Ari Taub

At the World Wrestling Championships, he came in 5th in Freestyle Cadets at 95 kg in 1987, and 5th in Freestyle Espoir in 1991.

At the 1989 Maccabiah Games in Israel, he won two gold medals. In the Pan American Wrestling Championships, he won a silver medal in 1992, and bronze medals in 2006 and 2007.

He quit wrestling in 1992, when he was 22 years old, for 10 years, after a diagnosis of osteophytes (bone spurs) and a spinal column injury involving a narrowing of the spinal canal, which could turn him into a quadriplegic if he continued wrestling. But he returned a decade later upon learning that it had been a misdiagnosis. In 2000, he had chronic fatigue syndrome.

In 2004 he won the Canadian Greco-Roman championship. He won a bronze medal at the 2007 Pan American Games, and a gold medal at the 2007 Commonwealth Wrestling Championship.

Taub qualified for and then competed in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, in the 120 kg weight class, at 37 years of age. In the 1/8 finals, he was defeated by Mihály Deák-Bárdos of Hungary, and finished 16th. He was Canada's first Olympic Greco-Roman wrestler since 1996.

Taub and a partner created Calgary's only amateur MMA fight TV and live event series, Hard Knocks Fighting Championship, in March 2009. He is the founder and CEO of Hard Knocks Fighting network.