Leaderboard

For anyone wondering, Axente is ok. Nothing broken or anything.

Everybody who has the Peacock link... just go to the beginning of todays action and just watch the 65Kg matches. Repechage to the medal matches. That alone, was worth it all. D3

UWW site just brought up the final team scores (unofficial, of course. ) 1st (naturally) Japan w/130 pts. 2nd USA w/93pts. 3rd Kyrgyzstan w/45 pts. The wrestling in the Paris Olympiad is OVAH! Cheers to you all! D3

I love Burroughs said Dake uses science to keep himself going. lol thats called pseudoscience. And whatever works mentally for Dake is what’s driving him. and that’s quite effective for his age. Keep it going one or two more years. He may have to lose trials to retire

That was Jeff Buxton who made the right call. Rivera has two great coaches, Buxton and Donny Pritzlaff. Plus Rivera has a never give up - never quit attitude, A perfect match between great coaching and a wrestlers who is all guts!

I think he is killing it! Very informative without over-talking. Good for him.

Missing so many? frankie Edgar. Matt Hughes. Jon jones. Yuck Tito Ortiz. Lesnar. Sonnen. Nikal? He’s young yet. Mark Colman. Cain Velasquez. Tyron woodley. Johnny Hendrix. Chad Mendez. Askren. Josh Koscheck (spelling?), Rashad Evans, Dan sveum (spelling?), randalman, mo lawal, Ryan bader, Faber + more….. I give up on names lol. I didn’t find the list. But Does folkstyle wrestlers not own more ufc championships than any other discipline? By a decent margin.

Just saw the match for the first time. I just hope the Toms River, NJ local media gives him his doooos. What an inspiration. This is what it takes young people.

I think the answer to the title of the thread depends what the goal is. If the goal is to improve our international performance, there is probably some benefit to switching to freestyle from folkstyle. How much, I’m not sure. If the goal is to increase viewership, I don’t see how it would help. I agree that the tribe aspect would mean we shouldn’t lose many of the existing fans, but I’m not sure where new ones would come from unless colleges recruit a bunch of guys from India or something. Continuing on my last point, isn’t the fact that NCAA swimming doesn’t have many fans evidence that switching college to freestyle wouldn’t mean more viewers?

Could the strength issues be related to the reduced number of weight classes resulting in some serious weight cuts with the accompanying loss of strength? I don't see anyone past the novice wrestler getting "stronger" simply by wrestling. They do get more efficient at using the strength they possess but you don't get stronger without an overload stimulus (more weight on the bar) followed by recovery and adaptation.

Kind of hard to take that comment seriously.

Brooks doesn’t even lift, bro.

There is some serious DT nostalgia going on on this board. Sorry to pick your post for this response because it is not just you. But this idea that the DT who said he had lost the fire was somehow going to run through this bracket is just wrong. And the reason DT left NLWC is he was done wrestling. The reason he left his business interests in State College is they were not going to make him $6 million richer in the next 6 years. As for training together, both DT and Brooks said they had not done that in years. Time to let the DT who dominated go. He does not exist anymore.

Yeoman's work @D3 for LU. Thank you for a week of quality programming. Looking forward to hearing you on the mic along side the JBs in LA.

The only thing that could have improved is adding John Smith.

There is no room for reasonable takes on this forum. Edit your comment.

D3, thank you!!!

Pain. Here's to hoping Blades makes Chicago proud and finishes her run to gold and carries Team USA to the overall title and our sport gets some extra shine. It's been fun, maybe see you guys in March.

Except when I see Walz talk, normal isn’t the word that comes to my mind. It’s all strangely exaggerated. Normal people don’t act the way he does. Kamala seems much more normal to me in the way she acts than he does.

Kiyooka does it... 65Kg medal matches had been INSANE!!! Action EVERYWHERE! D3

Dudaev wins the challenge AND the point. Muz dives after Dudaev... nope! 13-12 bronze medal for Dudaev. WHAT A MATCH!!! (Muz goes to the back of the venue, looks in the dust bin to pick up his pack of smokes he previously tossed... ) D3

CHALLENGE WON! Sebastian Rivera is an OLYMPIC BRONZE MEADALIST! D3

1234?

We don't know if Snyder is done yet. I think he'll go until he can't. At 28, it wouldn't be unusual for a guy his size to give it a go in 2028 We don't even know if Burroughs is done yet... It's a great generation of wrestlers. They've made it easy to be a fan. We've also had some promising performances from some age-group kids.

Alliseeissomeonethatfailedmathclass

I get the impression Tervel was the one who grew Snyder into the guy he is. He seems to have regressed a bit.

I think Gable overworked them in 93 or 94? But there are certainly plenty of skills and tactics they could be practicing as a group before breaking off. I would like to see something different than hand fight , handfight, handfight, maybe get a takedown, and then be totally unwilling to even attempt a turn. Be stood up and more of the same. This seemed to be the strategy in about 70% of our matches.

Everyone belittled this post, but it aged like a fine wine. Sadly, it was spot on. Outside of 57 and possibly 86, I hope we get new reps everywhere. Never in my wildest dreams would I thought that I would be praising our Women over our Men.

