John Smith's record didn't exist. Until now.

[WrestlingRecords.com]

I thought it was weird I'd never seen John Smith's complete FS stats/match records. Same goes for the other US GOATs. Tom Brands, Dan Gable, Cael Sanderson, etc. Turns out they didn't exist. Until today. I created a database with stats/match records for all "pro" wrestlers. 

Idk if anyone cares, but I thought it was cool.

You can check out John Smith's record here: https://wrestlingrecords.com/wrestler/john-smith/

[CHROMEBIRD]

This is awesome. Thanks for pulling it together. Will it be updated moving forward with future tournament records, or is it more of a snapshot in time?

Also hell of a run that Ol' Johnnie had from '86 until retirement. Went 168-5 (161-3 going into his last Olympic run).

Pretty mind blowing to see Dave Schultz's numbers, too. He was closing in on 500 wins + 600 career matches at the Senior level. By comparison, JB and Adeline, two of our most accomplished current wrestlers (and who many think have aged out of the sport) have about half the matches he had.

[WrestlingRecords.com]

19 minutes ago, CHROMEBIRD said:

This is awesome. Thanks for pulling it together. Will it be updated moving forward with future tournament records, or is it more of a snapshot in time?

Also hell of a run that Ol' Johnnie had from '86 until retirement. Went 168-5 (161-3 going into his last Olympic run).

Pretty mind blowing to see Dave Schultz's numbers, too. He was closing in on 500 wins + 600 career matches at the Senior level. By comparison, JB and Adeline, two of our most accomplished current wrestlers (and who many think have aged out of the sport) have about half the matches he had.

No problem! It will stay updated. I'll keep adding people, and will keep everyone updated with future tournament records. John Smith was a stud. A lot of the older guys seem to have a crazy amount of matches for whatever reason. Bruce Baumgartner had 400. 

[GrandOlm]

I've often wondered about Karelin's 887-2 record. It's plausible, but who on Earth was keeping track of this. It's not like the mainstream sports where everything is recorded in print or even digitally. 

And how was this compiled? Newspaper clippings and interviewing the athlete to confirm some random tour or small tournament wasn't missed?

[scourge165]

6 hours ago, WrestlingRecords.com said:

I thought it was weird I'd never seen John Smith's complete FS stats/match records. Same goes for the other US GOATs. Tom Brands, Dan Gable, Cael Sanderson, etc. Turns out they didn't exist. Until today. I created a database with stats/match records for all "pro" wrestlers. 

Idk if anyone cares, but I thought it was cool.

You can check out John Smith's record here: https://wrestlingrecords.com/wrestler/john-smith/

This is...duck duck goose'ing awesome! 

Nice...

 

(I've only read the initial post, but please Jimmy, please resist the urge to douche this up by making it a John Smith vs Fantasy Match thread).

 

[scourge165]

15 minutes ago, GrandOlm said:

I've often wondered about Karelin's 887-2 record. It's plausible, but who on Earth was keeping track of this. It's not like the mainstream sports where everything is recorded in print or even digitally. 

And how was this compiled? Newspaper clippings and interviewing the athlete to confirm some random tour or small tournament wasn't missed?

From what I'VE heard was that some of the Karelin stuff was...embellished to magnify the 2000 Olympic Matchup. Rulon's coach came up with the unbeaten in 14 years and unscored upon in 10(we know he was beaten and then it was overturned in one WC in like '98 or '97 and he was scored on).

 

NOT that this takes away from what an absolute MONSTER of a man Karelin was. Just watching that reverse lift was amazing. 

[WrestlingRecords.com]

26 minutes ago, GrandOlm said:

I've often wondered about Karelin's 887-2 record. It's plausible, but who on Earth was keeping track of this. It's not like the mainstream sports where everything is recorded in print or even digitally. 

And how was this compiled? Newspaper clippings and interviewing the athlete to confirm some random tour or small tournament wasn't missed?

I met this guy who has spent the last 5 yrs compiling the records for every US world/olympic medalist from 1960-now. He said he has hundreds of librarians helping him go through old archives of newspaper clippings. Wrestling hall of fame and other places have boxes of old records. USA wrestling has lots of online records from 2000-now, but they aren't presented well, and they are sometimes inaccurate. 

[WrestlingRecords.com]

14 minutes ago, scourge165 said:

This is...duck duck goose'ing awesome! 

Nice...

 

(I've only read the initial post, but please Jimmy, please resist the urge to douche this up by making it a John Smith vs Fantasy Match thread).

 

Thanks! I appreciate it. It took insanely long to make, so glad some people seem to like it. 

[GrandOlm]

32 minutes ago, scourge165 said:

From what I'VE heard was that some of the Karelin stuff was...embellished to magnify the 2000 Olympic Matchup. Rulon's coach came up with the unbeaten in 14 years and unscored upon in 10(we know he was beaten and then it was overturned in one WC in like '98 or '97 and he was scored on).

 

NOT that this takes away from what an absolute MONSTER of a man Karelin was. Just watching that reverse lift was amazing. 

A lot of the things people believe about him are word of mouth things American coaches and wrestlers from that time said. These people were truthfully not in a good position to know these things. The only time they would have seen Karelin is at worlds or a random tournament once or twice a year. 

