Candor about depression gave former Mizzou wrestler J’den Cox a new sense of purpose
Former Mizzou wrestler J’den Cox is an Olympic bronze medalist, two-time world titleholder and three-time NCAA champion. And then some — as displayed with a row of plaques over his shoulder during a media Zoom interview Tuesday in advance of the USA Wrestling Olympic trials next week in Fort Worth, Texas.
Teased about that sight by a reporter, he smiled and said, “I wasn’t flexing. They just so happened to be there.”
In fact, the endlessly engaging and appealing Cox is infinitely more than his wrestling credentials. And the only thing that might pass for flexing these days is promoting the greater good with his willingness to speak candidly about contending with depression.
After all, if he’s only known as a great wrestler, he said, glancing up, “when my day comes, then I’ve failed.”
His sincerity, and his depth, have long been evident. That’s most simply summed up in his gift for music, inspired and nurtured by his mother, Cathy, and apparent from being able to play five instruments to his capacity to sing and compose songs like the uplifting and unifying “One More.”
Amid racial unrest and borderline chaos at MU in the fall of 2015, the school turned to him to write and perform that song for the university’s $1.3 billion fundraising campaign.
All of which helps explain why others in need turn to him now. And his ever-pensive way also helps inform his perspective and approach to the last year with the 2020 Tokyo Olympics postponed until this July because of the pandemic.
In an interview with The Star last March hours before the Olympic trials were postponed and later canceled, he already had thought through the implications despite his eagerness to compete.
“You could never give me enough gold medals or whatever,” he said then, “to choose my own success over someone else’s life or ability to breathe.”
Still, the delay of something so meaningful and the ensuing absence of structure, or at least lack of traditional structure, figured to be a challenge for someone who began to speak publicly about his battle with depression in 2017 as part of a project by the Columbia Missourian.
Despite being from Columbia, he felt alone and off-balance as a freshman at MU. Even as he was on his way to a national title, the Missourian reported Cox once stood on the shoulder of U.S. Highway 63 and “contemplated stepping into oncoming traffic and bringing an end to all of the pain.”
A timely phone call from concerned assistant athletic trainer Shane Bishop interrupted the moment, and Bishop and coach Brian Smith picked up Cox and took him to a hospital. He was treated two weeks there for depression.
Fast forward to now: Perhaps counter-intuitively, the ever-looming issue for which Cox still goes to therapy in some ways proved to be therapeutic over the last year for him … and a number of others.
Not only has he in some ways been freed by speaking of it but he also has been sustained by being able to help some in need. His Olympic bio, in fact, refers to him as a “mental health advocate,” part of what has positioned him to speak about depression with universities and various sports teams, as well as friends and acquaintances who sought him out.
Amid a broader mental health crisis in our country because of isolation and desolation, Cox’s example and empathy doubtless have been a comfort for many.
When I asked him how he had grown the last year, he said he believed he had become “an avenue for others” who might be feeling sadness or a sense of losing themselves since sports are such a part of their identity.
Talking other people through that and how to carry themselves through this, he added, has helped him, too.
Suggested to him that it sounded like he was saying he’s actually been helped by the last year, he agreed.
“It’s kind of like wrestling: When you wrestle, yourself, you can get as good as you want,” he said. “But when you coach, too, when you’re teaching somebody else, you actually grow a lot from that as well.”
The most important part of his message is that those suffering from depression need to know they’re not alone and have nothing to be ashamed of and not be afraid to speak about it.
“Especially when more than likely a lot of other people are going through it, too,” he said.
As he adapted to the void in the schedule and training, he found some spiritual nourishment in an improbable source: evidently less athletic new friends, who would see him training in the park (sometimes running while carrying barbells) across from his apartment and wanted in.
One lost 30 or so pounds following some of his routines after his other workouts. One initially couldn’t walk a lap around the park and now can run five laps without stopping.
“So it kept me on track,” he said, adding that he’d made “great friends that will last a lifetime, and they’ve accomplished things they didn’t even think were possible.”
The pandemic, of course, wasn’t the only disquieting part of the last year.
When I asked him to reflect on the social justice movement, he first referred to becoming a founding member of the Black Wrestling Association, founded last May with the mission “To Inspire, Connect, and Empower Black Wrestlers and Allies to Grow Wrestling through Representation, Equality, and Opportunity.”
Personable as he is, Cox said, there were times “when I just felt alone” as a Black wrestler. Turns out, much like dealing with depression, he wasn’t alone at all. Knowing their shared experiences, he said, “made us stronger to voice our opinions on things that need to change and things that need to be recognized and looked at.”
While he said right now his “main thing” is “trying to listen to understand people’s viewpoints” instead of listening “to have something to say back,” he also believes no legitimate conversation can be had without acknowledgment of history not typically taught in school.
Meanwhile, he reckons the most meaningful things he can do are lead by example and be informed, genuine and upstanding but loving at a time when he has friends “who don’t even know how to walk down the street any more or how to even deal with all that craziness.”
“I know we want to sit here and say America’s the greatest country in the world. And to me I think that it is,” said Cox, who draped himself in an American flag as he celebrated his bronze medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics. “But the problem with that is that whenever you start looking at something and you start saying that it’s fine just the way it is, that’s when the downfall starts to happen. …
“When you say, ‘Oh, it’s great,’ it doesn’t mean that it’s perfect. It doesn’t mean that we can’t get better. It doesn’t mean that things don’t need to change. And that’s from every social issue that you can think of. … We are not that far from the past of when things were a lot different.”
We’re also not that far from the past when some may have thought of Cox as just a great wrestler.
(He’ll seek to reaffirm that in the trials even as he’s moved up from the 86 kg., the class in which he won bronze in Rio, to 97 kg. and will have to beat 2016 Olympic freestyle champion Kyle Snyder for a berth in Tokyo.)
Even if he’s always been much more, perhaps that’s more obvious now than ever from what he called “a new sense of purpose” in the last year.
“I needed to be a voice for those who needed kindness, genuineness and help through all this strife that’s come up on us,” he said.
Then Cox paused and smiled and tried some half-hearted trash-talk.
“Now I’m just here to kick people’s butts,” he said. “I’m here to destroy everybody.”
Containing a laugh, he added, “That was good, huh?”
Sure. But not enough to obscure the real person within.
This story was originally published March 25, 2021 at 5:00 AM.