The real problem with RAF sustainabilty?

[BruceyB]

After responding to @okokzach's question about who would have the longest match streak of title defenses, it made me think that there are two very significant obstacles that the organization will have to navigate (outside of $)

The first is two-pronged regarding college wrestlers. One issue being that so far we don't even know if college athletes can compete in the events. In every domestic weight class, the majority of top contenders are still in college (if not high school). The other problem is that even if college athletes can participate, when would they? These top college athletes are getting paid to wrestle for their school, I don't see any coaches signing off on a RAF side quest. After the college season is WTT and worlds for these guys.

The issues with college athletes leads to the very real issue of the lack of truly competitive athletes to pull from. Just look through domestic rankings and you'll see that most of the guys on the U.S. ladder are still in college. A lot of weights only have 2 or 3 active wrestlers. Pulling guys from RTCs or coaching because they have name appeal won't lead to a good product, they might sign-up and wrestle, but they aren't going to be the best version of themselves. I'm curious if international guys would be interested in signing with RAF. I think it could be really beneficial for more casual fans to watch given the "just root for the USA" concept that would give even the most casual of fans a rooting angle.

What do you guys think? Are there enough active wrestlers that could realistically climb the ranks and challenge for a title to make RAF a long-term success?

[Interviewed_at_Weehawken]

20 minutes ago, BruceyB said:

After responding to @okokzach's question about who would have the longest match streak of title defenses, it made me think that there are two very significant obstacles that the organization will have to navigate (outside of $)

The first is two-pronged regarding college wrestlers. One issue being that so far we don't even know if college athletes can compete in the events. In every domestic weight class, the majority of top contenders are still in college (if not high school). The other problem is that even if college athletes can participate, when would they? These top college athletes are getting paid to wrestle for their school, I don't see any coaches signing off on a RAF side quest. After the college season is WTT and worlds for these guys.

The issues with college athletes leads to the very real issue of the lack of truly competitive athletes to pull from. Just look through domestic rankings and you'll see that most of the guys on the U.S. ladder are still in college. A lot of weights only have 2 or 3 active wrestlers. Pulling guys from RTCs or coaching because they have name appeal won't lead to a good product, they might sign-up and wrestle, but they aren't going to be the best version of themselves. I'm curious if international guys would be interested in signing with RAF. I think it could be really beneficial for more casual fans to watch given the "just root for the USA" concept that would give even the most casual of fans a rooting angle.

What do you guys think? Are there enough active wrestlers that could realistically climb the ranks and challenge for a title to make RAF a long-term success?

I think the plan is to try to get quite a few international guys, but that won't happen until after Worlds.  This helps with that problem, a bit.

[nhs67]

Nomad needs to come here and educate us on how it isn't sustainable.

I say that tongue-in-cheek, but I suppose I really shouldn't.  He has talked about it endlessly since before RAF1 and believes he has the numbers to prove his point.

Meander through his feed, if you want to know some of those specifics.  I can't disagree with him, because I am ignorant on a lot of the details.  He seems to have done the research.

 

[alex1fly]

1 hour ago, nhs67 said:

Nomad needs to come here and educate us on how it isn't sustainable.

I say that tongue-in-cheek, but I suppose I really shouldn't.  He has talked about it endlessly since before RAF1 and believes he has the numbers to prove his point.

Meander through his feed, if you want to know some of those specifics.  I can't disagree with him, because I am ignorant on a lot of the details.  He seems to have done the research.

 

I went there but the tweets are all out of order so I didn't find anything on RAF. However I will say that if he's so knowledgeable on why it won't work, why doesn't he flip the thinking and figure out how TO make it work? It could be a really good thing for our sport if it succeeds.

[nhs67]

7 minutes ago, alex1fly said:

I went there but the tweets are all out of order so I didn't find anything on RAF. However I will say that if he's so knowledgeable on why it won't work, why doesn't he flip the thinking and figure out how TO make it work? It could be a really good thing for our sport if it succeeds.

You need to go back a few days and they're all there.

He essentially believes a few things:
- We need new fans, not the old fans.
- Pumping money in to this instead of things at a more base level seems silly (meaning fund programs rather than these events).
- This will fail because all other versions of it have failed.

[ScottishSteel]

I think their goal is to keep college grads who are fighting to stay on or get on the ladder in wrestling by giving them a financial means to stay on the mat.  This would in theory be their depth and, again in theory, be something college wrestlers move into for their 20s even if realistically they aren't a medal threat at the senior level but can still just be popular and wrestle

[CHROMEBIRD]

What if RAF one day ended up being a feeder into MMA? Dunno if that would piss wrestling fans off, but Dana White has been investing in BJJ development. He could probably concoct something interesting with a combat series facing BJJ and RAF league champs against one another for a shot at the UFC. I really don't know how MMA works, so I'm just spitballing.

