Danny Hodge's career covered 30 years of wrestling championships - from Junior High to World's Professional Champion. One of the strongest wrestlers ever to step on a mat, the stories of Danny Hodge's strength sound like fiction. Walking into a hardware store and bending pliers with his grip. His laurels would cover several pages, but the following lists the highlights of an outstanding career.
In the collegiate style of wrestling, he had no peer, indeed no challenger. He won every one of his 46 bouts for the University of Oklahoma, 36 of them by fall, an astonishing 78 per cent. During his junior and senior years, he pinned 22 consecutive opponents. And no collegiate foe ever took him to the mat from the standing position.
Three times a National Collegiate champion at 177 pounds, he twice was voted the outstanding wrestler of the NCAA tournament.
In one 10-day span in 1956, his junior year, Hodge won the NCAA title and National AAU championships in both Greco-Roman and freestyle, winning every bout in those three tournaments by fall.
Twice he was an Olympic wrestler, placing fifth in 1952 at Helsinki before his college career started, and winning the silver medal in the 1956 Games at Melbourne. There, in the championship bout, he led his Bulgarian opponent by a wide margin when a controversial rolling fall was called against him.
Over five years starting in 1952, his only three defeats in any style of wrestling were administered by three Olympic champions, a Russian, an American and a Bulgarian.
After his collegiate wrestling career, Dan Hodge won national Golden Gloves and National AAU championships in boxing, becoming the first athlete in more than 50 years to win national titles in both sports.
For his legendary achievements as a wrestler, Dan Allen Hodge is honored as a Distinguished Member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
