ILLINIWrestlingBlog

No. Our stuff isn't this good. We will be this good soon. Last couple of days, I've seen snippets of this video around Twitter and Instagram but hadn't seen the whole thing. Thanks for posting it! As for MIdlands, we're hoping to get some brackets today. Driving up tomorrow. It looks like the ILLINI are leading the way with 19 wrestlers entered. Arizona State has 15, ILLINOIS has 21 (I don't know if those are unattached ILLINI, NIU and SIUE or what), MSU 18, MIchigan 11, Penn 18, Wisconsin 18 and Rutgers 0. At least that's what they have for Rutgers on Track. I thought they were bringing a full team. A bunch of other teams bringing 15-17 wrestlers. Should be some massive brackets!

I don't know. I can't find anything about preseeds last year, Flo just popped out with the brackets. I've seen on the schedule that the Coaches are supposed to have a "business meeting" on the 28th--the day before the tourney starts. My guess is after that meeting. Brackets will be on Track, so I'll be checking then.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS to everyone on the Intermat Forums not from Iowa! My favorite part is the completely stolen Monty Python bit:

What are you signing up for? Haha! By the way, it's IWB&F&B+ if you want to be technical. My favorite part is César's kneepad:

... we would just like to say that we will be on our best behaviour. See, we even used the English spelling of behavior just now. Very classy. Does this mean that our **** doesn't stink. Well, yes. Kinda. We're so excited about this sponsorship deal that we've added a "Plus" to our corporate name: The ILLINI Wrestling Blog & Forum & Beyond Plus. If you want to see our ILLINI Midlands Preview, it's at this link. As always, it is free without advertising. All you will ever get from us is top notch journalism from respected and impartial journalists. That's our promise to you. The ILLINI had two champions at last year's Midlands, Zac Braunagel and Edmond Ruth. Can Zac wrestle unattached? Yowzers, I just thought of that. What about Danny? Wouldn't it be cool if the Brawlnagels just wrestled Greco holds at this year's Midlands? That would be so epic! Edmond Ruth is undefeated against the field, at least 7-0, including 3-0 against the other highest seeds at the weight. Heavyweight should be a blast with Cohlton Shultz and Yaraslau Slavikouski and Luke Luffman entered. You can expect ILLINOIS to show off some of their true Freshmen wunderkinds to see how they do against a field with 48 teams in it. The younglings did pretty darn well at Fargo last year, but how does that translate to the greatest folkstyle tournament in the world? Finally, what would an ILLINI Midlands Preview be without a cartoon about the Iowa Hawkeyes? .

A very thoughtful critique. I will take it to heart. Cheers!

Checking the HATER METER for Keegan O'Toole. And, and, and, it's empty. He's a stud. Congrats to stupid Missouri for coming out strong in every match, looking for takedowns and mostly getting them. The bright spots for the ILLINI were the two true freshmen, Kannon Webster and Chris Moore. Coach Poeta said at intermission that his guys were "respecting them too much." As usual, he was right. Great production, Jim Gibbons and David Taylor did a fantastic job, no buffering, high resolution cameras, good replays at the end of matches, no commercials during the broadcast. Zero complaints from me about the show they put on. This is how we grow the sport. I hate Missouri. #FREEJORDAN! .

Too much Missouri. Yuck.

I just watched part of the Campbell/Purdue match on UFC Fight Pass. That is the entire scope of my experience with the organization, but from what I saw, my friend, what you say is true. Nice production along with Shane Sparks and Joseph McKenna commentating. During that match they did a promo for the ILLINOIS versus Mizzou dual. It was also very nicely done. Well, except for one small detail: They showed too many Missouri wrestlers. So, I decided to cut those guys out of the promo and put in only ILLINI wrestlers. This is how that turned out:

