What a 220 lb Weight Class Could Look Like?

Spending the weekend watching AJ Ferrari drop his match to Nick Feldman in sudden victory, and Braxton Amos outlast Koy Hopke thanks to an escape and locked hands call, I couldn’t help but be amazed that here I was viewing the two most promising high school big men in 2019 and they were scoring a grand total of 3 points combined. It served as a searing reminder as to what we have been robbed of as wrestling fans due to the lack of a 220-pound weight class. I know this is a long-running debate, but this season might be the best case ever for what could have been gained by carving out what I would argue is the optimal weight class for a maximized six-foot power college athlete.

If you don’t follow age level wrestling prior to these guys getting to college, you may not realize just how deep 285 is this year. The rankings are thick with dudes who made world teams, to the point that you have wrestlers like Jimmy Mullen and Hunter Catka barely cracking the top 20. Not a chance another weight class has this many world teamers in it. You could argue that all of these guys just got bigger and the weight class is as far as they can go, but I would argue that they HAD to get bigger, because the weight class they need is non-existent. And if you did see them competing back when they made those world teams, you would know that not a single one of them is showing you even a tiny glimpse of just how good they really are while stuck at heavyweight.

I am going to bypass the old arguments that littered my Big Man Breakdown columns. We know wrestling is a little man’s game, and weight cutting is so deeply ingrained in the culture that even when the results demand a different approach, most coaches can’t help but suck guys down a weight class or more. Stay with me for a few minutes as I lay out a 2026 220 weight class filled with wrestlers performing at their ideal size and power and diet and hydration who would be INSANELY entertaining to watch. This requires a leap of faith that results would be very different for some wrestlers if this was available, but I think we can all agree a 30-pound (or more) swing in either direction can be huge in how it impacts the product out there on the mat. Enjoy a meal that isn’t boiled chicken or a tub of protein powder and feast (see what I did there?) your eyes on what could have been.

2025-2026 220 Weight Class Final Rankings

1. Braxton Amos (Wisconsin)

2. AJ Ferrari (Nebraska)

3. Ben Kueter (Iowa)

4. Isaac Trumble (NC State)

5. Cody Merrill (OSU)

6. Christian Carroll (Indiana)

7. Hunter Catka (Virginia Tech)

8. TJ Stewart (Maryland)

9. Cole Mirasola (Penn State)

10. Dayton Pitzer (Pittsburgh)

11. Luke Luffman (Illinois)

12. Aden Attao (Oregon State)

13. Konnor Doucet (Oklahoma)

14. Taye Ghadiali (Michigan)

15. Wyatt Voelker (UNI)

16. Rune Lawrence (West Virginia)

17. Bennett Tabor (Minnesota)

18. Seth Shumate (Ohio State)

19. Nate Schon (Iowa State)

20. Evan Bates (Missouri)

 

He’s Not Heavy, He’s My Brother: Some guys that you might think would be destined for this list will still get swoll, and you will have to take my word for it, but this change would have created far more entertaining matches at 285 all season, as you strip out undersized guys wrestling just to survive and wait for one takedown, and most of the matches where a block of cement can just keep a 218 pound guy on his belly for two periods. I think Younger Bastida starts at this weight class, but eventually moves to heavyweight by this stage in his career. I also think that Nick Feldman needs the extra power and ends up a heavy by this point as well, but most importantly, after two seasons at 220, he is a much healthier and more agile heavy with fewer injuries to his knees.

HUGE Recruiting Adjustment: You still have weight class battles and Konnor Doucet would be perfect here but he would have been pushed out of his spot by both Ferrari and Merrill, so I actually have him being recruited as part of a tandem with Josh Heindselman (a huge coup at the time to get both) to Oklahoma, with Heindselman going heavy between the two. Ferrari goes to the highest bidder regardless.