[forkemaz]

9 hours ago, nhs67 said:

You need to go back a few days and they're all there.

He essentially believes a few things:
- We need new fans, not the old fans.
- Pumping money in to this instead of things at a more base level seems silly (meaning fund programs rather than these events).
- This will fail because all other versions of it have failed.

Number 1 is the real obstacle and most likely reason RAF will fail

Number 2 is an opinion and a bad one. People are free to spend their money and fund whatever they choose.

Number 3 is an even worse argument. Look at history to see how many ideas are failed ideas until the right person makes the right alterations at the right time and has massive success.

[GrandOlm]

On 9/7/2025 at 5:17 PM, Interviewed_at_Weehawken said:

I think the plan is to try to get quite a few international guys, but that won't happen until after Worlds.  This helps with that problem, a bit.

How many fans of international wrestling are there? As in, people who actually know non American wrestlers by name, their present form, and their accomplishments. A few thousand at best? Maybe much less. Sadulaev has a little microcelebirty status and name id, but other than him?

My impression is that the biggest bloc of "international wrestling fans" (that aren't family members or former competitors) are hard core college wrestling fans who keep following these D1ers after they graduate. They know about domestic results and relive college matches through the domestic senior level season and intra American matchups. To them every foreign wrestlers is just some no name with a nationality based descriptor. Only Americans' performances matter (this American wrestled well, that other American did bad, this American would have done better). 

Nolf on today's FRL, I think is illustrative of some of these attitudes. Despite being a former senior level wrestler one year removed from competing, he had no clue Akgul retired, didn't know Geno was not retired, and had no insights to give about the 125kg field. He used the standard template rinse and repeat of "X American rep at Y weight is super good, he's my pick to win gold" that most wrestlers who don't follow wrestling use when they get asked questions by the wrestling media. 

Sort of a non sequitur, but if the competitors don't even care to learn about foreign wrestlers why should the fans? It does feel strange. 

[ionel]

On 9/7/2025 at 3:56 PM, BruceyB said:

After responding to @okokzach's question about who would have the longest match streak of title defenses, it made me think that there are two very significant obstacles that the organization will have to navigate (outside of $)

The first is two-pronged regarding college wrestlers. One issue being that so far we don't even know if college athletes can compete in the events. In every domestic weight class, the majority of top contenders are still in college (if not high school). The other problem is that even if college athletes can participate, when would they? These top college athletes are getting paid to wrestle for their school, I don't see any coaches signing off on a RAF side quest. After the college season is WTT and worlds for these guys.

The issues with college athletes leads to the very real issue of the lack of truly competitive athletes to pull from. Just look through domestic rankings and you'll see that most of the guys on the U.S. ladder are still in college. A lot of weights only have 2 or 3 active wrestlers. Pulling guys from RTCs or coaching because they have name appeal won't lead to a good product, they might sign-up and wrestle, but they aren't going to be the best version of themselves. I'm curious if international guys would be interested in signing with RAF. I think it could be really beneficial for more casual fans to watch given the "just root for the USA" concept that would give even the most casual of fans a rooting angle.

What do you guys think? Are there enough active wrestlers that could realistically climb the ranks and challenge for a title to make RAF a long-term success?

Who is broadcasting this?

[bnwtwg]

16 hours ago, nhs67 said:

Nomad needs to come here and educate us on how it isn't sustainable.

I say that tongue-in-cheek, but I suppose I really shouldn't.  He has talked about it endlessly since before RAF1 and believes he has the numbers to prove his point.

Meander through his feed, if you want to know some of those specifics.  I can't disagree with him, because I am ignorant on a lot of the details.  He seems to have done the research.

 

No. Not normalizing Nomad and his soliciting bikini requests to underage children and of-age people by taking advantage of his previous position. Fvcking creep.

[Tripnsweep]

I like the idea of a league or something, but we already have that sort of. Wrestling is an individual sport, like golf or tennis. I think they should follow that model. We have two major international tournaments in the US, the Schultz and NYAC. What they should do is make it a tour style entity, incorporate those two existing events, and hold smaller, localized tournaments to build up lower level competition. They could hold another 5 tournaments in wrestling hotbeds across the country. Like they could hold one in California somewhere, then Iowa, Oklahoma, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Meanwhile they could hold smaller events in other places as a way to qualify for the bigger events. The PGA does this sort of. Why not wrestling? By keeping the big events in wrestling hotbeds, you guarantee you'll have good attendance. Then use the smaller events to build up and eventually expand. 