Unless you really dig Gardner-Webb or Sacred Heart, the big dual on Thursday is ILLINOIS against Missouri. It will be streamed on UFC Fight Pass. We've posted a preview at The ILLINI Wrestling Blog and Forum and Beyond. Some pre-dual questions for the Mizzou posters here: 1. I watched the Missouri/Air Force dual on Sunday. Peyton Mocco rolled his ankle and had to take injury time to get his ankle taped up. Is he ready to go against the ILLINI? Has he been able to practice since that dual? If we're going to bet six figures on the ILLINI, we have a right to know. It's in the Second Amendment. 2. Same question for Zach Elam, except it was his knee. Mocco and Elam are supposed to face Ruth and Luffman, making them the two marquee matchups. Will they happen? 3. Missouri came out quickly and aggressively in that dual, and in the matches I watched, the Tiger wrestlers were in on takedowns either off the whistle or within :20. Has that been the case for y'all this year, or was it the competition? 4. This question is for everybody: It is our first time using UFC Fight Pass. Is there anything we need to know about that streaming service? Good stream/bad stream? On time? Announcers? Casting to other devices? Easy to cancel? 5. Again, a question for everybody: Should athletic departments start putting out injury reports for wrestling matches? Below is a picture of Ben Askren in an argument with my wife. You can see me in the background yelling at him before running inside the camper and locking the door.

I agree. In fact, I just put up a video on YouTube about A Christmas Carol. It's pretty short, but I still discuss how absolutely weird it was, and then explore how Charles Dickens came up with the greatest transformation in the history of fiction.

About that Missouri - Air Force score: Ouch! I watched Hendrickson's match at the U23 finals, and what happened to his knee was a crime. He gimped through the rest of that match to pick up the Gold, but I thought for sure he would be out a couple of months for a repair job. I was astonished that he wrestled in the NWCA All-Star classic. On another note, we've published a preview of the ILLINI/Mizzou dual up at The ILLINI Wrestling Blog and Forum and Beyond. Thanks to KCMO2, we've purchased a month-long subscription to UFC Fight Pass for $9.99 plus tax. Missouri is a huge favorite, and a favorite to win by a lot. Wrestlestat.com predicts a 29-6 win for the bad guys. Still, there will be a lot of great matches, including Luffman versus Elam and Ruth versus Mocco. Moreover, some of the other matches should be very close.

AN AIRING OF GRIEVANCES 1. Flo and Track, why do you make me click that "Are you still there" link every two minutes? You are the clingy girlfriend who is not worth this much attention. See image below. 2. With regard to #1 above, I'm a Flo subscriber, so why is this hurdle in my path? At least in the before times I got to see a stupid Jake Varner youtube video about Defense Soap, but now, what purpose does it serve other than to anger your consumer base? 3. The commercials. They still interrupt. I want to see hands raised, celebrations, the coach pumping his fist, etc. By the way, why commercials? 4. The cameras [at Senior Nationals] were better than the Flo average but still not as good as a birthday party in 1999. 5. Whoever manned the scoring table for Mat #6 wasn't trained enough. There was no link to Trackwrestling [most of the morning] and thus no live scoring. I had to go to the actual camera on FloWrestling to see that there were people wrestling on that mat. Surprise! 6. Why force us to toggle back and forth between Track and Flo? The bout board on Flo was useless, so I had to go back to Track to see who was wrestling. 7. At least during the matches that I watched somebody thoughtful at the table was usually kind enough to turn the camera when the action went off the screen. It didn't happen enough, mind you, but it was better than usual. 8. In the list of events on Track [on Friday], you [had] to go to page two and then a quarter of the way down that page to find Senior Nationals. Seriously, that's insane. On the first page of events, you [had] a Triangular, a Middle School conference tournament, two JV "mixers," four JV invites, a JV tournament, and a JV Open. There's also a Jamboree. What the **** is a "Jamboree"? No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. You're all going to prison for that! We have to scroll through all of this stuff. Please put an obvious link to the big events on the front page. This is so freaking obvious I laugh. Is there somebody at Flo sitting in a big leather chair petting a cat and chuckling evilly while thinking about the confusion this causes? "Chaos! I love CHAOS!" 9. Are you hiring?

I asked because they are calling the match "Mizzou in the Lou." It took me some time to put the pieces together and figure it out. I make fun of that in the preview. I'll link to the preview here tomorrow. I get it, though. Missouri wants to own St. Louis like ILLINOIS wants to own Chicago. Streaming, streaming, streaming, that is the question. There's no streaming listed by either website. That would be a crying shame. Thanks for all the responses. I wish that I was as couth and gentlemanly as you awful and horribly evil Missourifolk.

I'm doing a preview of ILLINOIS and Missouri. Some questions for Mizzou fans: 1. Can we expect Rocky Elam? 2. Has Kade Moore won 133 over Zeke Seltzer? 3. Does anybody actually call St. Louis "The Lou"? 4. Noah Surtin is now 8-0; does that surprise you? Please explain.

