ILLINIWrestlingBlog

So, is he too fat or too short? I wish you guys would make up your minds.

That was so bad it was funny.

He made the trip. There's also a flu bug or something going around the team. Of course, I don't think they'd bring him if he was sick. Maybe if he had just recovered? In any event, I don't know.

Pitt wrestled smart. Credit to them. The ILLINI missing Dylan Connell at 184 and Kannon Webster at 149. Big ups to Caden Ernd wrestling Reece Heller up from 165 to 184. He is a tough kid, and he worked his butt off for the team. Jake Harrier also did a great job filling in for Kannon Webster. Jake started for the ILLINI last year at 149 even though he was a 141-pounder. He is also very tough and almost beat a ranked Pitt kid. The big highlight for ILLINOIS was the Pucino upset. Cole Matthews got PUCINO'D! Edmond Ruth looked really good as well against a very good Luca Augustine, who has obviously worked on his body during the off-season. Joe Roberts got the only other ILLINI win, keeping him undefeated at 157. Nice arena. Nice call by the broadcast crew. Could've turned up the lights a wee. Stream only slowed down once. Good wrestling from Pitt even though I hate those guys. Time to cancel my YouTubeTV free trial.

That's Jake Harrier not Kannon Webster.

Homer ref. Pucino won in SV. That was sweet. Big win!

Big shout out to Santaniello for calling the ref's attention to the Madrigal injury.

Luuuke was wrestling like a tough heavyweight for 6:30. Then, he wrestled like a JV 98-pounder the last :30. Oh my. He did avoid that Pitzer switch, which is deadly. Congrats to the Pitt wrestler going from lanky kid to strong Mason Parris looking stud.

Free trial on YouTube worked! It is now 6:03, though, and the stream hasn't started. Instead a :10 dramatic "Your Event is about to Begin" message.

Allred was unlucky to face the man-mountain Cardenas in the evening. He must balloon up to 210+ after a couple of meals and will now have to sleep in a sauna tonight.

Wow. The San Diego State University came out of nowhere to field a real good wrestling team. For me, the surprise of the tournament. Edmond Ruth beat Navy's Danny Wask in SV recently. Now Wask is in the semifinals having beat the Stanford guy who beat Shane Griffith. Very stingy wrestler. The main benefit of the three-point takedown? Now Cameron Amine wins all of his matches 4-2 and not 3-2. What happened to Seth Nevills? He's gonna have more losses in this tournament than in all of high school. Speculation: Wyatt Hendrickson had his knee scoped. What happened at U23 on top of the NWCA All Star almost requires it. Or, is he just resting it?

But are you sure? Under that ILLINI/Pitt image in your post is the dreaded ACCNX. I've seen other warnings on the internet that some ACCNX content is not provided on ESPN+. Some is. This? I want to believe. .

Him and Bonaccorsi are gone. They've reloaded, though. Their replacements are ranked #17 and #10 respectively. Look pretty solid up and down the lineup. Cheers! The ILLINI can only beat them if they bring THE STORM. .

WARNING: If you go to the ESPN schedule for "all networks," then click on "upcoming" and then "December 3," it indicates that ESPN+ will be showing two duals but not the ILLINI/Pitt dual. That is covered by ACCNX. If you then go back to the top of the page and click "ESPN+" the ILLINI dual doesn't show up. Perhaps a Ruthless card: .

A couple things: First, the Maryland Millers seem like really big dudes for their weight. Are they having trouble settling into their respective weights early in the season? They seemed to come on late in the season last year. Second, the only person who should be pitching a diet plan on TV or the radio or the internet is Gavin Hoffman. Dude starts out at 197, but the next year he's at 184, a year later 285, then 197 for three years, then back down to 184. He even wrestled a bunch of matches at 285 one year that he started out wrestling a bunch of matches at 184. This was a quick go-over, but I got these for his records at the various weights: 285 -- 17-3 197 -- 40-30 184 -- 37-10 He's obviously much better as a fatty.