Places like Indiana didn’t get the hometown boy when he was a tweener, but now that they think they have a legit national title contender at 220 right under their noses, they get it done for Christian Carroll. The same happens at Maryland for TJ Stewart, where the Terps are a completely different program, having completed a southern sweep and bringing in Stewart, Gabe Arnold and Jaxon Smith, with each guy slotted perfectly. All three perform at the elite level they were prior to college. Part of how this happens is because Virginia Tech is so happy with Hunter Catka. I will talk more about Catka in a second, but one of the most consistent big man stories of the last 5-6 years has been Tech recruiting heavyweights in addition to Catka, almost since day one. The Catka they get at 220 means that it never even becomes a conversation in Blacksburg.

Yeah, But What About? Guys I waffle on are Sonny Sasso, Hayden Walters, Gavin Nelson and others that could all move up here. Sasso and Nelson are a no due to their paths likely being blocked by Catka and Tabor, but Walters could eventually be a top ten guy in this class if it existed. The question for Walters might be Taye Ghadiali, who would have absolutely been a 220 at Campbell and maybe finishes at Michigan. As much as I would have loved to put Taye in here at Campbell, he proved that even a title contender on the roster couldn’t stop what has happened to that program. Of course, the wrinkle is that Taye struggled at heavy against guys that were made for 220, as they were just as quick as he was, so his career might have been muffled to the degree that he never gets an NIL deal at Michigan.

There are also guys that would find that they excel at 197 (or whatever the adjusted weight might be with a 220 class - let’s say 190.) Rocky Elam probably never gets to 220 because big brother Zach would have been great here and Rocky is an instant success at 197 - though maybe this year would be his bump up EXCEPT this weight is now too loaded. Mo Endene has too small of a D1 sample size for me to be sure he shows up here, but he doesn’t have an ounce of extra weight on him at 197 and I won’t be mad at you if you mentally put him in this list (though I don’t think he sniffs the top ten if you do.) I also know that not every kid reaches even half of their potential in college, so I am not digging too deep and pulling guys that would have been blue chip 220 prospects their junior year of high school, like Andrew Donohue, and saying they would have deserved to be here now. You have to have shown a glimmer of what could have been.

One of the biggest factors here is that I strongly believe that guys wrestling with minimal weight cutting and performing at their ideal weight leads to substantially fewer injuries. That comes into play heavily with how I rate a lot of these guys, but I didn’t completely discount that injuries are a part of wrestling and college athletics in general, so I didn’t pull someone like Kolby Franklin, who would have been really good here, back into the conversation.

Let’s talk about the biggest impact on individuals.

Braxton Amos: If all you have seen of Braxton is the version where he has starved himself into the hollow-eyed refugee camp status that has led to numerous serious injuries, I can understand you being skeptical of his inclusion at the top of these rankings. His last gasp transformation into a thick heavy this year is a feel-good story, but you can see that he has to dig deep into all of his veteran tricks to grind out results against the more talented guys with heavyweight frames. The Braxton Amos before college, wrestling at 220 and minimal cutting, was FIRE! Not only great technique, but also just mean enough to succeed on any stage. He scored big points and lived for big moments and was primed to be a superstar. But not having a 220 weight class meant that balancing his dreams of making an Olympic team with wrestling in college proved to be impossible. With a 220 class, we not only get an NCAA champion Braxton Amos, but we might possibly get a medal threat in Greco at the Olympics.

AJ Ferrari: AJ would have always been low scoring in big matches, and likely would have had the same legal issues and school jumping that followed. But it is also undeniable that the more nimble version of AJ is the better version, and more than anything, we all would have benefited from the epic rivalry that this weight would have had between AJ and Amos. He REALLY would have come into himself as the villain in these moments and their matches would have been EPIC. No 220 robbed us of our time period's version of Taylor vs Dake. I mean this with all of my heart.

Ben Kueter: Maybe football derails Ben staying at 220 but it looks like his body simply doesn’t want to carry more weight than that even without this weight class. What changes is Ben not having to go under guys with 60 pounds on him, and we get the full tilt all three periods “Mister Iowa” Ben Kueter that we all know is still in there. No one other than Amos is more ready to be a national superstar with this weight class, and Kueter would be a constant highlight reel and Iowa legend - guaranteed. Instead, we are left with a lot of “good effort” type responses as he tries to navigate these behemoths. At 220, he wins a national championship in his senior year.

