What happened to Lee?

[mspart]

He got beat bad.   Was he hurt?   This is just really odd.   I have not seen a topic on this so I thought I would start one.   Please excuse if this has been discussed somewhere else.   If so, point me to it or just say what happened.   It would be weird for him to meet a match  so much better than him like that, it seems that something must have been wrong. 

mspart

[Lucho]

10 minutes ago, mspart said:

He got beat bad.   Was he hurt?   This is just really odd.   I have not seen a topic on this so I thought I would start one.   Please excuse if this has been discussed somewhere else.   If so, point me to it or just say what happened.   It would be weird for him to meet a match  so much better than him like that, it seems that something must have been wrong. 

mspart

I think he just got out wrestled by Harutyunyan. I'm just as shocked as you tbh. I thought him and Zare were guaranteed gold medals but it looks like you can't bet on light weights at all. Harutyunyan is a super tricky wrestler so its not that surprising he won its just that I would've thought the American strength and conditioning would have kept it a lot closer. Maybe Lee needs to go train at PSU or OSU as Iowa's ability to consistently produce international hammers has diminished in the modern era. 

[boconnell]

44 minutes ago, mspart said:

He got beat bad.   Was he hurt?   This is just really odd.   I have not seen a topic on this so I thought I would start one.   Please excuse if this has been discussed somewhere else.   If so, point me to it or just say what happened.   It would be weird for him to meet a match  so much better than him like that, it seems that something must have been wrong. 

mspart

He scored a few points and the other guy scored a lot of points.  

[MPhillips]

 

[mspart]

Thanks.   Sounds like no excuse except he got beat.   It does happen, but seems weird for Spencer Freekin Lee.   Maybe he can lose the Freekin middle name  now.  

mspart

[wrestlingshoe]

I think he puts too much pressure on himself. He looked lackluster. His silver medal last year was a huge disappointment to him and nothing but gold would suffice this year. And the way the Brands look at winning, I'm sure it makes it even more difficult. 

 

[de4856]

No clue, but he didn’t look right, some people suggested that he just got out wrestled, but it looked like he just got manhandled to me. 
So I don’t know what happened, maybe a bad weight cut, maybe he overtrained and was just stale. I don’t have any insight or information about any specific health issues regarding Spencer but I have suspected for some time that there is something else going on with him besides his bad knees. 

[SocraTease]

No talk of injury, yes?  He dominated his first match, right?  Leading up to Worlds, he was solid at Final X and previous matches, correct?  He was coming off an Olympic Silver, and the finals there was relatively close, if I recall.

So consternation is warranted.  

Sometimes, there are just bad matchups.  Or one isn't mentally in the game against an opponent.  Or things start off poorly, and seem to go downhill.  Look at what happened to Simone Biles.  She just lost it for a while.  Or the Japanese tennis player. Very elite baseball players sometimes can't buy a hit or get a throw to first.  Or, closer to home, Dake and Borroughs getting smashed  once ... at the Olympics (was it?). 

Who knows?  Maybe Lee will share something.  Maybe not. More importantly, I think, is how he responds the next few times out.  I bet most of us who have wrestled or competed in sports at a serious level have a head-scratching loss or two

[Eagle26]

8 hours ago, wrestlingshoe said:

I think he puts too much pressure on himself. He looked lackluster. His silver medal last year was a huge disappointment to him and nothing but gold would suffice this year. And the way the Brands look at winning, I'm sure it makes it even more difficult. 

 

That’s my take as well. You see Penn State and many other programs adopting the mindset of just “having fun and scoring points”. Iowa is still stuck on winning is everything. Even though PSU is super competitive and wants to win as bad as Iowa, the mindset they promote is much more freeing. It allows their guys to wrestle without all the pressure 

[oldschool]

42 minutes ago, Eagle26 said:

That’s my take as well. You see Penn State and many other programs adopting the mindset of just “having fun and scoring points”. Iowa is still stuck on winning is everything. Even though PSU is super competitive and wants to win as bad as Iowa, the mindset they promote is much more freeing. It allows their guys to wrestle without all the pressure 

couldn't agree more

[The Kid]

15 minutes ago, oldschool said:

couldn't agree more

lol.....do you really believe that nonsense propaganda?

