GrandOlm

I remember looking at Amos' run, how he was just beating these Greco opponents with toughness and athleticism. Then that Russian wrestlers who had some actual technique (and enough strength to not get overwhelmed) put it on him. Amos is in his mid 20s now and I don't think he's developmentally any closer to the peers of his age cohort today than 2021.

You never really know for sure, until they start beating senior world medalists. Look at Amos. Double medaled at juniors and struggled with his college career. Internationally is a punching bag for the top Greco wrestlers whenever he makes a world team. I don't even know if that Russian greco wrestler (who beat Amos in his junior medal run) is even involved with the sport anymore. Haven't seen him anywhere either.

Well, wrestling is mostly a parent-participant sport in the US. If interest goes any further than that, it ends at rooting for the college alma mater. Funny you mention Iranians, they're one of the few (or the only???) countries in the world with mass appeal fandom for wrestling. Like if there's a lively crowd at Worlds, 90%+ of the time it's Iranians in the stands. Everywhere else the wrestling world is a small and insular community. You might be the local town hero, but the regular denizens of St Petersburg or Tokyo have never wrestled and don't follow the sport at all. If you win an Olympic medal, you might participate in a ceremony and get a picture with a politician. That's about the extent of your national appeal.

Given the amount of participants, money, quality youth clubs training kids from very young ages, and wrestling infrastructure that the US has compared the rest of the world, you'd expect Americans to dominate wrestling the way China does in ping pong. But they don't. Somehow a plucky little tag team of Dagestan+Ossetia and Mazandaran are able to match them. I think it's thanks to Folk style that we have the current rough parity at the top. There is this misconception that wrestling outside of America works the same way as in America, just on mini scale. In a lot of what would be considered the Tier 2 nations, the entire wrestling scene is a club or two in the capital plus one other big city and maybe one military run program. That's it.

Well you're wrong because I was on a swim team in my youth for about 3 years. Not that it really matters because you couldn't bother to figure out that olympians have been winning multiple medals in the different styles for years.

I think speed walking is ridiculous. No defense from me there. But it doesn't get one iota the attention that swimmers do. Well hurdles are a different skill set. It's not a suboptimal way of racing like the swimming styles are. It's adding jumping obstacles. Which I'd argue isn't that contrived (ever run and have tree branches, puddles, or rocks in the way). It also looks like specialists are the ones winning hurdles. So it's not like swimming, where it's another medal for Phelps and friends to pick up. High jump isn't a race, ditto long jump. It just gets grouped with track because it occurs outside and is individual. How far or high a person can jump is so universal and true to the appreciation of human athletic excellence that it absolutely belongs in the games. The ancients had myths of their amazing heroes that could out jump farther and higher than all their peers. Pole vault is almost a gymnastics event. It's niche and definitely specialized, has been around forever. It gets grouped with track and field, but it isn't that closely related to the races. I think steeple is outdated. It's apparent origins are in fox hunting? But again like speed walking, they don't get the attention that swimmers do. Swimmers collect medals like baseball cards. It's clear that the styles and distances either aren't unique enough to require enough specialization (in which case just make it all freestyle) or the swimming talent pool is too low to properly delineate the stroke styles among competitors. It's always some swimmers with boatloads of medals, this doesn't happen in track or other sports.

There could easily be a world though where the only type of event is "freestyle" (use whatever technique you want to get from a to b fastest) with a sprint, middle distance, and something long for 3 events. Perfectly logical. It just so happens that in our timelines, that's not the case. If track were like swimming, you could have hop on one leg, hop on two legs, skipping, backwards running, side running, spinning races. That's the kingmaker position swimming has found itself in.

I did here a comment about how wrestling fans need to get over being interested in more than #1 v #2. That's a problem almost every individual sport has. Team sports in theory represent more than the individual, as in a school, neighborhood, village/town/city, region, or nation (yes that's a farce a lot of the time with these differently colored logos pulling and trading among the same pool of vagrant athletes, but the pretense is still there). So yeah people will watch even if it's not the best of the best, because they gave the something else in common. A big part of college wrestling's appeal, over generic senior level freestyle, is the shared identify of going to the same school.

