Easy … I'm teasing.
The final game of the FIFA World Cup is the most watched sporting event in the world. In 2014 the finals from Rio de Janeiro garnered more than 1 billion views, with a total of 3 billion having watched some or part of the month-long event. Maybe the USA won't be competing, but with more than half the world still tuning into watch there are reasons to watch beyond nationalism.
For instance, it's worth pondering how this sport took over the globe so quickly. There are a lot of answers in the book "How Soccer Explains the World" but a few main reasons are obvious to almost any observer. The sport brings in a large number of people for play, with 22 players on the field at once. Soccer can also be played by people of any height, weight, speed or athletic ability. Men and women have equal access to play. Small kids can play from as young as four years old and yet there are still competitive leagues for men in their 60's and 70's.
Overall, the sport is accessible, builds good cardio and requires a nice mixture of athleticism and gamesmanship. Being accessible is a massive part of the equation as fans are more likely to watch a sport that they can play and play a sport that they can watch.
Wrestling's lesson should be to create a form of the sport that is free and open to more people. One that can be simple and fun for youngsters, but also doable for those who are no longer in peak physical shape. Wrestling as a productive play tool, not just a form of combat.
How to do that is trickier. I have my ideas but will save them for a future article. For now we should all get our creative juices flowing and ask ourselves how we might be able to transform and adapt the sport of wrestling so that it can be enjoyed by more people around the world.
Don't know who to root for? Try this quiz …
Want to engage in the fandamodium? Play the FIFA World Cup Bracket Challenge.
To your questions …
Hayden Hidlay moments before wrestling in the U.S. Open finals (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)Q: Hayden Hidlay is entered in the U23 World Team Trials this weekend. I was impressed with what he did on the senior level this spring. Is he good enough to win a world title this year at the U23 World Championships? That's assuming he make the team. He still has to get by the likes of Ryan Deakin, Matt Kolodzik and others at 70 kilograms.
-- Mike C.
Foley: The U23 World Championships is probably the second toughest tournament of the entire international calendar. Most every nation's second tier wrestlers are just about 18-23 years old and the high side of that bracket tend to be the top contender for their national team. That means this tournament will be filled with hammers. Stuffed.
Hidlay has a good style for competing at the international level. He's strong, makes very few mistakes and is disciplined in his scrambles. Where he might run into trouble is in defending the higher-level attacks and scoring opportunities of the Eastern European wrestlers. I think it takes time to find the right reaction to their exposure creating moves and without an immediate adaptation to a lot of new positions it's tough for wrestlers from the Americas to limit being scored upon.
I'm excited to see how Hidlay wrestles at the U23 World Team Trials and really anxious to see how Team USA competes at the U23 World Championships in November.
Q: With Mark Cody taking the helm at Presbyterian College, I couldn't find anything on how many scholarships men's and women's wrestling will be allotted. The school announced that the football program will move to non-scholarship in the next few years. Any idea how many scholarships each program will have and is this where they are coming from?
-- Frank C.
Foley: Hard to say where the money is coming from as I don't have access to the internal documents and nothing was stated online. The fact the football team is doing away with scholarships though would indicate that they are reallocating to other programs.
From what I've been told the programs will be fully funded with 9.9 scholarships.
Q: Do you think the Russian and/or Iranian freestyle national teams could field 10-man teams that would be competitive with Penn State, Ohio State and the other top teams wrestling folkstyle at next year's NCAA tournament?
Assume they have between now and March of 2019 to get ready and access to quality coaching with NCAA limits on practice time. I know they'd be dynamite on their feet, but could they get off bottom/get any points on top? Is one year enough time to deal with funk and all the back exposure they have spent a life time avoiding?
-- Bryan R.
Foley: Interesting question. I think that we have a few reference points, mainly the Mongolians that came through American and The Citadel in the late aughties. Guys like Sanjaa and Turtogtokh had little on the mat experience prior to their collegiate stints. (Turtogtokh wrestled two years in high school.) While both showed more overall skill on their feet, they definitely lacked the aggression in working from bottom.
The biggest difference wouldn't be the skill in escaping from bottom, but the divide in why you would even try to escape from bottom. In freestyle it's not just that par terre defense is different, it's that at its core you're meant to stay flat. In folkstyle the rules attempt to create urgency. After 15 years of no urgency, it can be tough to get a foreign wrestler to work from bottom.
