Neil deGrasse Tyson, High School Wrestling Team Captain, Once Invented a Physics-Based Wrestling Move

We know that Neil deGrasse Tyson was some­thing of a wun­derkind dur­ing his high school years. If you’re an OC reg­u­lar, you’ve read all about how Carl Sagan per­son­al­ly recruit­ed Tyson to study with him at Cor­nell. Deft­ly, polite­ly, the young Tyson declined and went to Har­vard.

There’s per­haps anoth­er side of the pre­co­cious Tyson you might not know as much about. The ath­let­ic side. While a stu­dent at The Bronx High School of Sci­ence, Tyson (class of 1976) wore bas­ket­ball sneak­ers belong­ing to the Knick­’s Walt “Clyde” Fra­zier. He ran an impres­sive 4:25 mile. And he cap­tained the school’s wrestling team, dur­ing which time he con­jured up a new-fan­gled wrestling move. In pro­fes­sion­al wrestling, Ric Flair had the dread­ed Fig­ure Four Leg Lock, and Jim­my Snu­ka, a dev­as­tat­ing Super­fly Splash. Tyson? He had the feared “Dou­ble Tidal Lock.” He explains and demon­strates the physics-based move in the video below, orig­i­nal­ly record­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Indi­anapo­lis.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol’s One Minute of Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestling Fame (1985)

The Ulti­mate War­rior, Pro­fes­sion­al Wrestler & Philoso­pher, Cre­at­ed a Glos­sary of World Philoso­phies

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

When Samuel Beck­ett Drove Young André the Giant to School


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Comments (5)
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  • Ryan says:

    Umm lol he did not invent this in the sev­en­ties of you didn’t know it was around long long before you know noth­ing of wrestling

  • Brad says:

    And all wrestling moves are based on physics :)

  • rather not says:

    also maybe we don’t need to bring any more pos­i­tive atten­tion to men accused of sex­u­al mis­con­duct (an easy google)

  • Mike41 says:

    Maybe you should use google and not sound like a hyp­ocrite.

    “Kate­lyn Allers, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of physics and astron­o­my at Buck­nell Uni­ver­si­ty in Penn­syl­va­nia, claimed Tyson put his hand under the shoul­der part of her dress while explor­ing her tat­too of the solar sys­tem to see if it includ­ed Plu­to. Allers said the alleged behav­ior was “creepy.”

    Cleared

  • Mike41 says:

    He was cleared on all the oth­ers also lol. Fun­ny when it comes to black men “accused” auto­mat­i­cal­ly equals “guilty”.

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