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Let the arms race continue. Pleased to see the hype video includes yours truly in a couple team photos. https://pennathletics.com/news/2025/7/22/penn-athletics-receives-20-million-gift-to-support-wrestling.aspx https://pennathletics.com/documents/2025/7/17/Penn_Wrestling_Lasting_Legacy_of_Excellence__2_.pdf

He's out!!!!

I was asked to commentate while I was working Fargo. Release was dropped while the majority of USAW staff was in Fargo (all the comms). The in-arena emcee was doing MMA over the weekend in Prague as well. Coordinated it all pretty quick.

To start, I also think the quarter century team is dumb, especially when the majority of guys wrestled at multiple weight classes during their careers and there is picking and choosing regarding which weights guys are being considered. That being said.. I would 100% pick Askren over Pendleton. 4x Finalist, 2x Undefeated National Champion, 2x Hodge winner, most pins in NCAA wrestling this quarter century, and he absolutely dominated his junior and senior years.

Great news for the Quakers

You did great! Its always fun hearing you on random streams and events. You are everywhere. If anyone missed any of the matches, I have them uploaded here:

That's 2% of an annual subscription to FloSports! We sure did take them to the cleaners!

Looks like Askren...

You: Don’t talk about Biden he’s in the past you what about ism wingers. also you: Popeye and olive oil are racist and so is Henry ford..

Pendleton was great. How did he do at OTT? I'm very interested in Pendleton's career outside of his wins over Askren. He has a three paragraph wikipedia entry and one whole paragraph is devoted to beating Ben? Literally 9 sentences total, and five about Askren. Like who did Pendleton beat? Was he undefeated for his career? No record or list of wins. Kinda tough to say he's the best of the last 25 years with that lack of info.

Not good enough - he still wants that airfare so he can practice there.

I know; was just easier to make a point of the two finals losses in the comment I was quoting. I believe Ben did get him once in college but that's nothing compared to Pendleton's 7

Burroughs as HC is the obvious move

Manufactured in the sense that they knew it fake and presented as truth, and withheld key elements that didn’t work in their favor to mislead the court. Everything about it was an illegal operation and criminal abuse of their power. They absolutely were the bad guys and their tactics mirrored those of the NKVD.

Good question. Ivy League cannot even offer athletic scholarships so maybe this is focused more on endowing the coaching positions and building state of the art facilities

I was disappointed to see Yianni and Rob Koll visit the WH with (not all of) the other NCAA champions and take a photo with Trump. Same reaction when Vito went over to Trump after winning his second NCAA tournament. Neither of them were "blue collar" raised, nor from a rural area (Rochester and Long Island? Ha!).

I hear everything is on cruise control. It's a perfect system.

Asked Gemni to do it

Literally the only argument you can make for Pendleton over Askren is that junior and senior Pendleton was better than freshman and sophomore Askren. Pendleton's an amazing two-time champ that dominated the series against a future all-timer. That argument is extrapolating that they were on the same trajectory and that Ben Askren wouldn't surpass Pendleton as he continued to develop in college. I'm not going to take a stance in either direction, but I do think it's worth noting. The bottom line is that if you are putting Pendleton above Askren then you are giving Pendleton points because of what Ben would go on to do. Pendleton did not beat a 2x Champ and Hodge winner, he won 6 or 7 matches where he was the favorite over a very tough underclassman.

I don't think Chris wrote his own Wiki page. Here's some more bio on him that doesn't mention Askren if that's what you're wanting https://osubeavers.com/sports/wrestling/roster/coaches/chris-pendleton/3081 I'm not necessarily contending that Pendleton is the greatest of the quarter century, just that I can't fathom putting him behind Askren.

I believe he had 1 loss each in his Junior and Senior years, 1 of those to Askren. His junior year he was 1 point against Askren away from bonusing his way through the NCAA tournament. His senior year he beat Askren 10-5 in the finals and only had 1 other non-bonus in the tournament. He didn’t beat him but Jake Herbert was in this bracket and took 3rd. His sophomore year he got a pin and a tech to make the quarters before losing to Brad Dillon. He had a 17 second pin the third place match, and the guy he lost to got 5th.

Where was this result and at what weight? Ben was at 74kg and Pendleton never wrestled below 84kg as far as I remember. Although an exhibition sounds vaguely familiar. The only match I could find online was Pendleton vs Max Askren at 96kg. Edit: Nevermind, I found it. Ben lost at the 2009 Sunkist open (2-1, 1-0) to Pendleton at 84kg.

