I was reading the thread below about the Millard South coach and I am pretty new to Nebraska. What is the "Headlock" publication, and what does that have to do with the NWI? I am pretty interested in what's being talked about, but have no clue what Hawk is talking about. Can you give me a little history lesson? Thanks in advance.

It was the first publication about Nebraska wrestling. Coach Denson did it for 5 years...funded it, ran articles, sent wrestling certificates, compiled all 4 class rankings, covered the college scene...it was a low scaled version of a wrestling magazine. It was not an internet magazine, but it was the model for which to develop from!
Many kids and adults enjoyed the paper! I know I sent my 10 bucks in every year! It was a great effort to cover wrestling!

HI GUYS - Looks like there is a lot of questions and opinions in the good ole forum. Well, I thought I would put my two cents worth on THE HEADLOCK and then let Mike tell how it came to be in his hands:

In 1983, Tim Neumann came out with the Original Headlock (long before we were frollicking through the WEB), and it was awesome. Tim published several issues which were done professionally. However, he lost over 10 grand in the operation.

At that time, I really liked hearing about the college scene and then Tim had a deal called the Super 16 all class team rankings as well as the All-Class rankings. Well anyway, I decided to try to do a version of the whole thing, but scaled down so as not to lose a ton of money. With the help of Tim and Mike Denney, I launched The Headlock in 1988. I worked hard on it and put in a billion hours, but a one man show is just too hard to do! I could only cover college and the Super 16 and All-Class rankings. Anyway, that is what I decided to focus on. Seemed like the OMH and others didn't want to cover wrestling.

I hung on for 10 years until Mike C. came to me and talked to me about his venture. I was elated and dropped my publication when his came about. That is the end of the story. Mike can tell you in detail what led him to the development of the NWI and a little of his own background. Go for it MIKE!

The NSWCA board asked me to go along with their team to the Dapper Dan Classic, and of course I jumped at the opportunity. Took a ton of photos, interviewed all the Nebraska kids and came home with a bunch of great stuff and a great experience and a new appreciation for the sport.

When I got back, though, I saw that the OWH and LJS had done NOTHING on this first-ever Dapper Dan team from Nebraska...not even agate on their match (although they did mention Brad Metzler wrestling for the US national team at the DDC). In fact, the only mention of the Dapper Dan team that was made in any daily newspaper in the state, to my knowledge, was the Norfolk Daily News. Coincidentally...the reporter who wrote that story was a guy by the name of Michael Carnes.

Kevin Dill, my best friend from our school days and a graphic design guru (so good he's scary), worked with me on putting the first PDF file together. Originally, it was going to be called Wrestling Illustrated Nebraska (WIN), but obviously there was already a publication with a similar moniker. Thus, NWI was born and the magazine was e-mailed to about 150 coaches who, in turn, gave me 150 variations of the exclamation "THIS IS AWESOME" in response.

Doug contacted me about the magazine and we talked for a while, and he encouraged me to go ahead with the magazine. He was getting to the point where his kids were getting close to high school and he wasn't going to have time to do the Headlock, and he's been one of the magazine's biggest supporters from Day One.

To make a long story a little shorter...we developed an e-mail list and attempted to e-mail the magazine, but because we had a number of Hotmail and Yahoo accounts we were getting them sent back by their servers. Thus, the website was born and downloads of the magazine exploded from there...over 200,000 in each of the last two full seasons.

The magazine has always been a free, downloadable PDF file, but now we're going to change things in an effort to really grow the website and the business that it's tied to (iHaveGame.com). The PDF files won't be there anymore. In their place will be a login for paid subscribers who will be sent to a "premium" area where you will get everything that was in the magazine previously.

We're still going to do the live bracket coverage of the state tournament and we have more things planned for the future. All of this is possible ONLY because of the support and encouragement of people like Doug Denson and the tons of coaches, wrestlers and fans that have made the magazine the success that it is.

Kevin and I get a lot of kudos for the work that we do, and we certainly thank everybody for the kind words. But the success is not ours alone...it is also that of the wrestling community who has supported us. Without you, this doesn't exist, plain and simple.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it...

Just curious, if there is a picture in the magazine that we like, will we be able to download it?

We have a link on our website where you can go and order photos that we shoot and publish in NWI. That will still be available on the home page.