‘I plan on winning an NCAA title’: Meet Paniro Johnson, Iowa State’s ever-confident freshman

TULSA, Okla. — Sunday night, early March, at the BOK Center, and here comes Paniro Johnson after winning the Big 12 Championships.

Johnson, Iowa State’s ever-confident freshman, had just beaten Missouri’s Brock Mauller, 10-4, in the finals at 149 pounds, setting him up as the 5-seed at this week’s NCAA Championships, set to begin Thursday here at the same BOK Center.

On that Sunday night, less than two weeks ago, Quint Kessenich, ESPN’s mat-side guy, is ready with a microphone and a national viewing audience. After first asking Johnson about his speed, Kessenich then asks Johnson about his success this year.

“I characterize it as, it’s not done,” Johnson said then. “I plan on winning an NCAA title, and I plan on never losing again. Two more weeks, we’ll be right back at it on the big stage again.”

A bold statement, for sure.

But … that’s Paniro Johnson.

“If you interview him for 45 minutes,” Iowa State coach Kevin Dresser said this season, “he’ll tell you how great he is for 44 of them.”

That unabashed aplomb has fueled Johnson’s 17-4 record entering this week’s national tournament. He is one of just 17 true freshmen competing this week — and one of three at 149 pounds (the others: N.C. State’s Jackson Arrington, the 16-seed; and Virginia Tech’s Caleb Henson, the 4-seed).

The 19-year-old Johnson is technically a true freshman, but he is actually two years removed from high school. He grey-shirted last year and competed for the Cyclone Regional Training Center. He went 19-6 and beat three NCAA qualifiers and also reached the finals of USA Wrestling’s Under-20 men’s freestyle national championships.

That experience made Johnson’s entry into the Iowa State lineup seamless. He opened with a bang, a 9-4 win over Wisconsin’s Austin Gomez, a returning All-American. A month later, he took Cornell’s three-time NCAA champ Yianni Diakomihalis to overtime. He has wins over eight others who qualified for this week’s national tournament.

So the confidence is, to a degree, warranted — especially if you ask those who see him work behind the scenes.

“He works really hard and he believes in himself,” Iowa State’s David Carr, the 1-seed at 165 pounds, said earlier this season. “I love training with him. If I come here, at any time, Paniro is here training, working and talking about winning a national title.”

“It rubs off on everybody,” Carr continued. “When I first came here, we didn’t have many people that had that confidence, that swagger, that belief. Now, everybody here believes.”

How Paniro Johnson went from Erie, Pennslyvania, to Ames, Iowa

To understand where Johnson’s confidence comes from, it’s important to understand where he comes from.

Erie, Pa., sits right on Lake Erie, a hard-nosed manufacturing town that produces tough wrestlers. Of the 46 Pennsylvania natives competing at this week’s national tournament — the most of any state — three are from Erie, the most of any city in Pennsylvania (the others: Bucknell’s Dorian Crosby and Penn State’s Carter Starocci).

Johnson’s upbringing was tougher than most, he says.

His mom, Thesha, raised five kids mostly on her own. She bounced between jobs, causing her family to move often. Johnson says he lived in 13 different houses and attended as many as seven different schools between kindergarten and eighth grade.

His father, Jermall, is currently in prison after being convicted in 2015 of possessing a firearm with an altered manufacturer's number and resisting arrest and fleeing police. His older brother, Little Jermall, has also run into various legal troubles.

“My mom was strong, and she raised all of us to be strong,” Johnson said. “Some Christmases, we didn't get nothing but a garbage bag full of free toys. It wasn't easy, but we always made the best of it.

“I love my dad, but he went to jail when I was like 7 or 8. That’s kind of sad. He still calls me all the time, but he’s never gotten to watch me wrestle in person. I just grew up so much faster than everybody else.”

The list continues, Johnson explained. He had an uncle pass away. He’s had childhood friends who have died and others who have landed in jail. More recently, about a year and a half ago, his mom had a stroke. She’s doing better now, Johnson reassured. She and one of his sisters will be in Tulsa this week to watch him wrestle.

The one constant for Johnson was wrestling.

A family friend introduced him to the sport when he was very young. His first club, the Erie Vipers, included many high-level wrestlers — Johnson, Crosby, Starocci, Dazjon Casto (Pittsburgh), Jacob Van Dee (Nebraska), Kaeman Smith (Navy), Cole Rees (Campbell), Kawaun Deboe (a junior-college national finalist for Indian Hills), and many more.