[Interviewed_at_Weehawken]

10 hours ago, GrandOlm said:

How many fans of international wrestling are there? As in, people who actually know non American wrestlers by name, their present form, and their accomplishments. A few thousand at best? Maybe much less. Sadulaev has a little microcelebirty status and name id, but other than him?

My impression is that the biggest bloc of "international wrestling fans" (that aren't family members or former competitors) are hard core college wrestling fans who keep following these D1ers after they graduate. They know about domestic results and relive college matches through the domestic senior level season and intra American matchups. To them every foreign wrestlers is just some no name with a nationality based descriptor. Only Americans' performances matter (this American wrestled well, that other American did bad, this American would have done better). 

Nolf on today's FRL, I think is illustrative of some of these attitudes. Despite being a former senior level wrestler one year removed from competing, he had no clue Akgul retired, didn't know Geno was not retired, and had no insights to give about the 125kg field. He used the standard template rinse and repeat of "X American rep at Y weight is super good, he's my pick to win gold" that most wrestlers who don't follow wrestling use when they get asked questions by the wrestling media. 

Sort of a non sequitur, but if the competitors don't even care to learn about foreign wrestlers why should the fans? It does feel strange. 

I'm just saying that if collegians can't wrestle from September until March, they'll plug in some foreigners.  And this is from listening to Willie.

[Husker_Du]

It's not 'September to March'.

apparently the issue was/is that winter athletes can't compete (in anything) from the classes start at their university until November 1st. 

on the Nomad front - he's a moron. he has bizarre takes in all facets of life, including wrestling and zero experience in either business or growing a wrestling product. he talks out his ass.

one of his tweets said the money the (private corporation) RAF is spending would be of better use if it were donated to JR Highs. smh.

this is a human who once said he 'doesn't trust refrigerators in texas'

seriously. we (flo) literally had a spreadsheet of all the absurd takes he made. 

[nhs67]

7 hours ago, bnwtwg said:

No. Not normalizing Nomad and his soliciting bikini requests to underage children and of-age people by taking advantage of his previous position. Fvcking creep.

I didn't mean to advocate for that, I just also didn't care to post a bunch of his shit that I don't agree with (but can't disagree with because I don't have the time nor have I put the effort in to gathering the data/stats for it).

[1032004]

I disagree with OP, I don’t think not getting college guys matters, there are tons of top tier guys not in college and we see most of the college guys enough anyway.

But that’s kinda why I unfortunately don’t think this is sustainable.  There are events like Bill Farrell or the US Open where you can see tons of NCAA champs compete and there are like 10 fans there.  It’s really the schools that draw the fans.   I do think RAF did pretty much as good of a job as you could with this type of league, I just don’t think it’s sustainable to pay the athletes as much as I’m sure they did.   I wish it was.   And this is coming from someone who has now contributed with a 1 year subscription to Fox Nation.

Edited 6 hours ago by 1032004

[Interviewed_at_Weehawken]

49 minutes ago, Husker_Du said:

It's not 'September to March'.

apparently the issue was/is that winter athletes can't compete (in anything) from the classes start at their university until November 1st. 

on the Nomad front - he's a moron. he has bizarre takes in all facets of life, including wrestling and zero experience in either business or growing a wrestling product. he talks out his ass.

one of his tweets said the money the (private corporation) RAF is spending would be of better use if it were donated to JR Highs. smh.

this is a human who once said he 'doesn't trust refrigerators in texas'

seriously. we (flo) literally had a spreadsheet of all the absurd takes he made. 

So, a lot of collegians will be participating in RAF from November to March?  I can't see Cael (or anyone else) letting their guys wrestle in RAF through most of the college season.  That's why I said "from September through March," which seems to make a lot of sense.

But you would know better than me...

Edited 6 hours ago by Interviewed_at_Weehawken

[Husker_Du]

roger that.

i cannot say the college guys will be participating in droves in RAF during the season.

i just meant that, according to what i know as of now, they are eligible to. 

[Interviewed_at_Weehawken]

8 minutes ago, Husker_Du said:

roger that.

i cannot say the college guys will be participating in droves in RAF during the season.

i just meant that, according to what i know as of now, they are eligible to. 

OK, thanks.  I was just saying that it if they are legally unable to do September to November, then (for most) it means September to March are probably out.  I suppose redshirts could compete without much problem.

[boconnell]

On 9/7/2025 at 2:56 PM, BruceyB said:

In every domestic weight class, the majority of top contenders are still in college (if not high school).

I'm sincerely curious if this is true.  I would not have thought so, but it's said so confidently that it makes me think a shift could have occurred without me knowing it.  

Not college - Lee, Woods, Carr, Zahid, Hidlay, Snyder, Wyatt

College - Haines, Duke

HS - Jax

Does it look different if you go top 3?  Top 5?  Are most of those guys still in college?