Who do y'all have in the 57kg finals? The guy who took out the PSU backup and the 4x nonAA or the guy who took out the tween and the other guy with 59 college losses?

KAMAL BEY!

As for the IRTC and IRTC-adjacent wrestlers, I think this is their status vis-a-vis an Olympic Team Trials spot: IN Joe "The Wraustler" Rau Kamal Bey (waiting in the finals) MUST WIN ONE OF THEIR NEXT TWO MATCHES: Zac Braunagel Danny Braunagel West Cathcart Danny has the toughest road, followed by West and then Zac. Zac already teched his first matchup earlier today. And now for the Airing of Grievances: 1. Flo and Track, why do you make me click that "Are you still there" link every two minutes? You are the clingy girlfriend who is not worth this much attention. See image below. 2. With regard to #1 above, I'm a Flo subscriber, so why is this hurdle in my path? At least in the before times I got to see a stupid Jake Varner youtube video about Defense Soap, but now, what purpose does it serve other than to anger your consumer base? 3. The commercials. They still interrupt. I want to see hands raised, celebrations, the coach pumping his fist, etc. By the way, why commercials? 4. The cameras were better than the Flo average but still not as good as a birthday party in 1999. 5. Whoever manned the scoring table for Mat #6 wasn't trained enough. There was no link to Trackwrestling early on and then later in the day and thus no live scoring. I had to go to the actual camera on FloWrestling to see that there were people wrestling on that mat. Surprise! 6. Why force us to toggle back and forth between Track and Flo? The bout board on Flo was useless, so I had to go back to Track to see who was wrestling. 7. At least during the matches that I watched somebody thoughtful at the table was usually kind enough to turn the camera when the action went off the screen. It didn't happen enough, mind you, but it was better than usual. 8. In the list of events on Track, you have to go to page two and then a quarter of the way down the page to find Senior Nationals. Seriously, that's insane. On the first page of events, you have a Triangular, a Middle School conference tournament, two JV "mixers," four JV invites, a JV tournament, and a JV Open. There's also a Jamboree. What the **** is a "Jamboree"? No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. You're all going to jail for that! We have to scroll through all of this stuff. Put an obvious link to the big events on the front page. This is so freaking obvious I laugh. Is there somebody at Flo sitting in a big leather chair petting a cat and chuckling evilly while thinking about the confusion this causes? "Chaos! I love CHAOS!" 9. Are you hiring.

Tremendous! I think we need to amend the OTT qualifying criteria: -- Past World medalist -- Top American at Bill Farrell -- Top 5 at Senior Nationals -- Qualify spot at Pan Am Championships -- Lose 40 pounds to chase your dream

That's wrong. The "Brawlnagels" are 4-1 so far. Danny did lose to the number one seed Kikinou, but the next match on the same mat saw Zac beat Berreysea 3-2. If my math is right, Danny needs two more wins to qualify for the Olympic Trials. Zac needs one. They both have long rests and are rehydrated by now. Very excite! Joe Rau is 2-0, and I think he only needs 1 more win to qualify. West Cathcart likely needs 2 wins on the consolation side.

If Flo bought Track, why am I still seeing this as a Flo subscriber:

No Max Nowry or We Rachal in the brackets. Bummer. Seen some excellent women's wrestling, though. They are so technical. Great to see!

Micic had some tough years starting out but all of that eventually led to his Disney moment this season. That's what I've seen in Zane Richards. He has worked his way up, Fighting the whole way. Will he have his Disney finish? I don't know, but he's certainly earned it. At least for now, he's had a really nice Pixar moment. But, my friends, Greco! Tomorrow, I'll be watching the Brawlnagel twins, Kamal Bey, We Rachal, Joe Rau and West Cathcart in the most exciting domestic Greco event in years. Besides these warriors from ILLINOIS, there are other great storylines, and folks have popped up out of the woodwork. Additionally, I saw Max Nowry listed in an Instagram post. Is he wrestling as well?

In previewing the Pitt dual versus ILLINOIS, I thought the Panthers had two holes in their lineup. One of those "holes" is now 3-0 against Big Ten wrestlers. They're strong up and down the lineup. Young, too.

This. The ILLINI were cruising to a 60-0 win until the ref decided to stop looking for pinfalls. I watched the match live, and I'm an impartial and respected journalist.