Two-time World Team member Joe Rau on wrestling, trusting the process, and moving to Hawaii someday

Photo courtesy of Tony Rotundo/Wrestlers are Warriors

 Joe Rau is No. 1 at 87 kg on the Greco-Roman National Team. He is a two-time World Team member (2014, 2019) and was the 2016 Olympic Team Trials champion. Recently, Joe took time to answer some of our questions.


What is your favorite movie?
Catch Me If You Can


Who is your favorite musical artist?
Marvin Gaye


What is your favorite food?
An American breakfast
What is your favorite sport to watch other than wrestling?
I used to watch football a lot, but now it’s probably Judo… I like watching their throws.


Did you play any other sports growing up?
I played a lot of football and a little bit of baseball, but I pretty much played everything growing up. I was a running back and a linebacker. Football was my favorite, but I was a better wrestler.


Who is your favorite wrestler to watch either past or present?
There are so many exciting guys to watch right now. I think my favorite from the past is Kendall Cross. I also like watching (Hamad) Sourian from Iran. He’s got a crazy style. He’ll snap guys like he’s the strongest person in the world.


What are some of your other hobbies off of the mat?
I really like doing improv comedy and standup. I do it very casually. I’ll do open mics for standup, and I’ve gone on stage recently a couple times for improve. Other than that, comedy writing.


What is your biggest fear?
I think my biggest fear is that I don’t reach my potential. That’s kind of a weird one because you don’t know what that is. I kind of think a lot about that now. Especially now that this could be my last year, or I could do another quad. Either way, no one would hold it against me; I’m kind of getting to that age. For me, I guess I get scared sometimes thinking about if I have done everything that I can do, or am I going to be able to reach my dreams that I think are possible. I just don’t want to be that guy talking to people for the rest of his life about how he, “should have, could have, would have.” I guess my fear is just not being at peace with what I did with the sport. Hopefully I accomplish something great that satisfies me, or I learn to become satisfied and have peace with all the great opportunities I had.
Do you have any plans once your wrestling career is over?
I think I might move to Hawaii. I just have to figure out how to afford that lifestyle. For a while I thought I wanted to one day focus on comedy more seriously. I don’t think I want to do that. I think I just want to get a job, so that can be something in my life I do more casually. I’m a big traveler, so I think that I would love to live in Europe for a year or maybe New York or California for a year. Definitely living in another country is a big goal of mine, but occupation-wise it’s kind of up in the air for me. I don’t think I am going to go into coaching for the rest of my life at least. Maybe it will be a stepping stone for what I want to go into next. I don’t need a lot of money, I just want a good time after this. The Hawaii thing is pretty serious. It’s kind of like my exit plan. I don’t know if it will be a permanent thing, but I want to move to Hawaii for a while and live the island life.
Where’s your favorite place you’ve been?
That’s hard to say. There’s so many really cool places I’ve got to go to because of wrestling. Whenever anybody asks me this I end up listing like 5 place. I think I really like Petra in Jordan. It was really cool. It was a really good memory because that’s actually where I met my girlfriend. She’s from Belgium. It was a really special place. I made some friends out there who I still talk to. You meet a lot of people when you travel, but you very rarely get to hold onto them. That’s another reason that I really love it.
How did you first get involved in wrestling?
I actually didn’t come from a wrestling family… I had a neighbor from Poland. His son was pretty much like my brother. He was always hanging out with us… I had a very sandlot-like upbringing. All the kids would get together and play pickup games of football, basketball and baseball. I was kind of the runt of the neighborhood. People would always tell me I couldn’t play. They would usually use my front yard to play games, so I was always getting into fights because they would try to tell me I couldn’t play on my own yard. He would see me getting in fight after fight, and he started calling me “mad dog” because I’d fight anybody. I’d fight kids way older than me, and I’d bite them if they were winning. My neighbor kept telling my mom that she needed to put me into wrestling because I was so aggressive. It was at the height of Stone Cold Steve Austin, so of course I wanted to try it out.
What was the best advice you’ve received in your career?
It’s said a lot, so you can kind of not let it hit you the right way, but it’s “respect the process”… You can wrestle every day for 20 something years, and do everything right, and you can still suck. You know martial arts and combat sports and any sport, we feel like if we do things right, we should be somewhere else, like we should be in a better spot. I always feel like I should be doing better. I should be beating these guys by more. I shouldn’t be losing to this guy. You always feel like you can do better. But you know there’s always backsliding and bad things that happen, and careers go up and down. It’s not just straight up. That’s what brings you back to being humbled by how hard it is do to do this. You can do everything right and still suck, so you have to be grateful for your career and just respect the process of it. If you don’t respect the process, you will be like, “well if I did everything right, I should be good. I should win. I should be a champion.” Then it means you’re kind of thinking about this in the wrong way. There’s a process to this, and this can take years and years and years. If you have any success, you’re lucky. If you ever just think, “no I earned it,” then I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. You have to do everything right to give yourself the best opportunity to succeed, and you really have to respect how hard it is to do this and respect the process at becoming good at something like this.
What advice would you give to a younger wrestler?
Love the sport, like really let yourself enjoy the sport. I think that anyone trying to do something seriously at a high level can lose sight of that pretty fast. I would say love the sport and wrestle as much as you can.


Do you have any pre-match rituals?
Yeah, I bounce, squat and then I’ll slap my socks which kind of reminds me of where I’m from. It’s a physical cue to tell myself to wrestle as hard as you possibly can with as much effort and integrity you can. Win or lose, you can hold your head up high.
What is your best wrestling memory to date?
There are so many things that stick out over this long of a career. One that I’ve been thinking about in recent years was when I won the Bill Farrell in freestyle two years ago. It was because I got to wrestle in front of my brother and my dad. Because of wrestling internationally now, I very rarely ever get to wrestle in front of my family. I was actually going out to wrestle Greco, but they couldn’t get off in time to see me wrestle in the Greco tournament. I literally decided to wrestle freestyle that day, and I won the tournament. It wasn’t a huge bracket, but I beat some tough guys. I had a great tournament, and sometimes you’re so competitive it can be hard to have fun sometimes. I really had fun at this tournament and I did it in front of my dad and my brother, so it was really special to me.


The Rau File
Birthday: March 17, 1991
Hometown: Chicago
High school: St. Patrick High School
College: Elmhurst
Residence: Chicago
Club: Titan Mercury, Wildcat WC
Twitter: @raustler84
Instagram: @raustler @chowithrau
• Two-time World Team member (2014,2019)
• 2016 Olympic Team Trials champion
• Two-Time U.S. Open champion
• 2013 NCAA Div. III champion
• Three-time NCAA Div. III All-American
• 2014 University Nationals champion
• 2015 Pan Am champion