[WrestlingRasta]

Margin of error at that level is razor thin, and simply a notch or two down in the mental part of the game can be the difference in a silver medal at the olympics and what we saw earlier this week.  At the beginning of the match I was already feeling like something was off with him, from a 'zoned in' standpoint.   Then there was one moment....if you go back and watch, Harutynuuan had just went up 2-1 and Lee kind of back out of bounds grounded.  On the way back to center the ref talked to Lee about it.....Lee was looking the ref dead in the eye like a kid being talked to by his father and nodded in acknowledgement.   May seem like a nothing burger, but it really stood out to me, you don't see that at this level.  These guys are laser focused and aren't typically paying much attention to what the ref is telling them, they are focused on the match and looking to gain whatever edge they can.  I literally said at the moment "oh he's in trouble, he's not all there".

I honestly believe that with that score and exchange with the ref, and already not 100% in it (mentally) Lee completely lost it.  And the rest of the match went the way it did......

[Eagle26]

25 minutes ago, The Kid said:

lol.....do you really believe that nonsense propaganda?

Please elaborate

[Eagle26]

To be clear, I’m not a Penn State fan. I believe Cael is a win at all costs guy just as much as Brands, Taylor, and just about every D1 coach. I don’t think Cael is on some moral high ground that he won’t do what it takes to win. But I think you have to respect that he’s not promoting that with his athletes. They are already ultra competitive. He’s getting them to buy into down playing the importance of winning to help them relax, perform better, and in turn, the winning comes. 

[The Kid]

54 minutes ago, Eagle26 said:

To be clear, I’m not a Penn State fan. I believe Cael is a win at all costs guy just as much as Brands, Taylor, and just about every D1 coach. I don’t think Cael is on some moral high ground that he won’t do what it takes to win. But I think you have to respect that he’s not promoting that with his athletes. They are already ultra competitive. He’s getting them to buy into down playing the importance of winning to help them relax, perform better, and in turn, the winning comes. 

It's easy to have fun when you have the #1 recruit at every weight.

How would he do at Clarion roster with the fun?  

[WrestlingRasta]

28 minutes ago, The Kid said:

It's easy to have fun when you have the #1 recruit at every weight.

How would he do at Clarion roster with the fun?  

To respond, I will ask you a question as well as provide some context for that question.  
 

Question: Is it possible the recruits are coming because of the program built? 
 

Context: prior to the current coach, Penn State had 1 team title (1953), 23 National Champions, and through all of history four olympians with one medal (1924 bronze)

Since 2011 those numbers are 11 team titles, 36 individual champions and four olympians with a gold and a bronze, even though there are only six weights.  
 

To answer your question, he would do better than clarion is doing right now, and with a little bit of time be doing much much better than they are now. 

[The Kid]

46 minutes ago, WrestlingRasta said:

To respond, I will ask you a question as well as provide some context for that question.  
 

Question: Is it possible the recruits are coming because of the program built? 
 

Context: prior to the current coach, Penn State had 1 team title (1953), 23 National Champions, and through all of history four olympians with one medal (1924 bronze)

Since 2011 those numbers are 11 team titles, 36 individual champions and four olympians with a gold and a bronze, even though there are only six weights.  
 

To answer your question, he would do better than clarion is doing right now, and with a little bit of time be doing much much better than they are now. 

He might do marginally better at Clarion with it's current roster.  But, there wont be many dual wins or national qualifiers, no matter how much fun they have in the room 

[alex1fly]

1 hour ago, The Kid said:

It's easy to have fun when you have the #1 recruit at every weight.

How would he do at Clarion roster with the fun?  

+1

Easy to optimize when you have the fundamentals solved. Applies everywhere. Easy to sleep well when you have a safe home. Easy to work longer when your tools are sharp. Basics are nailed, so you focus on the top 1%. Etc.

[PortaJohn]

1 hour ago, The Kid said:

It's easy to have fun when you have the #1 recruit at every weight.

How would he do at Clarion roster with the fun?  

How is the talent level at Clarion relevant to Spencer's talent level?  

Also, damnit that this is going to devolve into another Iowa/PSU thread

[Crotalus]

My assessment was that he went in ready to control the hand fight, but his opponent was super quick on the shot and finish and was able to get an early lead. This seemed to surprise Lee, and he wasn't able to make any adjustments to his game plan and mentally crumbled. Lee is pretty one-dimensional, as he relies on a plodding, methodical control of his opponent. But the one dimension allows him to dominate 99% of his opponents. It clearly didn't work here.