It's also the sport that, for whatever reason, gets their athletes turned into national heroes. Even if swimming is almost as niche as wrestling. The French went gaga over that swimmer at the last Olympics. Phelps became a household name. Maybe it is because they offer 500 potential medals for every swimmer to win at the games. 50 meter fly, 100 fly, 120 fly, backstroke, front stroke, relay, team, individual, mixed.

Went back and saw some of Taz's matches. He does sometimes muscle-athleticism his way to some scores, but there is artistry to his game. Impressed that Baranowski wrestled him that tough. Never managed to score, but you could tell that he's still a high level grappler and a formidable human. Poland might not even have a 1,000 active wrestlers across all age groups. For them to produce a 97 kg wrestler like that and have a couple of other quality guys is commendable in an age of America, Dagestan and the likes.

This whole episode has got me thinking about perspectives. There's a lot of happiness that Ben had a successful lung transplant, but it also mean that some unknown person definitely died (probably young and probably tragically).

His takes that irk me the most are his unabashed prisoner of the moment stands (his job is to be a hype man so that colors his views) and his general refusal to acknowledge most of wrestling before the 2000s.

Didn't see the matches but from the score lines it looks like Taz wiped the floor with the field. That Hushtyn guy he beat is actually one of Sadulaev's bad matchups. He's wrestled Sad close a number of times and has scored wrestling moves on him on multiple occasions. Not that it really matters, but just a tid bit. I'm a little surprised that people like Baran are still wrestling, and that he hasn't retired yet. There is a slim chance that a 36 year old him will win an Olympic medal. Maybe it's just the economic situation has been improved

It will be interesting to here what his thoughts are on that it appears that it was hobby and lifelong passion that nearly took his life ( a staph infection from grappling?). These moments can radically change people, I'd like to hear what Ben thinks about this whole thing once he's stronger and collected his thoughts.

The Ghasempour comparisons that they're bringing up are not valid. Ghasempour can wrestle at another weight class like 92 kg at worlds. Even for the olympics, he has the option of trying out 86 or 97 kg. So it's not like it's one guy stopping him. Masoumi is 6 ft 6. There is no other weight he can make. You know who is a good comparison, Yasmani Acosta. He could have stayed put and not had a career behind Lopez and Oscar. Acosta transferred and now he's an Olympic Silver and World Bronze medalist.

Yousefi is puzzling. He destroyed Semenov. The same Semenov who is winning major silverware and having a wonderful career, while Yousefi rots on the bench.

Why would he do that? The competition so much fiercer at 97. 86 might be better than the good old Punia and Amine days, but it's still a weak weight. A 5 ft 11 man can't make 190 lbs anymore after years of weighing that much? Nonsense.

Geno is better than Mesh. Geno is not retired yet, as far as I'm aware. Though he might be retired by the time Masoumi is eligible to compete post transfer. Gable is also better than Mesh, but he's not an active wrestler for now. I don't think we know where Hendrickson stands yet. Yes he pulled off a nail biter of a major upset in another ruleset. But he also just gave up a million points to someone who wouldn't have medaled at worlds. For all we know, he might not be able to beat someone like Deng.

The extreme weight loss has made him look younger since his face was so puffy and wrinkly before. Blond fro is gone, he looks like a man who time traveled from a bygone decade ( a Seinfeld set or even the 70s). He is very weak. Hopefully the worst is past him.

Masoumi should look out for himself. This system's backwards way of selecting wrestlers has chased many great competitors out of the sport. No one is going to remember his loyalty when he's 36 and retired with no world level medals. It's the Zare's who will get cushy jobs and respect. Unless they are paying him a handsome amount that will leave him set for life, I'd take the 3 year hit. Wait it out and go win world and olympic medals. Even if you never beat Zare, don't waste away your entire career.