I'm afraid you've got it backwards. As I mentioned above, Pendleton won their freestyle faceoff as well

He's a fighter. Very good to see his progress. He has a positive outlook on life and that carries through to what it takes for his remarkable recovery. I'll bet he is just happy to be home even though life is still a challenge for him. mspart

Well, they were funny. Letterman was funny and weird and had funny and weird guests. It was fun to watch. Late night TV is no longer fun to watch. Streaming probably has something to do with that, but they are just not funny anymore. And with https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2025/07/01/study-late-night-comedy-shows-begin-2025-99-percent-guests-being For the men of the late night comedy talk shows, the first half of 2025 was an instance of history repeating itself. According to a NewsBusters study, 99 percent of their political guests were on the left, matching the result for the last six months of 2024. The grand totals were 106 liberals and Democrats compared to one conservative. The study looked at the five daily late night comedy shows: ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show from January 6 through June 30. The genre is dying and that is because they have excluded half the potential audience. mspart

It will be worse for Azarpira this time I think

Due to the climate thing or the stock market crash?

D3

Brian coached me at SIUE a couple years. Great guy. Crazy his son is even old enough to be at Fargo, let alone win it. I remember him being just a pup.

Are you aware that he was our Olympic rep?

I can't say one way or the other, as I've obviously never coached there. But I know that Donnie Vinson is doing a great job recruiting there, with 16 committed recruits combined between c/o 2025 & 2026 (including c/o 2025 #223 and #241 & 2026 #64, #128, #138, #178, #192, #217, and #235). So you can see the recruiting improvement from his first year to second year. Time will tell what these kids become in college, but this is promising to me.

Who are these "top guys" you speak of? Pendleton and..

BTW, you can see the windows in this picture. Wrestling room should run along/above the scoreboard.

"What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.” ― Billy Madison (movie)

It wasn't just the two finals wins. Pendleton beat Ben 7 times in college and then a couple years after Askren was out of college he beat him again in freestyle. Pendleton was just better.

If only I'd kept my subscription coulda got a week free.

I think it's great wrestling and the event in particular is getting this exposure. What I find odd is how it seems like wrestling is almost being politically commandeered or owned by right wing politics. I don't say that to start a debate but just seeing how things have played out with the prez at NCAAs and the spectacle that was made on his entrance, Bo Nickal and his outward political nature, Dan Gable stumping for trump in Iowa and just the kind of people that seem to be involved lately even at a youth wrestling level. Just never really saw that in other fringe sports before to my knowledge. Maybe it's just the nature of wrestling being more of a blue collar sport and the rural/urban divide but it's just a weird thing to watch happen in real time... Maybe it's always been a sport with the same people but the attention it gets from folks on the right side of the spectrum just seems to be increasing and more in your face than it ever was:.

How could you possibly know this ... where's your evidence?

Barry Davis, Wisconsin seemingly pushed out in 2018 CD Mock, UBC fired in 2015 Kevin Jackson, Iowa State stepped down 2017 Zalesky, Iowa was fired in 2006 J Rob, Minnesota fired in 2017 And then you can list programs dropped. That's a longer list.

Invest wisely!

Idiotic things like this is why democrats own approval rating is sub-20% and dropping. Imagine if they had the foresight to replace Colbert years ago?

When it comes to athletics the fat boy should stick to golf

It was lack of success mixed with issues with the administration for lack of support from the school so he went back to the place he had the most success .bloomsburg also recently had some outside money pumped into the program

Did it ever come out why the coaches at northwestern got fired? Northwestern was producing a lot of studs and seemed to have fallen off a cliff since the coaching change.

A good time for all to make sure their ID reflects DONOR. If so the chances your eyes, lungs and whatever possible can be used to help others since you will not be needing them any longer.

Maybe the reason BN seems to dislike DT is more of a personal one. DT has a family with kids, was the coach picked to take over one of the top college programs in the country, is (was?) a successful businessman, and is pretty much universally liked and respected. BN gets his azz kicked for a living and has a podcast with a couple of head nodders.

That's not the only explanation that results in Nickal hating Taylor. It is just the only reasonable one tied to Taylor's injury and Final X 2019. Nickal could primarily hate him for other reasons or it could be unreasonable hate. Taylor could have actually been getting second opinions and waiting to see how well he could wrestle in that condition. He could have given no thought whatsoever to keeping Nickal at 92kg. Nickal meanwhile had an unreasonable expectation that Taylor should have decided to go under the knife within 10 days of the injury so as to give him enough time to cut weight and change his registration for the WTT. Spencer Lee had two torn ACLs and he took like 9-10 months to decide to have surgery. Taylor was supposed to make this decision in 9-10 days because it would better suit Nickal? That's unreasonable. It's possible Nickal thought he had a better chance at beating Cox. I wouldn't expect it to be his primary motivation for going 92kg vs 86kg or 97kg. I don't know that your conjecture about what happens in the room really matters. Yianni Diakomihalis had said the first time he had ever beaten Jordan Oliver in a wrestling competition of any kind even 1 min situations in the room was in the semifinals of the US Open in 2019. I would guess that Nickal primarily was interested in maintaining his training situation in 2019 and thought that the ability to train with Taylor for another year would give him the best shot at making the Olympic team.

It just is damn near impossible to take anything BoJob Nickal says seriously anymore. Can he just take the inevitable turn to Skip Bayless-level troll commentator already?

Not a chance...

What an utter embarrassment this guy has been become.