Ohio State’s Sammy Sasso wrestling with new idea of winning
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Sammy Sasso isn’t a giant of a man, but the Ohio State All-American wrestler definitely has a giant presence on the wrestling mat.
That hasn’t changed, even as he walks across the mats at the Jennings Wrestling Practice Facility in street clothes with a noticeable limp and sits in front of the microphone to share how his life has changed.
"Craziness – that's how life goes sometimes. Crazy things happen,” he said. “You're just happy to be alive once you wake up."
On Aug. 18, 2023, Sasso suffered a gunshot wound to his abdomen during a carjacking in Weinland Park. That night, he had emergency surgery to reconstruct his colon; and then the next morning had surgery to remove the bullet near his spine. He had four screws and two bars inserted into his back.
It’s been almost six months since “the incident” as he calls it, and now he’s on the mat wrestling again.
"I’ve been making a lot of improvements so, you know, you go back to learning how to walk again to where I am now. It’s honestly just been an uphill improvement since the incident,” Sasso said. “I'm happy to be alive and be with my family. I'm not in a wheelchair, so things could've been a lot worse for me. It just feels good that I'm able to roll around a little bit."
The limp is the only outward evidence of what Sasso has been through.
"The deficit is mostly in my left leg and some of the nerve damage that happened,” he said.
Sasso said tests have shown everything is clicking and firing but at a lower percentage than an uninjured left leg.
“So it would be just your brain telling your body to move a certain way and some of those highways right now are lined with honey,” Ohio State head wrestling coach Tom Ryan explains. “They’re just not smooth. He’s telling it to do something and it can’t do it the way he wants it to. But, as we all know, through a lot of repetition, defined deliberate practice, you can reestablish those super highways. He had those super highways – his highways were lined with grease, you know, grease lightning! So his goal is to get back to that part of his body moving the way he wants it to move.”
Of course, the hardest work has been where you can’t see – Sasso’s mindset, his hopes, his dreams – that’s where some of the most challenging recovery and growth has happened.
“I had a great career. So if God's got the plan for me that I'm not gonna wrestle again, I'm okay with that,” Sasso said. “If I'm not competing at the level I was before then I won't come back."
Ryan said Sasso is going through a transformation.
“As much as he was a leader he is, he's been able to really take a step back and find even deeper gratitude for what he does have,” Ryan said. “It's been a pretty amazing thing to see him refine himself."
Sasso does have the goal to wrestle for Ohio State next season. He knows even if he gets back to full strength, there are other factors he has to overcome, such as roster spots and maybe a new weight class since his body has changed so much, but the idea is there.
“Just to be able to have the hopes to wrestle again, that's cool with me,” he said. “You go through something like that, it makes wrestling a lot easier. I’ve noticed that just sparring with the guys and rolling around with these folks: what I went through was a lot harder than wrestling live in the room. What you thought was hard before, you go through something like that and it’s not hard anymore. Life is good. Life is good. It just keeps getting better."
Two teenagers have been arrested in the shooting and each is charged with aggravated robbery and felonious assault. They will be in juvenile court on Thursday, Feb. 15.