Yes Mphillips and Bntwg, Kyle Dake alone equaled Japan's production over 30 years. But it's just Russia, promise.

Mediocre at the world level. Roughly meaning outside medal threats to two rounders that don't get blown out by some other medalists. Also on aggregate meaning only rarely producing a world champion over extended periods of time. I consider 97 kg to be a heavy weight. I think of 85+ kg to be a heavy weight. Japan has won like 2 gold medals over 30 years at the 70 kgs (middle weights). If they start winning world golds or even consistently winning medals of other colors at those weights, I'd consider that they evolved past what they were. I don't see it yet.

Japan's historical profile has been good lightweights, mediocre middle weights, bad heavyweights. And they still haven't broken that mold as of yet. It's why I think of them as like a tier 1.5 island. They are better than your Turkeys and Georgias, but not as good as the countries that have strong squads top to bottom like Russia, US, or now Iran. Being bad a heavier weights is not unique to wrestling for Japan. In judo they've had no answer to Teddy Riner who has run rampant and broken all the records at super heavy. In sumo, Mongolians have dominated the sport and the last great champion who was ethnically Japanese retired all the way back in 2003. Their big star in boxing right now is a light weight etc...

The only other countries that are sufficiently strong and complex enough to make a foreigners time worthwhile would be Iran, Russia, and Japan. I don't think any of these countries have an end all be all team trial. Russia has the most straight forward process. They have a tournament called the Russian Nationals (it's a direct descendant of the Soviet National Championships) where citizens from the country compete under the flag of their province (multiple entrants per province are aloud). If you win that tournament you are either the world/olympic rep or if there is a highly decorated athlete in that weight class who did not win/participate, they'll have them wrestle off with the winner of the Russian Nationals. It's important to note that Russian wrestling is dominated by two ethnic minorities, an Iranic speaking people called Ossetians and the muslim ethnic groups that live around Dagestan (Dagestani is not an ethnicity). Flo would invite a Slavic Russian wrestler from St Petersburg to try to get inside scoops on the Russian scene and it ended up not working at all because he was as much of a stranger to these two communities as Christian Pyles was. He wasn't imbedded in either the Ossetian or Dagestan scenes, so he had no interesting information to give. Iran does not have a formal process. Whoever is in charge of the national team picks the team, and whatever process he does or does not want comes up on the fly. It will be something like they'll send 3 tough guys from 125 kg to this ranking series and its understood that if someone from Iran wins it they get the spot. They do have a domestic wrestling wrestling scene. From what I've seen it's like European in soccer in that there are clubs and they can buy and sell wrestlers for their club team. So Zara and Yazdanis have clubs that they represent. I don't know how often the top world teamer Iranians actually wrestle in this club system and it features a lot of lower level competitors. The club season exists independently from what happens in international wrestling. Oh and most of their wrestlers come from a province called Mazandaran. Japan's I know the least about. I think their wrestling is based around Universities (not that it's like American College wrestling, just that Unis are the entity which provides them the framework for training and being a team). They have a tournament called the Emperor's Cup which is involved with how they pick their team. I don't remember what their other tournaments are called but I think they have one or two other big ones. I also am not exactly sure how they chose the team. I remember reading something like if you win X and the Emperors cup you're guaranteed the spot. So for watching, the easiest place to start with is youtube. Typing in Russian Nationals in Cyrillic or trying to find the federations channels. If you can't find the whole, you might find clips. Twitter might be good to check out, both English speaking and local language. Wrestling is still very much niche in Russian and Japan, so even for native speakers it's not the easiest thing to get into.

I'm surprised by them asking for donations. The Askrens are a wealthy family. Ben has been involved with bitcoin, he's the partial owner AWA and I believe has 3 gyms that he directly owns, plus all the money he has made in the entertainment industry (mma, boxing).