maligned

To echo others, center control is valued above all else. Also, there are certain rough time markers in bouts where someone will be called for passivity, no matter what, if scoring isn't happening. Then it's simply, " who's controlling the center less?"

So far, only Raney (7th place) and Bey (10th) have scored for us.

Last man standing for us is Payton Jacobson at 87kg. He'll be in the repechage tomorrow.

Both Black and Sancho ended up being brought back in. As previously mentioned, Sancho would have to win 3 very tough matches tomorrow to medal. Black has a more winnable first match against Israel before he'd face the 1 seed from North Korea to earn a spot in the bronze match.

I wonder if he wishes that now, too. I think with his longevity and dynamism, he could have been a rare Greco star--but the results have always been just outside his grasp.

Greco proposal: a 1-1 passivity points match stops at 5 minutes. Each guy is given 30 seconds on top in par terre. Whoever scores the most points wins. If both score the same amount, the one who scored quickest wins. If neither score, do a second, and then a third round of par terre sudden death like I described. If none of that yields points, we've wrestled 8 minutes. Flip a coin or disqualify both guys. I'd be fine with either result. But guys "winning" a 1-1 passivity points match is bogus.

Sultangali, the Kazakh who beat Black, is into the semi's with an upset. So Black and Sancho still possibly alive pending the semi-final results.

I think it's like tennis or track--not team sports--because of it being individual. If you ask AI, "Who are the greatest American tennis players of all-time?" it will spit out a mixed list of men and women, with Serena Williams rightfully listed first and Pete Sampras rightfully listed before Chris Evert, for example. Then, it further lists the best men and the best women separately. I think this is logical for individual sports. There's one discussion of someone's quality and impact, no matter the gender, and another discussion by gender to compare athletes within their spheres.

I'll cede the obvious point that there are less female participants. Two counterpoints, because I'm interested in your thoughts: First: Wrestling is a novel sport. Women's wrestling shouldn't count in any way as a "first generation" sport because of how the athletes were grafted into and competing within an already established system against opponents (boys) in that system and with the established coaches and in the same households of that system. Any girl 25 or younger has been groomed to the same level as her male counterpart for her entire journey, with no missing piece of training, knowledge, or competition level. It's no different from African & Asian track and field athletes from non-traditional nations now winning medals in things like javelin and sprints that they never won before. Those athletes are being sent to academies and training programs in the US and Europe at a young age, where they're grafted into a long-established system. Women's wrestling is completely different from emerging women's soccer opportunities globally, for example, where the generations of time needed to establish competition levels and training frameworks is much higher. Secondly: Even if we had only 30% of the current number of boys participating in wrestling in the US; if we had the same coaches, the same number of competition opportunities, the same number of university slots available, and the same level of fan support--the slight reduction in overall athleticism would be almost completely offset by the training and experience built up by those 70% of different athletes who got to inhabit the high-end opportunities from a young age. The level we'd see at NCAAs would see only a mild drop-off. Again, I'd say this: even though Helen Maroulis started out at a time that the girls around her wouldn't have had this fully developed system across the full depth of nations, the fact that she keeps winning now against the generation who DID have it from the time they were 6 or 8 years old onward validates all that she's accomplished and should put her in a general discussion as one of our 3 or 4 best wrestlers ever.

Ghanem wins his quarter and will be a slight favorite in his semi. Sadly, even if Sancho is brought back in, the Armenian-Iranian-Kazakh gauntlet he'd have to run to win a medal will be stronger than any run of wins he's put together before. Sorry to be all doom and gloom, but the Kazakh and Georgian are both 8 seeds about to face 1 seeds with strong credentials in their quarterfinal bouts. A lot would have to go well for Black and Foy, as with Sancho, to see us get into medal contention.

This argument is losing steam. All of our girls in their prime right now have grown up in the long-established BOYS system: wrestling boys, getting the same training as the boys, lifting and dieting like the boys, working just as hard as the boys. And we're only the 3rd to 5th best nation in the world in a sport that has 10+ nations contending for medals at each weight, with more nations overall than men's freestyle competing for medals at various weights. This is because all of their girls in their prime right now at this moment (not 1990) have grown up in fully developed systems similar to our system's level. And in that environment, Helen Maroulis is 33 years old and keeps beating all comers.

Our guy Raney that Azizli beat 5-1 in the quarterfinals is also only 18 years old. I hope we can see Raney vs. Ahmadi sometime soon.

Iranians on their thread were surprised. He's young like Raney. Only 18.

Wow. 13-1 record on the day. 3 finalists and 1 going for bronze. I guess they should just cancel the world championships and have a dual match instead between Iran and the best non-Iranian in the world at each weight. Congratulations to you guys.

That's the first match Iran has lost all day. They're 11-1 heading into 82kg semis. All 4 guys guaranteed a medal match tomorrow.