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Truly the GOATs is a sports history podcast with a sense of perspective. Truly the GOATs tells the stories of once-in-a-century athletes, their games and the worlds in which they lived.
Episodes
Monday Jun 22, 2020
Monday Jun 22, 2020
A sport that can trace roots 3,000 years back and has a solid 3½ centuries’ worth of stats – now we’re talking some true Greatest of All-Time athletes!
In fact, this episode is devoted to two GOATs and their ancient yet steadily evolving sport, sumo. First up is quite possibly the greatest athlete of the 18th century – a time when most “Western” sports were at least a half-century away from embryonic. His name was Raiden, and he compiled a winning percentage that may be untouchable in all of combat sports. Raiden stood as the undisputed GOAT for a good 200 years.
Until Hakuho showed up at the dawn of the 21st century. What does it take for any athlete to overcome a legend over two centuries old? As skeptical as Truly The GOATs is about crowning living athletes the GOAT, there’s a hell of a case to be made for Hakuho.
Joining this episode of Truly The GOATs are Andrew Freund, director of USA Sumo, and Dr. Dennis Frost, director of East Asian Studies at Kalamazoo College. Together with host Os Davis, the discussion runs to both legendary wrestlers, the times in which they plied their sport and the trimillenia history of sumo, one of humanity’s great sports.
Truly the GOATs: Never afraid to compare the all-time greats.
Additional music for this episode provided by Eric Taylor Music, Yakov Gorman, Audiotoolz, and Action Davis. Tracks for the latter three made possible by FreeMusicArchive.org.
Monday May 25, 2020
Monday May 25, 2020
Between two Chicago Bulls NBA championship threepeats came one of Michael Jordan’s greatest triumphs: Space Jam, the GOAT epic quasi-autobiographical cartoon science-fiction basketball movie.
With ESPN’s 10-part series The Last Dance in our collective rearview mirror, Truly The GOATs host and sometime film critic Os Davis together with his former colleague in European basketball podcasting, David Hein. Dave, a sports journalist and native of Chicago, guested on Truly the GOATs episode 5, in which we reviewed The Last Dance, inevitably dissecting the myth of MJ, those Bulls and the mighty Dream Team of 1992.
On this bonus episode of Truly The GOATs, Os digs into the personal archive to bring you this remastered review from a 2013 episode the Taking The Charge podcast, including some predictions about a film production being discussing back then called Space Jam 2. (Warning: References to Lebron’s Miami Heat and “The Harlem Shake” may induce flashbacks.)
Truly the GOATs: We got a real jam going down…
Friday May 08, 2020
Friday May 08, 2020
Everybody else is talking about it, so why can’t we?
With the coronavirus pandemic keeping most major professional leagues closed – Korean Baseball Organization notwithstanding – much of sports fandom worldwide is tuning into ESPN’s documentary series The Last Dance featuring basketball GOAT Michael Jordan. And whereas Truly The GOATs is based on a wide view of sports history, COVID-19 has schedules everywhere tied in knots, and ours is no exception.
So TTG host Os Davis welcomes his former podcast co-host/-producer and Germany-based sports journalist David Hein to talk the 10-part series, those 1990s Chicago Bulls, the (literally) game-changing Dream Team and of course Michael Jordan himself. (In short, as European basketball fans, more on Toni Kukoc would be awesome, ESPN…)
Truly the GOATs: Still taking MJ over Lebron in *that* argument…
Wednesday Apr 22, 2020
Wednesday Apr 22, 2020
You’d think that earning three-American basketball team nods plus one national team championship, winning the national Olympic trials as a one-person team and winning more tournaments than any golfer except Tiger Woods would earn an American athlete a spot in the cultural consciousness forever – or at least 75 years or so.
On this episode of Truly the GOATs, we’ve got the story of Mildred “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias, quite probably the greatest female athlete ever and certainly the most naturally gifted. Host Os Davis is joined by W.L. Pate, president of the Babe Didrikson Zaharias Museum and its concomitant foundation. Further helping compose the story are excerpts from Babe’s autobiography and contemporary reportage.
