Mike Falcon was the nicest man you’ll ever meet, but he was tough and unpredictable on the wrestling mat as he flipped a lauded and feared switch. He was Sachem wrestling’s first New York State champion, the only Flaming Arrows’ grappler to win two state crowns, and suddenly passed away the week before Thanksgiving. He was 61.
For someone as soft-spoken and gentle as Falcon, who graduated from Sachem in 1980, it’s almost unimaginable that 40-plus years ago, he was such a dominant and physically intimidating presence on the mat. At first glance, you’d never know he was a vicious and now legendary wrestler.
“The closest thing I could relate to watching him step on the mat was watching Mike Tyson in the ring,” said Wayne Wilson, a fellow state champion out of Sachem, who grew up idolizing Falcon as a kid. “That’s how powerful he was. It was part excitement, part fear, and part uncertainty about what would happen. People circled the mats to see what excitement he would bring.”
Besides the multiple county and state titles as a junior and senior, in 1980, he was an Honorable Mention All-American, a Junior Greco Roman National Champion, runner-up at the Regional Olympic Trials, and a U.S. Wrestling Federation Eastern U.S. Champion. He finished his Sachem wrestling career with a 77-8-1 record.
“Mike set the bar as to what it means and what it takes to be a champion,” said Billy Starke, a Sachem Class of ‘82 grad and 1982 state champion. “He earned respect from all that knew him and was feared by most of his competitors.”
Falcon, who also played football, hustled in the wrestling room and surprised teammates and coaches when he put fresh sweats on after practice at 8:30 p.m. to go for an additional run from Sachem High School in Lake Ronkonkoma to the Smithaven Mall in Lake Grove and back.
“He worked really hard and was very aggressive,” said legendary Sachem wrestling coach Jack Mahoney.
When his aggressive style in wrestling began to work against him on the mat, he changed his focus. Instead, he slowed down and used stalling as an advantage. It also infuriated his opponents.
“He would be getting booed, and we’d be sitting in the corner, putting our heads down and looking away,” said Mahoney. “It worked for him, obviously. He was a champion, but he was a character.”
Perhaps no other wrestler has been booed at the state tournament as harshly as Falcon was in 1980. In the finals at Onondaga War Memorial in Syracuse, wrestling against Bellmore-Kennedy’s Bill Lubell at 167 pounds, Falcon was showered with jeers for his stalling antics. He picked up Lubell and walked with him on the mat, eventually taking him out of bounds. Time was running out. The place went wild. Among the browbeaters were the coaches from Bellmore-Kennedy.
“He was incredible,” said Mahoney, “a real wild man.”
Everyone has a Mike Falcon story. Mahoney has thousands. Like when Falcon was late for practice around Christmas time and jogged into the wrestling room with a wrapped gift.
“Sorry I was late, coach,” he told a skeptical Mahoney. “I was out shopping for your present. I had to wait in line.”
“You can’t make this stuff up,” said Mahoney, recalling the gift was a holiday coffee mug set he suspects was regifted from his home.
Falcon went to Hofstra to wrestle for Nick Gallo and the Flying Dutchmen. Like Mahoney, Gallo said it was an interesting task to coach Falcon.
“There has never been a guy like him with that much talent and was that much fun to be around,” said Gallo, Hofstra’s only National Champion wrestler before he became head coach. “He entertained us all. When he was there in the room, he worked as hard as anybody, and the guys adored him.”
On the mat, Gallo said Falcon did what he wanted to do to beat opponents.
“People hated to wrestle him,” Gallo said. “He was too good for them to beat.”
He would also get very tired in matches during college. While he worked hard, he also wasn’t the most physically dedicated in his second and third years in Hempstead. Wrestling an All-American from Yale, Gallo recalls one match that could have been a scene in a movie. Falcon threw his opponent to the mat twice before throwing himself into the scorer’s table. He lifted his leg up and leaned it on the table. The ref was trying to get him up since it was clearly a stall tactic. He put his arms on the ref’s shoulders. He was gassed and playing around. Eventually, the Yale wrestler and coach were angry and screaming as this persisted. The crowd erupted. As Falcon sauntered on the mat, he approached the irate Yale coach, Bert Waterman, and said, “Coach, calm down; your pacemaker is going to stop.”
“There are 1,000 Mike Falcon stories like that,” said Gallo, laughing.
He wrestled for three years at Hofstra before dropping out and not finishing his degree.
Mike and his ex-wife Wendy had a son, Michael, who wrestled for Sachem about 10 years ago. This afforded Falcon the opportunity to get back in the wrestling room and join the coaching staff as a varsity assistant. He lit up every time he spoke about his son.
“I guess it’s every father’s dream to see their son follow in their footsteps as far as sports and life,” Falcon said in a Sachem Report story from 2013. “I didn’t push him into it. It was his decision. I’m glad he chose that path because it’s very demanding, and it pays off for the guys who work really hard. I never felt the anxiety like the match or two before he comes up. I can feel it; the heart starts pounding, and I get a little nervous. I don’t tend to feel that with other kids, but when it’s your own son, it’s nerve-wracking.”
Falcon’s championship photos grace the Jack Mahoney Wrestling Room at Sachem North, and his Sachem Athletic Hall of Fame plaque from 2017 is in the gymnasium lobby.
“You see his picture in the room every day, and it motivates you,” Falcon Jr., who wrestled at SUNY Brockport, said in 2013. “I met coach Mahoney when I was young, and he told me how good my dad was, and that made me want to wrestle more. You feel a part of the history of Sachem when you’re out there on the mat.”
Current Sachem North varsity wrestling coach Anthony Marino was on the team when Falcon was an assistant. He recalls the family atmosphere since Falcon was a father figure to many on the team. He was the first to volunteer to drive athletes to tournaments or offer advice about technique.
“That was always a cool thing to have around,” said Marino. “A lot of us knew how good Mike was. He was very well respected. It was special to learn the small bits of information and unique techniques he had to offer. It made an impact on all of us.”
Wilson, the head of security in Sachem, hired him to work on his team, so he was around the building often.
“I looked up to him like a big brother,” said Wilson. “As a kid, I emulated him. Growing up in Sachem, Mike was the older guy who everyone looked up to. He was just a really great individual. Nice as a person and tough on the mat. He was so dynamic.”
Besides his son, Michael, Falcon is survived by his mother, brother, Patrick, and sister, Virginia.
Services for Falcon will be held on Sunday, November 26, from 2-4 p.m. and 6-8 p.m. at Moloney’s Holbrook Funeral Home. There will be a mass at Good Shepherd in Holbrook on Monday, November 27, at 10 a.m. He will be laid to rest at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Center Moriches on Monday, November 27.