Isaac Trumble: Trumble is a star right out of the gate at 220 and fun and dynamic and he just always looks comfortable. I think that depending on the way the draw shakes out he makes a final one year but never wins the big one. He also (like almost everyone here) stays much healthier. Dayton Pitzer and Luke Luffman also fall into this category, but they top out as AA’s. It is a crime that college fans only get to see a small window into how good Pitzer and Luffman were at 220 before college.

Cody Merrill and Cole Mirasola: Two incredible talents that may still produce good results, while currently pushing in opposite directions with their weight. They both should absolutely be at 220 to maximize both their abilities and their potential. This is your NCAA final in two years. Nothing eats away at me inside quite like watching these two grind out tight wins or suffer razor-thin losses, all while looking boring while doing so. At 220, they have maximum energy and maximum power and maximum entertainment value. Every match they wrestle would be 1000% more fun to watch at this weight, and they would save the 2-1 rideout slugfest solely for when they meet one another.

Christian Carroll and TJ Stewart: Maybe these two require the biggest leap of faith, but I think having this weight class and having the ability to be happy and comfortable in their training and seeing the results they want also settles them as young adults and as student athletes. I think they both find the right programs, close to home, that nurture them, and in turn, they produce on the mat. And oh lord, are they fun to watch! Must see TV at 220 every time these two toe the line. TJ is lightning quick at this weight and Carroll bull rushes whenever he is pushed. They both go for broke at different times in March and get caught, so they never grab a title, but third is never out of the question.

Hunter Catka: Few would benefit more from this, outside of Amos, than Catka. It is hard to look at a guy who has added the weight needed to wrestle heavyweight solely through huge blocks of muscle and say he is too big, but Catka is stiff and cautious and just is clearly not himself at this size. Now, high school Hunter Catka was injury prone, and he has never shown the mean streak needed to get past an Amos or AJ, so I wouldn’t crown him at this weight, but high school Hunter Catka was also dynamic and agile and did things you just didn’t see big guys do. At 220, he would have been awesome and would have changed the college career of numerous wrestlers as Tech would have loved him from day one and altered their recruitment strategy full stop.

Aden Attao: Attao is a guy who was pretty awesome at age group level, even if he doesn’t look like an Adonis. With 220, he gets to wrestle in college while also pursuing a spot on the Greco squad, following the path set forward by Amos. He is a huge danger to everyone - one throw away from a surprise pin. No one wants to see his name in the brackets come March. In reality, there is a good chance we see little of him over the years, and when we do, he is undersized and makes no impact, seriously depriving all of us of so many fun jaw-dropping moments.

The rest of the ranked guys are all better for this weight class being in existence, and provide tons of quality matches over the course of the season. If you are reading this and thinking that I have thinned out 285 and 197 too much, well, let me promise you that there are great wrestlers and numerous stars in waiting that we never get to appreciate because these 220 guys are muddying up those weights and finding ways to either sneak one takedown late at 285 after running all match, or scoring early and then dancing for two periods on an empty gas tank as they barf at the end of the battle at 197. It is a diminished product across two weights every night of the week for no reason other than a stubbornness regarding creating this weight class and that has never been more evident than right now.

Just for fun, think about five years of watching a totally healthy, long and strong Greg Kerkvliet at 220, or Wyatt Hendrickson becoming WYATT HENDRICKSON three years earlier than he did. It was fun watching Kyle Snyder beat Adam Coon, but it would have been A LOT more fun watching Kyle Snyder beat another Kyle Snyder. We have probably always needed a 220 at the D-1 level, but this year it shows how much it has really robbed the fans of. Has anyone seen my “I Was There For Amos vs AJ Round One In Tulsa” t-shirt?