Truly the GOATs: Recalling the legends, recounting the history.
Babe Didrikson Zaharias’s autobiography This Life I Have Led is in the public domain and may be downloaded for free at TrulyTheGOATs.com/babebio.
Friday Mar 27, 2020
Friday Mar 27, 2020
By 1963, Angelo Mosca had already established himself as one of the Canadian Football League’s premier defensive lineman and was gaining ever-greater popularity in some of Canada’s regional wrestling associations. But thanks to a single play in that year’s Grey Cup championship game, Mosca ascended to new heights (or perhaps descended to new depths) as one all-time classic heel – in two sports.
If we can consider professional wrestling a sport, that is.
In this episode, Truly The GOATs has the concluding second part of the story of Angelo “King Kong” Mosca from his first Grey Cup win with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats through his career in Vince McMahon’s burgeoning World Wrestling Federation that moment in 2011 which solidified his tough guy badass reputation forever.
Joining Truly The GOATs host Os Davis to talk Angelo Mosca’s careers, his legacy in both sports and just how much of the Kapp/Mosca dustup was a setup are Travis Currah, host of the 2 And Out CFL Podcast, and Josh Smith, host of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats-centered podcast Podskee Wee Wee.
Truly the GOATs: Where we believe in sportsmanship – but also in good television…
Wednesday Mar 25, 2020
Wednesday Mar 25, 2020
In 2011, Angelo Mosca was co-star of a YouTube clip gone viral in the days before viral was a thing. The clip captures a fight between 70-year-olds over a Canadian football game played nearly 50 years prior: In some ways it was the culmination of a career playing “the man you love to hate” first in the CFL and later in the burgeoning World Wrestling Federation of Vince McMahon.
If we can consider professional wrestling a sport, that is.
In this episode, Truly The GOATs has the first part of the story of Angelo “King Kong” Mosca from his rough upbringing in Waltham, Massachusetts, through to his earliest years in Canadian football, when his Hamilton Tiger-Cats were so frequently stifled by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. And we’ve also got the story of his parallel rise in status to that of star heel in the pro wrestling ranks.
Joining Truly The GOATs host Os Davis to talk Angelo Mosca, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the city of Hamilton, the awesomeness of Canadian football and the strange attraction of professional wrestling are Travis Currah, co-host of the 2 And Out CFL Podcast, and Josh Smith, co-host of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats-centered podcast Podskee Wee Wee.
Truly the GOATs: Where Canadian football is loved like American football...
Monday Mar 09, 2020
Monday Mar 09, 2020
To say that the gladiators in the arena games of ancient Rome were fighting for their lives tells just a small part of these incredible athletes’ stories. They fought for honor and for freedom, all while playing out a sport-based story of redemption – and likely none fought more, won more and perhaps even lost more bouts in the arena than Flamma the Galdiator.
On this episode of Truly the GOATs, host Os Davis has the story of one of history’s all-time toughest, all-time baddest, all-time greatest athletes; joining us is historian Dr. Philip Matyszak, author of over 20 books on ancient civilizations and cultures. “Matty” drops the facts about the lives and lifestyles of the gladiators themselves, as well as the fans, the sponsors and that one wacky Emperor who wanted to be one…
Truly the GOATs: Where ancient sports are loved as much as today’s…
For books by Philip Matyszak including Gladiator: The Roman Fighter's (Unofficial) Manual, visit ThamesAndHudson.com. Material from Gladiator used with permission of Thames & Hudson.
Sunday Mar 08, 2020
Sunday Mar 08, 2020
Jim Thorpe was the NFL's first bonafide superstar and a decathlete who turned in the finest individual performance at the Olympic Games -- but is sports history forgetting him?
On this episode of Truly the GOATs, host Os Davis tells the story of the 20th century's greatest athlete along with special guest Justin Lehhart of the Jim Thorpe Museum and Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame. And if you've got only passing knowledge of the man, you're certain to be surprised.
Friday Feb 21, 2020
Friday Feb 21, 2020
An introductory teaser/pilot episode to Truly the GOATs, the sports history podcast with a sense of perspective. Hosted by Os Davis.