This is the problem, ionel: But what if I play the YouTube or Fubu card? I guess that I need to make sure that my free trial of any of those includes the stupid ACC Network. Geez. I think that I'll just play the Feast of a Thousand Chickens card:

This is a bit of a bait and switch. I will get to the dual in a bit, but right now, I need to put to use the combined brainpower of this board to solve a problem. The dual is at Pitt, and it will be streamed by something called ACCNX, which I gather is short for ACC Network Extra. In effect, it is a sub-sub-sub-specialty service of ESPN. That's like a porn channel that not only specializes in Latinas, but chubby Latinas, and not just chubby Latinas, but chubby Latinas with beautiful feet who perform Japanese anime cos-play, and if you know anybody like that, please DM me. The problem is that I don't have cable or a streaming service. I would like to buy a month of ACCNX, but that doesn't appear to be available. My plan is to get a free trial of something like YouTubeTV and use my password for that service to access the match. (You need to have a subscription to some cable or streaming provider that shows the ACC Network). Does that sound like a feasible plan? THE DUAL Our good friends at Wrestlestat.com have this as a 26-6 whomping of the ILLINI. Moreover, it has Dayton Pitzer scoring a major decision over Luke Luffman. Me no gusto. I think it will be much closer, and, in fact, could come down to those very same heavyweights. In their last dual, the ILLINI were predicted to lose by a similar score to UNC. Instead, it was a 20-13 win for the good guys. I have the ILLINI favored at 125, 133, 149, 157, 174 and 285. Some of those are slight favorites. The marquee matchup will be the one at heavyweight, but Kannon Webster versus Finn Solomon at 149, Edmond Ruth matched up with Luca Augustine at 174, and Dylan Connell versus Reece Heller at 184 should be very good. My complete preview is here, but beware, my friends, as I bad-mouth Pitt and there is a Wrestle: The Gathering theme.

I've researched ILLINI Olympic wrestlers before and others from the old times, but I never knew about Lou Kachiroubas. What a great story! I will look into it. Cheers and Thanks!

I figured that I'd do one post at the end of the November tournament. Because it is wrestling season, I wasn't able to watch all the matches in the upper division. However, I did catch the most important ones each day. Even without the injured Yokozuna, it was a very entertaining basho (tournament). The eventual winner was Kirishima, an Ozeki (2nd highest rank). He is one of my favorites because he looks like Sumo Elvis. He is also very nimble and strong and can use a variety of techniques to win. In fact, he frequently will adopt the style of his opponent, and then beat that guy using his own style against him. Two back with 11-4 records were Kotonowaka and Atamifuji. Kotonowaka is a Sekiwake (3rd highest rank). Atamifuji is a young rikishi (wrestler) in just his third upper division tournament. What makes these two especially interesting is that they are talented, and they are Japanese. Mongolians have held a stranglehold over the top rank (Yokozuna) for years. In fact, Kirishima is a Mongolian, and he's the guy who just won this tournament. If he wins the next one convincingly, he will become another Mongolian Yokozuna. That's why the great showings from Kotonowaka and Atamifuji were exciting. Hakkeyoi!

Lucas Byrd and his girlfriend have 361,000 followers on TikTok and 44 million likes. Shakira has fewer likes than they do.

165. How much has Hamiti been slowed by injuries? It seems to me that that explained all of last year, which was still an AA year. Granted, injuries don't matter when Olejnik hits that wingspan ankle pick. Wow! 184. "Was satisfying to watch" ... the last thirty seconds. It was painful to watch the first 6 1/2 minutes. 285. Hendrickson looked to have hurt his knee real bad during the finals at U23 Worlds. It was one of those knee tweakers where you wish the ref had jumped in sooner. He gutted out a one-legged Gold Medal because he had built up a big early lead. It surprised me to see him out there last night. I don't think Wyatt is this bad or Greg this good. Cheers!

David Taylor is the guy at the Magic: The Gathering table who knows every card and can tell you the damage done by a Hippogriff compared to a Thrull. By the way, tomorrow I file a multi-billion dollar antitrust lawsuit against Penn State. They got the venue, a suspiciously large number of the participants, one of the announcers, Wrestleknownothing providing play-by-play here, and they promoted their venue for Olympic Team Trial during the match. I almost miss Iowa. What happened to them anyway?

Not close.

As an impartial and respected journalist, I have to note that Wisconsin has now lost 11 matches in a row.