Sakamoto and Merkle

[jackwebster]

To defend short offense and the slide-by, Sakamoto repeatedly stepped over / behind Ayala's leg to prevent the go behind. The first time he did it, he got both legs in the hole and was able to shelf the ankle. The other times, he only got one leg in and thus put himself in danger of the Merkle. When Ayala burned him with the shrug / slide-by, you could tell by his immediate reaction (turning his hips into the shrug and fishing with the lead leg) that Sakamoto has drilled this defense until it has become automatic. He's gonna have to fix this.

Edited yesterday at 08:34 PM by jackwebster

[ohcomeon]

Rather than not doing it in the future, I think he should fix it by finding a way to finish from there.

[jackwebster]

13 minutes ago, ohcomeon said:

Rather than not doing it in the future, I think he should fix it by finding a way to finish from there.

Askren and a few of his clones have had success in this position, but usually not from neutral bc of the risk. 

[TylerDurden]

Sakamoto looked like he was wrestling a freestyle match to me. A couple of positions made him look like an average HS kid: the merkle and when he was on bottom - it looked like he was waiting for the referee to stand them up before he remembered that he had to get out. 

He has talent, but you can tell he didn't come up in folkstyle wrestling. I understand why Oklahoma State sent him out, but it was a tough ask against Ayala. 

 

[Winners Circle]

1 hour ago, TylerDurden said:

Sakamoto looked like he was wrestling a freestyle match to me. A couple of positions made him look like an average HS kid: the merkle and when he was on bottom - it looked like he was waiting for the referee to stand them up before he remembered that he had to get out. 

He has talent, but you can tell he didn't come up in folkstyle wrestling. I understand why Oklahoma State sent him out, but it was a tough ask against Ayala. 

 

Did we watch the same match? He almost scored from the merkle position the first time they got into that position. He made Drake uncomfortable there, which is why Drake stalemated. That is a position Drake's been in his whole life too. 

[Truzzcat]

That position is great in freestyle because worst case scenario you can kind of bail and go for a push out or just ground yourself. I think it's hard to take a ton away from the match other than he's talented and competes hard. Other than match days in the room that was likely his first folk match ever and I doubt he's ever wrestled in front of more than a few thousand people let alone 20'000 all focused on a single mat with the vast majority screaming at you and you don't know what they are saying. I think it's being missed a bit too that he competes at 57kg internationally, so he is probably a bit undersized as well. My biggest overall takeaway was that he was very active on bottom and at least in the first and second was able to build his base and get to a quad pod quite a few times. I remember when Ech came over and for 2 years it was tummy time whenever he was under someone no matter the level of the guy. Hughes, I doubt see's 133 again so it will definitely be a fun roster battle between Mccomas and Rin although him getting the start in this dual leads me to believe he is likely getting the better of those goes in the room right now. 

[TylerDurden]

1 hour ago, Winners Circle said:

Did we watch the same match? He almost scored from the merkle position the first time they got into that position. He made Drake uncomfortable there, which is why Drake stalemated. That is a position Drake's been in his whole life too. 

He ended up in the position more than once. The first time he tried to freestyle it with his step over which would be something you might do to create an exposure opportunity. I agree that he had a opportunity to score on the first exchange, but the position was repeated because his finishing techniques and defense took him into freestyle positions that would likely lead to an exposure attempt or restart in free. He kept finding himself in positions that didn't favor him - a lot of that is Ayala. That tends to happen to less experienced wrestlers - in this case free vs. folk experience.

Perhaps a better way to frame it is to compare it to instances where one of the US guys loses a FS match because they gave up three exposures in a position that wouldn't even be a scoring sequence in folk. 

Edited 5 hours ago by TylerDurden

[jackwebster]

5 hours ago, Winners Circle said:

 He almost scored from the merkle position the first time they got into that position.

True, but horse shoes and hand grenades. In folk, it is exceedingly difficult score from the position Sakamoto was in that first time. Even if you have both knees in the hole and the ankle shelved, your near arm is trapped. You can't get that arm around the near leg. Instead, you have try to lock out the shelved ankle and attempt to turn the dude's knee-up vertical . . . all while trying to posture up. It's just too much weight going forward. Worse still is if the the guy in Ayala's position gets behind both arms and locks their hands. The guy will just slowly stretch you out and slip the trapped leg.

Again, I've seen some Askren folks work Peterson from there without much success.

Obviously, free is another matter. Jabrayil Hasanov (AZE) used to torch folks from here.

 

Edited 1 hour ago by jackwebster