Eagle26

Just in case anyone is interested in trying… I have the app “AdBlock Pro” on my phone and iPad and I don’t get a single advertisement on this site

He would say, I wish I would’ve stuck with wrestling instead of WWE and NFL…. Oh, wait, wrong Gable

Can Iowa still contend with Penn State after all these losses?

Here’s a good analogy… from this picture, more voting districts voted red, but blue actually got more votes. Therefore, blue was actually more popular. I think there’s very good evidence to suggest this would hold true in the popularity of freestyle vs Greco

These are both correct in a way. As others have mentioned, world entry’s don’t tell us how popular it is world wide, but it should help us realize it is more widespread and it’s popularity is probably more than we give it credit for in the US. However, when you look at countries that have high populations, freestyle tends to be more popular, which would lead to the conclusion that freestyle is more popular. Yes, we don’t have the exact data, but it’s pretty easy to draw conclusions from the data we do have. Look at the population for countries such as USA, Russia, Iran, China, Japan, India, and all prefer freestyle… that’s probably the majority of the worlds wrestling population right there

I think Marsteller is probably his biggest obstacle to a world gold. Stylistically, JB has struggled a bit against guys like him that can hold position and don’t let him wrestle from space. Marstellar has recently committed to getting bigger and wrestling 86, so we aren’t sure what he’s going to look like at 79 (I don’t think it should be too much of a problem though). Plus, It’s a little different now that JB isn’t “the guy” so maybe JB’s game plan will be as good as Marstellers was. You never know, but I’m not counting out JB. He is not in his prime, but his prime was so high that he is still incredibly elite. People keep comparing him to himself from 10 years ago and think he’s not as good. That may be true, but no one in the world at 79 kg is even close to as good as 2014 Burroughs (assuming Dake and some of the other heavy hitters aren’t there). I think 2024 Burroughs is close enough that he could win another world championship this year.

Honestly, I think the biggest thing is he wants to retire on his terms. He wasn’t giving that hostile Penn state crowd the satisfaction at OTT. He’s already got himself in excellent shape, so why not try to end on a high note of maybe winning another world title? He believes he’s capable, and I don’t doubt him

To me, it didn’t sound like retirement was a definite, but I would guess it will be. Either way, congrats to him on a great career!

I thought it was great! Made me chuckle each time

Definitely we want more weights. The issue that a lot of people don’t realize is that it has nothing to do with the number of medals. It’s all about the number of participants. So to get more weights you’d have to make the brackets smaller than 16 (which no countries outside of the top 3 or 4 would vote for), or cut Greco which might sound like a good idea to US but not the rest of the world. So we are pretty much stuck

Rivera’s bronze match has to be up there.

Honest question and I’m not sure the answer, but I get the impression that maybe we are focusing too much on heavy strength training? We see athletes with a lot of mass, and I’m wondering if that’s part of the conditioning issues? Those huge muscles take up a lot of oxygen. Look at guys like Taz, Amouzad, all of the Japanese wrestlers and you can tell they are strong but don’t have the mass like Snyder, Brooks, Lee, Parris, and Zain. Dake is probably the exception, but we know he does more “functional” training. I have no idea how these other train, so it’s just a theory, but does anyone else think this could be an issue?

I don’t think they are trying to diminish silver and bronze… they are simply looking for a good story line. That’s what the media does. As you said the medal count wasn’t even a race. The gold count is a nail biter and generates some excitement.

Sleeping in on the last day?! Disappointed lol

You are talking about two different things here. Obviously an individual would rather have one gold than multiple silvers and bronze. But we are talking about a TEAM. That is totally different. One team member getting gold and then six out seven wrestlers DNP with none even wrestling for a medal is not even close to as good as medals in half the weights and another in 5th. In what world is 4 out of 6 in the top 5 worse than 1 out of 7 in the top 5? Again, I’m not saying I’m happy with our performance. We should’ve done better. But our team is still much better than it was 16 years ago

No it’s not even close. Yes, we underperformed. Yes, we deserve some constructive criticism. But USA wrestling is not falling apart, and it’s not even close to our worst performance in 50 years. Even just back in 2016 was probably a worse performance. We only had two medals compared to 3. And as it’s been mentioned 2008 we only had one medal and even though it was gold there were seven weights and we had six other wrestlers who didn’t even come close to medaling. No way that’s better than this year! And that’s only going back 16 years…

No one would have predicted that

Wow! Good call @Spladle08

Wow! Two incredible matches in a row! This is some awesome wrestling!

Rivera wanted it and his coach wouldn’t hit the button. Takes some balls as the coach to stand up and make the right call but he did. Watching live I actually thought there was a chance Rivera didn’t expose, but the coach had a perfect view. I went back and watched the replay… and looks like the coach made the right call. Well done

Wow!!! Incredible match by Rivera! I was a little upset the coaches didn’t challenge that 4, but now I’m happy!

So sad to hear this!

Of course

I think that would be tougher than it sounds and the takedown is irrelevant here. Basically, you could say I got to my feet and the exchange was 1-1 instead of 1-0. I’m ok with that

I agree but at that point, I think you just need to go full freestyle. The main difference between free and folk is control vs exposure. If you change that, you totally change the sport. I’d be in favor of it, but I know we are in the minority