ILLINIWrestlingBlog

I just did this, and I appreciate the thoughtfulness of putting your strategy on this board. Navigating the other way would have been a pain. I realized that, but then I saw the light. This'll be so much easier. Bump for awesomeness. Cheers!

This was an excellent thread. Don't know how the match lives up to this thread with the beer miles, the beerfest, the shaft and all. Wrestling needs more of this!

OTHER BRACKETS I'm mostly interested in 57 kg Freestyle and 77 kg, 87 kg and 97 kg Greco, but there are some other great brackets here. 97 kg Freestyle: One of the first matches out of the gate will be two fatties having to make weight and wrestle in the first round: Tony Cassioppi and Christian Carroll. J'Den Cox and Isaac Trumble are my picks to meet to see who gets to face Captain America. This is a great bracket! 86 kg Freestyle: Not really a great bracket, but PD3 and Stallrocky in the first round is intriguing in the way Stalin versus Hitler was. I do think that Brooks versus Dieringer in the semis of the challenge tournament is a quality, quality match. That is a must-see match. 74 kg Freestyle: Burroughs, Dake and Nolf. That's a winner by itself. But what makes this bracket really "fun" is the bottom of the bottom half: Haines versus Cenzo to face Nolf. There will be Lion blood on the mat here. What makes it especially intriguing for this match (and for all of Friday) is that the wrestlers only have one shot to win or lose. In a perfect world, why not do like the NBA with a best of three in each round? It would probably require two weekends in a row, but seems a little random to me the way it is. One lucky leglace.... All the Women's weights: They have somebody already sitting in the Saturday best of two finals at each weight, and they are all huge names in the sport. So, Friday, kinda meh until the semis; Saturday, WOW! MORE ABOUT PEACOCK If Heaven only offered Peacock streaming, I'd be like, I'm good. I'll just roam the Earth as an untethered spirit. After going through most of the offerings, this is my list of things to watch before the month is over: Oppenheimer, SuperBad, Heroes (a few episodes maybe) and Scrubs (a few episodes maybe). I think this is how the negotiations went between Peacock executives and the executive producers for 99% of the movies on the streaming service: PEACOCK: We will give you $7. PRODUCERS: Is that per view on your service? PEACOCK: No. We will give you $7. And yet, I'm very happy to pay $5.99 plus tax to watch the OTTs. Additionally, according to the internet, Peacock will upload a replay of their sporting events within 24 hours of their completion. FINAL THOUGHTS I'm sorry y'all have to deal with my antsy-in-the-pantsy-ness until I get banned. But, c'mon, man, clear the mats and start the matches!

Looks interesting! Good audience and critic scores on Rotten Tomatoes. I will check it out while it is free and available. I would've likely missed it otherwise (and without your recommendation). Cheers! Back to the topic at hand, we posted a Moneyball look at the opponents of Zane Richards, Danny Braunagel and Zac Braunagel here. I very much like the fact that Zane will probably be much fresher when he faces Spencer than Spencer will be when he faces Zane. The cause was missing the US Open (that Zane won), and the effect is having to wrestle Nico Megaludis about 3 hours after making scratch weight, while the IRTC wrestler faces the winner of the 8/9 seed. Also of interest, the average age of the two men facing the Brawlnagel twins in the first round of the OTT is 32½. Both of the baddies have been Greco mainstays for years. If my calculations are correct, Danny and Zac were in sixth or seventh grade when Ben Provisor and RaVaughn Perkins were wrestling in Senior Greco National tournaments. Was a year enough training for the young guns to unseat the greybeards?

It costed me $5.99 plus tax. Seems like a fair price for a month. Supposedly, I can cancel any time. On top of that, there are movies and tv shows. I haven't seen Oppenheimer, so that's a good deal, but my goodness, there's a lot of trash. The Dog Who Saved Halloween? This website needs a font to show when you're dead-*******-serious. I'm serious, The Dog Who Saved Halloween. Is that why are brains are all mush? I will certainly cancel the service within a month. In any event, I wanted to ask this question: Does anybody know when brackets come out? I heard it was today, but that narrows things down to the next 16 hours or so, and I want to get to work on a Moneyball post. If you know, but don't want to say in public, please send me a direct message. Cheers!

This is less a comic strip and more a working hypothesis:

Back in 1980, the Chicago Sun Times published a review by Roger Ebert about a movie that "never finds a consistent comic note of its own," that also "never develops a plot," and that never allows the "central characters" to get "involved in the same action." He was writing about Caddyshack. By way of explanation of the comic strip below for the younglings, here's a very short :23 video of one of the greatest movies ever made: How does this relate to wrestling? Well, because Jombo™ has become involved. Also, it is my firm belief that the least likely person in the history of mankind to have ever liked amateur wrestling is Roger Ebert. And yet, in 1985, Ebert gave Vision Quest 3½ stars. I think that's pretty interesting.

I've enjoyed the seed predictions and the bracket talk. Great job! Now that we know who are the final entries, when will USA Wrestling publish the actual brackets? I'm getting antsy in my pantsy.

If you get rid of Bono, what you've got left is U1. Only instrumentals. BONO FOREVER!

Missing Olympic trials by one point = J. Bullock Missing Olympic trials by two points = Y. Thomas Feel for those guys. Youth caught up to B. Bassett. But Jax Forrest!

