Tiger71

Its a good wakeup call for McGowan. I re-watched and I think the second stall call should have gone against Lilledahl as he refused to allow McGowan to circle back towards the center and just pushed him out. But I'm aware from watching in recent years that no ref calls it that way. If you give ground and get to the boundary, your opponent has an opportunity for a sumo point if you've done it before. Lilledahl wasn't exactly a ball of fire out there either. But he had a better grasp of what was going on and correctly realized he didn't need to take any risk to win the match.

Gimp has the point I think is pertinent. For all the observers who have said (mostly elsewhere) that "a rule is a rule", the actual rule says that unsportsmanlike conduct may include (the actions listed). The way it's written leaves a lot of discretion to the referee....but it's all depending on what is unsportsmanlike. The Princeton wrestler's dropping his headgear was not unsportsmanlike. There is plenty of stuff that happens on and around the mat that doesn't get called. Vito slammed his fist on the mat and used a bad word when he gave up a takedown to Glory in the 3rd period of their NCAA semi's match in '22. I certainly wouldn't have called that, and the ref didn't. It probably never occurred to him. I wonder if the ref thought he had no choice. It looked to me as though that's what they were communicating when JoeD questioned the call.

The comments on Oxygen capacity are on point. One of the common stories among elite distance runners (who have super elite O2 capacity) is that they didn't think of themselves as athletic until in late grade school or middle school they had to run a mile for time and they came in first or second in their school. There's cleary a genetic component at the elite level. I think that if you have that natural gift of greater O2 capacity and you then train to maximize it. what you get is Messenbrink. Then, if he meets opponents who prefer a more controlled measured pace, it means that they are always defending. That's pretty much how it looks.