I think Lee is one of the best wrestlers we've had at 57kg/125lbs in a long time, but unfortunately I don't think he has "that dawg" in him, as the cool kids would say. He doesn't seem to handle adversity well, due in part because he always expects to be the better guy, and he struggles mentally when challenged. We've seen the intense self-criticism during interviews, but I think that we even see that creep in mid-match and turn into self-doubt when things are not going his way.

There are a lot of calls for him to change training locations, but I'm not sure anyone can really fix this for him (not to mention the other top locations have domestic challengers). If things go his was, he can tech his way through the best in the world. If not, well, we saw what happened.

[BAC]

I said this in the other thread but Spencer looked unprepared to me -- as in, unprepared to wrestle high-caliber talent at his weight, since he hadn't gotten the practice reps in before.  He doesn't have any training partners that are world-class talents at or near his weight, so he's not sharp. On top of that, he almost never competes overseas, so he's not getting many world-level looks that way either.  He came in unready. 

A related factor is that his coaches are always trying to build up his confidence, telling him how great and unbeatable he is, and that on the rare occasions he loses it's because he "beat himself." But that just saps his incentive to improve, as I think that sense of inadequacy motivates him.  Plus, it's not true anyway -- at least not on the world level, where the world's best will scout and beat him if he hasn't meticulously prepared for them, no matter how great Brands says he is.

A final factor I'll throw out there, which is far more speculative, is I just don't see the joy.  I don't mean that in the "Iowa only cares about winning while PSU has fun" sense.  I mean that in the HEW sense.  To me, he gives the impression of someone who's wrestling only because he's expected to, and feels obliged to. The positivity in his pre-worlds interviews seems forced.  I hope I'm wrong, but if I'm right, then maybe bringing in better practice partners, competing more, or changing his scenery won't help. Maybe he needs to rediscover what made him love wrestling in the first place, whatever that is -- or if that ship's sailed, then move on to something that brings him more joy, whether inside or outside the sport.

Edited 5 hours ago by BAC

[Hammerlock3]

People freak out whenever I say this...he's not super elite mentally. He gets rattled when his match doesn't come together. I know he's wrestled hurt a lot, thats baked in everyone knows it and gives him credit, that said he isn't one of these guys who always seems to find a way.  

[Eagle26]

2 hours ago, The Kid said:

It's easy to have fun when you have the #1 recruit at every weight.

How would he do at Clarion roster with the fun?  

I don’t necessarily disagree but that’s not the point of this topic. Spencer Lee was arguably a better recruit than anyone Penn State has had in the past (up until maybe Blaze and Duke). Why is he not having fun and/or reaching his full potential? We are all speculating here and I’m not trying to put down Lee. But it sure seems like part of it might be mindset and putting too much pressure on himself. I hope he figures it out and wins an Olympic gold in 2028!

[Grecojones]

On 9/15/2025 at 11:51 PM, Lucho said:

I think he just got out wrestled by Harutyunyan. I'm just as shocked as you tbh. I thought him and Zare were guaranteed gold medals but it looks like you can't bet on light weights at all. Harutyunyan is a super tricky wrestler so its not that surprising he won its just that I would've thought the American strength and conditioning would have kept it a lot closer. Maybe Lee needs to go train at PSU or OSU as Iowa's ability to consistently produce international hammers has diminished in the modern era. 

Real woods on line 1. 

[The Kid]

4 hours ago, Eagle26 said:

I don’t necessarily disagree but that’s not the point of this topic. Spencer Lee was arguably a better recruit than anyone Penn State has had in the past (up until maybe Blaze and Duke). Why is he not having fun and/or reaching his full potential? We are all speculating here and I’m not trying to put down Lee. But it sure seems like part of it might be mindset and putting too much pressure on himself. I hope he figures it out and wins an Olympic gold in 2028!

His full potential is an Olympic silver medal. 

Wright, Nico, Nolf, Bo, Brown  never made it to the top rung in the usa, let alone the world.

Ed Ruth made the team once.

Are their failures due because they didnt reach their potential?

Or are you just ripping Lee because he went to Iowa?

Edited 1 hour ago by The Kid