THE 1987 PAN AMERICAN GAMES : Wrestling : It’s Hard to Pin a Label on Heavyweight Champion

Here’s a multiple choice quiz: Who is this man? He is a die-hard romantic who sends flowers to his wife once a week. He’s soft, sensitive, never grumpy. Self-effacing. Likes gardening.

The answer is (a) Woody Allen; (b) A wimpy Robert Redford; (c) the freestyle heavyweight wrestling champion of the world, weighing in at 265 pounds; (d) none of the above.

The answer is (c).

His name is Bruce Baumgartner, and he won Friday night’s Pan American Games gold medal in the 130-kilogram class (286 pounds), before a crowd of 4,185 in a human sweat box also known as Nicoson Hall at the University of Indianapolis.

Baumgartner, 27, beat Domingo Mesa of Cuba in the gold medal match, 9-0, somewhat avenging one of the few losses he has suffered in a highly successful international wrestling career that began when he made the U.S. Olympic team as an alternate in 1980 and sailed right on through a world championship and a gold medal in the ’84 Olympics in Los Angeles. One of the few losses he had along the way was in the 1983 Pan Am Games in Caracas, Venezuela, when he lost in the final to Candido Mesa, Domingo’s brother.

“Mesa (Domingo) was an admirable opponent tonight,” Baumgartner said afterward.

That was not really the case, but it was the kind of statement one would expect from a man who, despite the rugged world of wrestling, is clearly a gentle giant. “Back in ‘84, I told an L.A. Times reporter (Dave Distel) something that got quoted all over the place,” said Linda Baumgartner, Bruce’s wife, watching here as her husband took the victory stand. “And that statement hasn’t changed a bit. Bruce is a big teddy bear.

“We’ve been married five years, and he still sends me flowers once a week. If I’m flying in to meet him, he’ll be there at the airport waiting for me with flowers.

“When he comes to me off the mat, he is the quiet, sensitive soft-spoken man he has always been. I’d call him the perfect husband.

“Bruce is a very orderly person,” she said. “Before a match, he likes to have his clothes and his equipment laid out just so. And you should see his wood shop at home. All his tools, right in place, right where they should be and where he wants them to be.

“And he’s the green thumb in our family. You should see his vegetables . . . “

All this, and a sense of humor, too.

When asked about the notoriety of his sport, Baumgartner said: “If I wanted to be in a sport with notoriety, I’d be in football or basketball. Or maybe gymnastics, but I’d break the bars.”

When asked about his habit not only of neatly lining up his clothes before a match but also of wearing the same clothes match after match, he said: “Actually, wearing the same stuff all tournament hasn’t got much to do with neatness. I’m just trying to keep up with the Europeans. They tend to wear the same stuff all month.”

And asked about things like his training patterns, his weight, his heart rate and his blood pressure, he said: “I don’t know. I’ll probably have heart trouble and arthritic knees when I get older.”

Clearly, Bruce Baumgartner would be a media darling, were the media to ever start looking for darlings in wrestling. But as things are now, life is fairly peaceful for the Baumgartner family of Edinboro, Pa., where Bruce is an assistant wrestling coach at Edinboro State and a local hero a couple of times a year when he wins a big meet and the big city papers create a ruckus.

The Pan Am Games qualifies for Baumgartner, sort of.

“If this had been in Chile, or wherever it was originally going to be,” he said, “I don’t think I would have gone to the trouble. The World Games coming up next week (in Cleeremont-Feerend, France) are bigger.”

But by the same token, Baumgartner and his U.S. wrestling teammates seemed to enjoy rising to the challenge of the Cuban competition here. Dave Schultz and Baumgartner each beat Cubans in the final Friday night; Schultz upsetting world champion Raul Cascaret, while Greg Robbins and Tim Vanni were beaten in the final by Cubans. Another U.S. wrestler, John Smith, beat a Canadian for the gold, and Canadian Doug Cox took the sixth gold contested on the evening program.

“The Cubans have a tough squad,” Baumgartner said, “but their chances of winning much on the World Championship level are slim and none. They key on the Pan Am Games. This is their Olympics, their biggest competition every four years.”

Baumgartner said he made a number of mistakes in the final and said that he would spend Saturday and much of the early part of next week working out hard before leaving for France on Aug. 19.

“We’re all peaking for this,” he said. “This is what you shoot for. You want to win in the worlds.”

If you are Linda Baumgartner, you would expect no less.

“You know, since we’ve been married, five years now, I know he’s lost a few matches,” she said, “but, when I think about it, he’s never lost one when I’ve been there. Nope, I’ve never seen him lose since we’ve been married.”

Yes, indeed. The perfect husband. Also, a pretty fair country wrestler.