Hola Amigos. It's been a minute. I was told to come check out this thread. And man is it bonkers. Some of the takes on here are a little out there.
Comparing the NFL and MLB, two sports with insane resources (does the NFL or FIFA have THE greatest resources in the sporting world?) to college wrestling is one of the silliest things I have every seen.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading @Jason Bryant's history of this site, its predecessors, and his ventures. As someone else who has spent a shit-ton of time typing data into a database, I understand his stance and feel his pain. And the amount of work I have done pales in comparison to his - and to what @cowcards has done with his WrestlingGuru site. I started doing this when my nephews got into wrestling. Now that they are done I often wonder why I still do it.
I wholly support what WrestleStat is doing. As a matter of fact, I have wondered what has taken them so long. They provide so much value to this community and by not charging they run the risk that is now realized - their work would be taken for granted and people would develop a sense of entitlement to it. There are some on here in whom that sense is strong.
Yes, WrestleStat has competitors now with matsavant, making it a risky time to shift their business model. But a word of warning there. I have found a few errors in their historical data without even trying too hard. For many wrestlers, what the wrestler's school page says does not foot with what matsavant has. It makes me wonder what the source of their data is. There is no indication on the site about where they got their data. To spring up fully formed is a thing that makes you go hmmmm (if I squint I might convince myself that I see some of my DNA there). I look forward to them paywalling their data too.
The ads on WrestleStat can drive you to distraction, but if you can handle this site you can handle pretty much anything. Now, with the pay version the ads will disappear. Halle-freakin-lujah. Well, have a good night. I need to log out here, log into WrestleStat, drop 40 bucks, and get back to my scotch. As I learned in central Europe this summer - Na zdrowie, egészségedre, prost, and na zdraví.