What strategy to use in the consolation bracket of a tournament like this? You'd like to win, but don't necessarily want to wrestle. If you change into your street clothes right away, the other guy puts his singlet on and gets his hand raised. So, you change into the appropriate singlet and warm up vigorously near your opponent and grunt and growl a lot. He starts doing the same, and it becomes a game of chicken. When I wrestled for Team Surrender in the 1980s, we perfected these techniques. My favorite was looking at my opponent with mouth open and crossed-eyes from across the warmup area. On another subject, the young kids are all right. Just amazed at some of their wins. This is a tournament full of part-timers, so maybe we'll get a true evaluation at the OTTs. Still, this was for a shot at an Olympic team for the younglings and the oldsters making it pretty spectacular.

Little Tommy Cello is the #1 seed at 57kg, Josh Rodriguez is #2. I couldn't tell who the #2 seeds were for the other weights because Track put a pop-up ad over their names. The ads didn't have an "x" to get rid of them. Then, another, bigger ad popped up over it. Just unbelievable how money-grubbing and incompetence can ruin the experience.

He did coach at Brown, but he's been back in Champaign, ILLINOIS for months. Brian Swaw and I interviewed him for The Threeeee Is the New Twooooo Podcast a couple weeks ago. He's the head coach at Relentless Training Center South. If you live in the greater Champaign area and want your kid to be an NCAA Champion.... What a great pleasure it was to talk to him! On another note, I'm now completely persuaded that the Ramazan Attasuaov transfer is real and not an April Fool's prank. Coach Poeta posted it on social media. My questions for Cyclone fans and anybody else familiar with him: Was he wrestling up a weight at 133 for ISU? Was that the weight he wrestled because it made for the strongest possible lineup? Did he look like he could drop 8 pounds? What was your opinion of him as a wrestler? He was in the program for four years, but it looks like he has two years of eligibility remaining because of Covid and a redshirt. Is that true? Is he able to beat Terukina? Why do you choose to live in Iowa? He qualified for the NCAAs but got injured. What was that injury, and has he seemed to have gotten past it? Ramazan's beaten some quality wrestlers so far in his journey, including Tony Madrigal (x2), the #1 NAIA wrestler, NCAA qualifiers Jake Gliva, Ethan Oakley, Angelo Rini, Julian Farber, Connor Brown, Sidney Flores (x2), Derrick Cardinal, Sean Carter and Dustin Norris, as well as Cullan Schriever, Cory Land and lost by two to Vito Arujau and Austin DeSanto. Hoping for the best.

This is ******* hilarious! That's from the biggest fan of Charles Dickens in the world. Top marks!

I've been told that I'm the worst judge of weight by folks on this board. I think they have a point. My thought is that Lucas Byrd is gonna go where Lucas Byrd feels he can do the most damage and, as he puts it, "put people on their heads." If Attasauov has #125 on his announcement, I'm going to say that's probably the plan. Cheers!

There's zero evidence to support that. On the other hand, Coach Poeta has secured funding for a state-of-the-art wrestling facility, signed a top ten class with three Fargo winners (two of whom wrestled in Who's #1), sat in the corner for two Final X winners for the RTC, and will lead the strongest ILLINI team in maybe ten years this upcoming season.

I thought this was an April Fools prank, but all the guys on the team were reposting this on Instagram yesterday. It would give Ruzic an opportunity to redshirt, but allow him to wrestle five dates on the calendar, while Caelan Riley can wrestle any other dates, so that, in theory, Attasauov only has to hit 125 a couple times during the season. Maybe certify, a random open, the Midlands, the BTT and NCAAs. Then, you have Zane Richards there to provide expert advice on weight management, train with Jesse Delgado, Zane, Lucas Byrd, and all the folks they bring into the IRTC to work with Richards, as well as Ermak Kardanov (Euro bronze; formerly wrestled for Russia) in the IRTC to head the welcoming committee.

We have to peel layers and layers of this onion. LOL!

Chris Moore at ILLINOIS makes sense. I also suspect: 157 -- Logan Swaw 285 -- Peter Marinopoulos

Jesse Delgado and Adam Tirapelle.

Wow! Love to read this! I was amazed by his athletic ability back in the day. Back in June 2023 when I looked him up, I was amazed by his many accomplishments. He was a striver and a barrier-breaker his whole life. Thanks for your testimony!

I knew it was you! The brains behind the conspiracy. Does his son really, really look like Yianni, or was that a joke or a hoax?

Didn't understand the reference. Googled it. HILARIOUS! Reminds me of a project that I'm working on that some will probably allege is complete bull**** even though it's 100% true. There was a guy from Dagestan named Magomed Islaniev who came to America and wrestled in (some say) about 80 high school tournaments around the country over a number of years. He rented himself out as a ringer. His greatest achievement was winning the 155 and 167 weights back-to-back at the 1985 IHSA tournament. He had to wrestle up a weight so he could change and get back to the mat in time. He died in a motorcycle accident. We're looking for actors to play that part (strong Eastern European accent a must), various 1980s-era coaches (should look comfortable in singlet and t-shirt), and some opponents (looking specifically for Greg Brady haircuts). If interested, call me.

The thing is Suds Dubler is 100% real. You can go to the Clarion website and see for yourself. The only questions are whether he is in fact a real person, a disinformation campaign, a Yianni clone or one of the pod people. As for Potatoes McBrewster, they took that page down. Suspicious, no? P.S. If enough of you go to the Clarion website and vouch for the fact that Suds Dubler (i.e. Giant Yianni) IS NOT THERE, I'll know that I'm ******* crazy. Either way, that would be valuable information to have.

Oh for crying out loud!