Bottom is only half the issue. While freestyle rewards techniques and risk taking, folkstyle rewards control. Throwing someone to their back with a headlock is always four or five points in freestyle, whereas in folkstyle there is a risk of rolling through and giving up two points. That's just one example, but it's vital to keep in mind when adjusting for the amount of scoring possible out of a Russian or Iranian athlete.
Overall, I think both could have top ten teams in year one and top five in year two. They are pulling from a much larger field of athletes and would give a lot of individuals who haven't wrestled overseas the type of looks that could spell trouble at the national tournament.
Q: After Nick Reenan qualified for Final X, he was asked about facing David Taylor. He mentioned that his main focus is NCAAs next year. I found that a bit odd. I would have thought making the World Team and representing Team USA would have been his primary focus. Do you find it odd that he's more focused on the NCAA season after making it to Final X?
-- Mike C.
Foley: Yikes! When I clicked to watch (link below) I thought the answer was going to be a folksy reply about wanting to help his team, a la Kyle Snyder, but Reenan kinda doubles down. Either he doesn't think he can win, or he just really doesn't want to be bothered by switching training for a few months before heading into the NCAA season.
I'm guessing that there is just a lot of excitement for him right now. Beating opponents who'd beaten him at the U.S. Open, and wrestling really well in all his matches. It's believable that he would just want to jump into the NCAA season as soon as possible and convert this energy to wins for the Wolfpack. To each his own, but I think he should stay confident and focused on the freestyle side of things since he is now on the U.S. National Team and is entitled to training camps, overseas travel and an incredible set of wrestling partners and coaches.
You always have to ask yourself, "What would Kyle Snyder do?"
MULTIMEDIA HALFTIME
Nicky Reenan Interview
Wrestler Madi Mpho speaks with UN Commission on human rights!
Link: MatChat with Mike Powell
Q: Are you hearing anything about Little Rock's head coaching search?
-- Mike C.
Foley: I have heard big names! Don't want to drop them here since I haven't been able to check the status of the interviews, but from what I hear it's attracting a good number of candidates who are optimistic about the area and about the idea of building something 100 percent in their image.
Q: A lot of wrestlers have transitioned from college wrestling into successful MMA careers, wrestlers such as Logan Storley, Daniel Cormier, and T.J. Dillashaw. Why do college wrestlers have such success at MMA? Lastly, who do you see as the next five college wrestlers to transition into MMA and be successful?
-- Gregg Y.
Foley: Wrestlers are successful in MMA for a number of reasons, but the primary reason is the ability to control where the fight goes, knowledge on how to prepare for combat sports, and training histories that allow them a higher starting point than those coming from boxing, jiu-jitsu or other martial arts.
The next five … What do you guys think? I haven't heard of many seniors who've made it known that they are going to compete.
Q: If we were to have a U.S. Open in folkstyle open to all wrestlers all of ages with a $1 million prize to each winner, who do you think would win in each weight class assuming the current NCAA weight classes?
Assume everyone qualified to enter has to actually enter/is healthy enough to compete in a five- round seeded tournament, including coaches/active competitors who might not otherwise do so (e.g. Cael Sanderson, Donny Pritzlaff, Jordan Burroughs, etc.).
I'm not asking who would win their prime. I'm asking who do you think would win a U.S. Open in folkstyle today?
-- Bryan R.
If there was a U.S. Open in folkstyle, would Tony Ramos win the title at 133 pounds? (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)Foley: Ahh, in folkstyle that could be a lot trickier. Assuming all the conditions you made are met, while still accounting for an increase in age, here are my predictions:
125: Jesse Delgado
133: Tony Ramos
141: Logan Stieber
149: Zain Retherford
157: Jason Nolf
165: Jordan Burroughs
174: Kyle Dake
184: David Taylor
197: Cael Sanderson
285: Kyle Snyder
Q: I'm going on vacation with my wife next week and looking for a good, thought-provoking book to read. Any books you can recommend that will get me thinking differently?
-- Mike C.
Foley: My wife doesn't think it's possible to read two books at once, but I'm currently attempting it defy her expectations. For non-fiction I'm reading "Bad Blood" … the story of health care startup Theranos and the incredible lengths of deception CEO Elizabeth Holmes' went to grow the company. For fiction I'm trying to break through "A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara. From what I can tell it's going to be complicated, big and, apparently, pretty sad.
I've had someone recommend "Breathe" to me recently, which a book roughly around surfing. A lot of readers into surfing swear by William Finnegan's autobiography "Barbarian Days."
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