Spanning 18,000 square feet, the center has everything a student-athlete could ask for: Resilite wrestling mats, video recording and flat-screen TVs for film, strength & conditioning space fit with equipment, custom locker rooms, a trainer’s room with treatment tables, and a team lounge. With couches, computers, video game consoles, study areas, and a ping-pong table, the lounge allows athletes to both study and relax with teammates ("Bahna Wresting"). The training room even has its own hydrotherapy room and cold plunge baths, emphasizing the university’s commitment to the well-being of its wrestlers. As you enter the front doors, visitors are immediately greeted by the university’s Wrestling Hall of Fame, which acknowledges and showcases the rich wrestling history here at The University of Michigan ("Bahna Wresting"). While the Hall of Fame showcases elite wrestlers, perhaps no one is as recognizable as Ralph Bahna, the Michigan wrestler that the center honors as a namesake. 

Ralph Bahna was a three-year letterwinner and brought home two Big Ten championships during his time as a Wolverine. During his senior year, he took home the Big Ten 123-pound title ("Bahna Wresting"). He was a Michigander, born in Grand Rapids in 1942. Bahna graduated from the university in 1964 with an undergraduate business degree, going onto receive his MBA at the University of California at Berkeley, and later served as the chairman of Priceline.com and founded Club Quarters, a private hotel chain (Sorkin). He also became an important figure in the airline industry, where he created a new “luxury business-class” service for major airlines (Sorkin). This implementation helped, at the time, save the crumbling TWA airline. He additionally helped revive Cunard Line, serving as the president of the American chain of the cruise ship brand, quadrupling the size of the company’s business (Ellison). “‘He was a marketing genius,’ [J.S] Walker, [founder of Priceline] said of Mr. Bahna," in Bahna's 2014 obituary in the New York Times, "describing him as a modest executive who eschewed public attention” (Sorkin).