I've never seen a Russian originating source claim that he went un scored on for X (6 or 10) years. They do say that he went undefeated for a long period and that his only two losses were controversial. And this un scored on claim from the English speaking internet can be debunked. See this (time stamp 2:22). So he was scored on in 1996 and the olympics, which keep good records, say Karelin was scored on in 1992. So there goes the 10 and 6 years possibility working back from Rulon. See, how could an American wrestler/coach have known about what happened at the Euros let alone internal Russian marches, but they still make these claims.  

I think the 13 years undefeated part is true, at least for his official record. In that he went undefeated in big tournaments (let's say Olympics, Worlds, Euros, Soviet/Russian nationals).

Karelin did have a couple controversial wins (who hasn't to be honest) and I think they all happened with Sergei Mureiko. Ahokas, a Finnish wrestler, said this about Karelin's match in 1997 worlds against Murekio "was a gift from the referee". Karelin then had the match in 1999 with Mureiko that was overturned.

To be fair to Karelin though, Ahokas could just be sour grapes, and that was there challenge system in the 90s. You couldn't challenge a live call so if a mistake did happen that was your only recourse. The article I saw regarding this did not go into specifics of the match and I don't think there is footage so who knows what happened. The only thing you can do is interview the wrestlers that took part in the match, but they will have their biases. 

Mureiko for his part does not seem to feel he was cheated with his career by Karelin. I saw an interview where Mureiko was asked about always losing to Karelin and he said something to the effect of "what can I do was facing a super man". And Karelin did demolish Mureiko on many occasions, including pinning him multiple times. 

The 887-2 was probably another American coach/wrestler tall tale that spread on the internet. Karelin lived for a while and competed in Sweden, who is recording these matches in 1991 and also following him around in Russia ha. Maybe you can come up with something close to 887 but who knows what the real number is. 

 

[ionel]

12 hours ago, WrestlingRecords.com said:

Thanks! I appreciate it. It took insanely long to make, so glad some people seem to like it. 

Great work, nice to see the results!  His college results are on wrestlingstats.com used to be searchable if any can figure out how to access and download. 

[BAC]

Thanks brother

[mspart]

Very cool, thanks!

mspart

[Voice of the Quakers]

On 9/28/2024 at 3:44 PM, WrestlingRecords.com said:

No problem! It will stay updated. I'll keep adding people, and will keep everyone updated with future tournament records. John Smith was a stud. A lot of the older guys seem to have a crazy amount of matches for whatever reason. Bruce Baumgartner had 400. 

To be overly simplistic about this, the older guys had more matches because they wrestled more competitions. Much more international travel - if you went overseas, you wrestled several tournaments and/or duals - and many more tours of international/Russian teams here. (I do miss those dual meet tours - those were a lot of fun to watch.) 

Philosophically, all sports/athletes seem to be moving to "load management". It's debatable whether reduced competition has made any impact on overall performance, health or career longevity. Snyderman (200+ wins at 28 years old) seems to be the only American embracing the old school tour mentality. I love him for it, but I do wonder if it hurt him in the last quad.

[Interviewed_at_Weehawken]

7 minutes ago, Voice of the Quakers said:

Snyderman (200+ wins at 28 years old) seems to be the only American embracing the old school tour mentality. I love him for it, but I do wonder if it hurt him in the last quad.

Maybe, but it could also be argued that he was at his best while also wrestling at Ohio State.

[cowcards]

On 9/29/2024 at 10:04 AM, ionel said:

Great work, nice to see the results!  His college results are on wrestlingstats.com used to be searchable if any can figure out how to access and download. 

https://web.archive.org/web/20161221091950/http://www.wrestlingstats.com/okstate/view_wrestlers.php?wrestler=307

You can still access the records on the website if you know how. 

[ionel]

10 hours ago, cowcards said:

https://web.archive.org/web/20161221091950/http://www.wrestlingstats.com/okstate/view_wrestlers.php?wrestler=307

You can still access the records on the website if you know how. 

I've been able to find the okstate page but haven't been able to search wrestlers for ~year or two. Now if I only had a database of names and wrestler #s ...

[cowcards]

3 hours ago, ionel said:

I've been able to find the okstate page but haven't been able to search wrestlers for ~year or two. Now if I only had a database of names and wrestler #s ...

https://web.archive.org/web/20110301014353/http://www.wrestlingstats.com/okstate/view_all_wrestlers.php

Sometimes all you gotta do is ask! Not all of them will work though. 

Edited October 1 by cowcards

[Gus]

You are the man. Thank you!

[WrestlingRecords.com]

4 hours ago, Gus said:

You are the man. Thank you!

No problem, I appreciate it!

[MPhillips]

1 hour ago, WrestlingRecords.com said:

No problem, I appreciate it!

He was talking to Cowcards...

 

I kid, I kid.

[ionel]

48 minutes ago, MPhillips said:

I kid, I kid.

never

[WrestlingRecords.com]

2 hours ago, MPhillips said:

He was talking to Cowcards...

 

I kid, I kid.

Lol I'm seeing that now. First time posting/responding, so I'm blaming it on that.