Guerin Emig: 'My ears are special' -- The honorable presence of cauliflower ear in wrestling

“My ears are special.”

– John Smith, Oklahoma State wrestling head coach, proud carrier of cauliflower ear

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You meet a wrestler in town for this weekend’s Big 12 Championships, you will be awed by his intensity, his civility and his ears. You shake his hand, notice his smile and then immediately lock onto his ears. You immediately understand Webmd.com’s definition of what you are seeing:

“The term ‘cauliflower ear’ refers to a deformity of the ear caused by blunt trauma or other injury, such as what may occur during a boxing or wrestling match. Left untreated, the injury leads to a blockage that prevents blood flow and damages tissue. This results in a bumpy or lumpy appearance on part of the ear, similar to a cauliflower.”

You want to ask about this.

Does it hurt? (“You get used to it.”)

Can you hear? (“Loud and clear.”)

Where do you put earbuds? (“Notice we use headphones.”)

You should ask about this. There is no embarrassment here, no self-consciousness whatsoever. Wrestlers see their puffy, mangled ears as trophies.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take some pride in it,” said Tanner Orndorff, Utah Valley’s two-time NCAA qualifier at 197 pounds.

“You know once someone has cauliflower ear, that guy’s pretty tough,” said Cord Surratt, Air Force’s 174-pounder. “It is a badge of honor.”

“Am I self-conscious? No. No way,” said Nick Piccininni, Oklahoma State 125-pound All-American. “It’s pride.”

Piccininni’s ears started “blowing up” his sophomore year in high school. It was hardly alarming. He simply figured he had competed long enough, and worked hard enough, for it to literally show.

Devin Brown, who wrestles at 125 for West Virginia, got his first case of cauliflower ear when he was 12.

“I went to a West Virginia camp,” Brown said. “I was wrestling this kid and we were in a scramble. He kneed me in the ear. The next day I woke up and I was like, ‘Wait a second. That’s not normal.’ ”

Ten years later? Totally normal.

“They’re a part of me now,” Brown said, his chest as puffed as his ears.

They’re as much a part of John Smith as all of his championships as OSU wrestler and coach.

“For me going to Oklahoma State and watching matches as a young wrestler and seeing national champions with their ears all blown up, it’s like you always wanted them,” Smith said. “Even my own son who’s wrestling for me (OSU 165-pound All-American Joe Smith), I can remember him asking at the age of 10, ‘When am I gonna get my colly-flower ears?’ I’m not sure he didn’t hit his ear a few times so he could have ’em. Trust me, there’s been some guys who’ve done that. It’s a symbol, right?”

Smith’s swollen ears remind him at 53 of the blood, sweat and tears he dripped on all of those mats. Same for Sam Barber, the 46-year-old coach at Air Force whose ears are even lumpier than Smith’s.

“You don’t necessarily wanna get cauliflower ear, but when you do, it reminds you of the hard work and the hard times,” Barber said. “Yeah, those were the good days. It was great to be in the trenches.”

Barber’s battle now isn’t with the condition of his ears, but the impression of that condition.

“As a coach, I feel like I have a duty to promote the sport and make sure we have it for a long, long time. Sometimes cauliflower ears are a barrier to that,” he said. “Moms don’t love cauliflower ear. When little Johnny is gonna get into a sport it’s like, ‘Well I don’t want my son to have a deformed ear.’

“We have enough challenges with weight management and singlets — little kids don’t want to wear singlets because they’re very revealing — and there’s no other sport out there where you get a physical deformity.”

An athletic trainer’s battle has to do with treatment of cauliflower ear, and its ever-presence.

“Just because there’s so much contact to the head in everything wrestlers do,” Air Force athletic trainer Kristen Cornett said. “Even when they’re on the mat and they’re trying to get out of positions, there can be trauma to the ears.”

NCAA-mandated headgear helps protect in that regard — wrestlers wear them in practice and competition — but the trauma is almost constant. Besides, wrestlers will go rogue now and then. They will toss aside the headgear,

That occasionally leaves athletic trainers to treat cauliflower ear, not prevent it.

“You sterilize the area, stick a syringe in and pull out the blood and liquid,” Cornett said, “and then you have to kind of pack it, whether you use gauze or a plug. One guy was telling me he had a button sewn into his ear because you’re supposed to hold the compression on it for 48 hours so it doesn’t swell back up.”

Starting to understand wrestlers’ infinite pain threshold, aren’t you? Never mind the treatment, just getting cauliflower ear hurts like the devil.

“I remember not being able to sleep at all on that side of my head,” Orndorff said. “It’s really hot. It almost feels like it’s infected.”

Said Surratt, “When your ear fills up with blood, it just throbs.”

Wrestling tends to throb. It tends to feel sweaty and swollen. It tends to look that way, too, if you are committed and doing it right.

It might even look a little grotesque to those who don’t understand or can’t appreciate the sport. It might look a little grotesque to those who spot the ears first.

They really should ask about the ears. That way they do understand and can appreciate.

“My ears will stick with me the rest of my life,” Orndorff said, “and remind me of my experience as a wrestler.”

Said Smith, “It’s who I am. There’s been some guys who after their careers have had cauliflower ear surgically removed, scraped down. There’s no way I could do that. No way. I would never have plastic surgery on my ear. You can’t take that from me. That’s mine. That’s a lot of years of work.”