Shoot, I like the idea of increased urgency because even though its 6-6 one guy knows he's down. I swear at the college level, the last minute of a tied match is 2 guys staring at each other 89% of the time.

To Never Trumpers. Why do people with questionable character argue that strong character is more important than the immediate benefits of sound policies? The rhetoric from some 'Never Trumpers' often reveals character flaws that are arguably worse than those of Trump.

Passivity is too subjective, Agkul lost his semi due to two passivity points, the last call with 1:30ish left in the bout when he had criteria. He and Zare were both dancing bears and neither appeared passive. They each had passivity points in the first period. Why not let them wrestle it out? Zare would have had the whole period to score, Taha was left with about a minute.

What fanbase for freestyle? Are the tournaments selling out? Are the matches getting comparable views to the top folkstyle matches? The answer is no. Its wild to attack folkstyles popularity when freestyle is even less popular with an even smaller fan base. And trying to straight up steal the folkstyle fanbase and popularity by forcing freestyle isnt going to make things better, youll just kill viewership and the fan base. Freestyle is non intiuitive, overly reffed by design, overly gamed because the rules are dumb, has much more controversial scoring, and criteria is not satisfying for a typical sports fan.

We have different definitions of better.

Forum MVP for a job well done this weekend.

You have hurt my imagination. On another note, the "Gold Medal Race" is the way NBC decided to promote a kind of horse-race for the Olympics. There was no race for total medals, so they had to figure out something else. I think it demeans Silver and Bronze, which are incredible achievements, and I think it is pretty cynical, and way too Ricky Bobby. With that said, the defending Gold Medalist USA just got crushed by Italy in the Women's volleyball final. On a final note, I am disappointed with the medal haul in wrestling, especially with no Russia here. I think the Americans gave their all, but it came down to some bad draws and some meh draws that turned out to be bad matchups. There are a lot of young lions in our country, though, who will be the stars of the next generation; kids who have already won age-group world medals. We'll be back. With that said, good day, and thanks to D3 and the rest of you. I went through about 200 "Bob Doles" and "LOLs" and "Fires" and other reactions over the games because y'all brought yourself to the party.

Imagine if she and Zare had a child.

Head up, Kennedy Blades, you are awesome.

If I never had to see another Kagami match, ever - I would be perfectly happy. She is a boulder, not a wrestler. She just doesn't wrestle. It isn't just frustrating, it is boring.

Tanxs, Rassling.... couldn't of done it w/o all of your participation. Give YOURSELVES an applause! D3

What American fan base? Outside of a couple of high profile matches in a few states and the NCAA tournament, college wrestling match attendance is dismal. I wrestled in Cali in the 80s, and the sport is loved there. But it's getting to be a hard sell now to parents in a era of hyper-capitalism and the turbo-charged desire for quick fame (social media) and money. Kids simply don't have the same opportunities anymore, and will likely be worse off than their parents. How can kids be expected to dedicate so much time to a sport that's over after college? Universities in Cali don't put much into wrestling because they don't see future opportunities with it. Everything's about capitalism now, how you can get by, get health insurance, pay the rent. The big names in folkstyle don't want to face this. The reason is that the 2 or 3 states that are fairly competitive at college wrestling, that have all the money, still see fairly decent crowds and therefore aren't getting the picture, or at least not wanting to look at the bigger picture. Time to switch to freestyle. At least there's international prestige that can lead to bigger sponsorships, and wrestling outside of schools.

Brooks would be a short 97Kg... not optimal. D3

Japan isn’t all of a sudden good at wrestling. They’ve been a top-4 team for more than this past Olympic cycle. 2024- 1st medals/1st gold 2023- 2nd medals/1st gold 2022- 2nd in medals/tied 1st gold 2021- 4th in medals/tied 2nd gold They’ve been ahead or tied with the US, Russia, Iran multiple times. Looking at their finalists this year: Higuchi was a a former world champ/olympic silver Kiyooka beat a former world/olympic champ to make the team Takayuki is a world bronze Fumita is an Olympic silver/2x world champ Kusaka is a world bronze Fujinami is a multiple world champ Sakurai is a world champ Motoki is a world silver Kagami is a world champ All of those results are during this cycle. Only one of those moves up more than 1 spot and that’s Kusaka going from bronze to gold. In men’s wrestling they are alway really good from 74 and down. With the Olympics and less weights it makes them more likely to have a better than normal result. If you’d take off your USA glasses for a minute you’d see they have the better team this year. Hell, the best wrestler in the world (Susaki) coming in didn’t even make the finals! It could’ve been even better.

They took it slightly better this time though.

It was disappointing, but worst in 50+ years seems like a stretch. I’ll take this output over 2008 (1 gold + 6 other guys no higher than 7th).

Gable is running out of career options. Time to come home

This is a new idea but why not just transition to Breaking?

He obviously takes his job seriously as opposed to promoting himself. Certain other wrestling media people try to insert themselves with inauthentic mannerisms, inflection, and opinions. JB, aware of his subordination to the sport itself, doesn't mess with any of that.