Johnson took to it naturally, racking up state, regional and national awards. He attended Cathedral Prep, where he became a four-time Pennsylvania state medalist and a top-50 overall prospect in the 2021 senior class. Never won a state title — yes, he’s got more Big 12 championships than state golds — but the talent was evident.

“It’s unusual, but it could probably only happen with a state like Pennsylvania,” Dresser said. “This might make the Iowa high school people mad, but there’s no comparison to the level of high school wrestling in Pennsylvania anywhere else in the United States.

“I knew the potential was there, but there’s a lot of potential sitting in our room that just isn’t as committed. When you get a guy that buys in at all levels, and then his God-given gift of confidence, you get a special, special talent.”

Wrestling was the vehicle that kept Johnson out of trouble. He saw the mischief that was available, how it befell family members and friends, and vowed to take his life in a different direction.

“Those teams I wrestled on, there are some guys who were just as good as us that fell into all the extra stuff in the city because it can pull you in pretty easily,” Johnson said. “Some people take one path, some people take another.

“I'm thankful I had a strong mind to avoid all that, because I was right in the mix of all of it. I'm staying on the right track and trying to make something of myself and build a name for myself.”

How a grey-shirt season benefited Paniro Johnson

Moving to Ames to grey-shirt last season helped Johnson stay on that path. The opportunity allowed him to be around Dresser, now in his sixth season as the Cyclones’ head coach. They talked often about goals, winning NCAA titles and team trophies, and how Johnson would do whatever it took to get there.

Dresser wasn’t fully convinced, at least at first. Conditioning was a huge issue for Johnson when he first arrived. Dresser sends his wrestlers on a mile-and-a-half run around Hilton Coliseum each summer. Johnson often crashed hard after a mile and barely finished.

Then, last spring, at the U20 men’s freestyle world team trials, Johnson entered as one of the favorites at 70 kilograms (154 pounds). In his quarterfinal match, against Iowa’s Caleb Rathjen, he led 8-0 early in the second period … then gave up 18 points in less than 90 seconds and lost, 18-8. Something didn’t add up, Dresser thought.

At the urging of Nate Carr, a former Iowa State wrestler now coaching at the C-RTC, Johnson got his blood checked. Doctors discovered he had a sickle cell trait, which led directly to random bouts of wicked fatigue while wrestling.

“Everything would be normal, and then you’d just hit a wall, like a switch,” Johnson said. “It would be so hard to even stand up. I hate that feeling. Your muscles get so, so, so heavy. Everything is hard. It kind of put a limit on me.”

There was no magical fix, only small changes to manage the problem. Johnson changed his diet to include more iron and Vitamin D, for example. It was merely a hurdle he needed to clear to better chase his bigger goals.

“He was ready for that challenge,” Dresser said. “He’s got a lot of pride. He was embarrassed about some of those matches in the spring and summer. He had to eat right, train right, all that stuff. That’s not an easy thing for freshmen to learn right away.

“But he’s surprised me — not because of his ability, but in terms of how he’s approaching it. We’ve seen big changes in that, from a year ago, even six months ago. You couple that with strong self-belief, you get a guy like Paniro.”

Indeed, you get a guy who is 10-3 in matches decided by two points or less this season, a guy who rebounded from an overtime loss in his regular-season finale by scoring a decisive revenge win in the Big 12 finals, and a guy who overcame a rocky childhood to become one of the best wrestlers in the country as a freshman.

“It’s been so inspiring to see him handle the pressure as a young guy,” David Carr said. “Nothing shakes that dude. Nothing rattles him. He knows what he can do, and he’s going to be scary.”

Iowa State qualified eight wrestlers for this week’s NCAA Championships, but only four are seeded eighth or better at their respective weights. If the Cyclones want a top-four team finish for the first time since 2010, a strong performance from all is required.

That includes Paniro Johnson, who comes in with unfinished business and confidence, swagger and, more than anything, self-belief — that he’ll not only win an NCAA title, but that he’ll never lose again.

“My journey has been crazy,” Johnson said, “and I feel like I have so much more to go.”

Cody Goodwin covers wrestling and high school sports for the Des Moines Register. Follow him on Twitter at @codygoodwin.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Meet Paniro Johnson, Iowa State's ever-confident freshman wrestler