he wanted Victor,” Bowden said. “He knows that if he beats Victor he makes a name for himself.”

So the two go out on the mat and before the match is about to begin the referee mentions to Hakopian’s excitable opponent about Victor’s vision.

“The kid’s face just dropped; I guess he didn’t know,” Bowden said. “Victor pinned him in about a minute. When the kid got up he congratulated Victor and told him what a great guy he thought he was.”

A great guy? Well, Victor Hakopian might have a little trouble with that.

“I’m not better or worse than anyone else,” he said. “People always ask the same questions about my vision and my wrestling. It gets pretty boring. But I tell them it’s no big deal and neither am I.”

Which might be, no, is stretching the truth. Because Victor Hakopian, like it or not, is much more than just a very good wrestler.