GrandOlm

Dake is old. He is older than Saitiev was when he retired. But he wants that olympic gold, the holy grail of wrestling, to complete his career. Dake made the calculation that a 37 year old him will have a better chance winning at 86 kg than 74. He's probably right, but I don't think he'll win at 86 kg either. He choked at the Paris olympics. That was his chance. I think he'll just have to be content as one of the many great wrestlers who never won the olympics. The sport may force him out soon.

Really? Who is there besides Zare that's really good? Akgul retired, Geno is taking the year off, and Massoumi can't make a team or get his transfer approved. Who's left from the actual field? Big boring Monkhtor and grandpa Deng? Russia is mediocre at 125 kg, they don't have anyone good. Heavyweight is not looking strong.

Yasmani Acosta transfered. He is now an Olympics Silver medalist and a World Bronze medalist. No one would know his name if he stayed in Cuba. He probably secured a nice pension with that Silver medal. If wrestling has this silly structure, that the theoretical second best in the world can't compete, then it's not the athletes who are the problem.

I wasn't making a moral judgement ("how could this happen to such a good person....."). I'm not that naive. I was more pondering the biological mechanisms of his conditions, since it seems that he either has something very rare or was just very unlucky. If Ben had gotten cancer, I would not be surprised at all. I think cancer is still like the 4th biggest killer in young adults.

I still don't understand why this happened to him. Just really bad luck? It sounds like his immune system catastrophically failed on him and now all these infections are wrecking his body? He was losing weight, watching his diet, is still youngish, was exercising daily, his parents are both still alive.

I don't think it's that long. He's 21 now. So he'd be 24 when he comes back. That's still young, especially for a heavyweight. I can't think of any heavyweight who was medalist level at 21 (like he is now) and then wasn't in his mid 20s, barring extreme injuries. Gable wasn't training full time and we don't really know if he could have won a medal since he never committed to being a world teamer again. He crushed Mason Parris the same year that Mason who won a Bronze medal at worlds, so evidence points to him being world level medal, but choosing not to participate. Masoumi will presumably be training FS full time during his 3 year hiatus, I'd think. What's the alternative, trying to age out Zare who is in his mid 20s? That might take forever and rob Masoumi of a career. No one is going to care about your loyalty when you're in your late 30s and have no world level medals to show for it. The nice jobs and perks will go to people like Zare, who have medals.

There has to be an out. Or Russia would have blocked most of these transfers. 3 years in the grand scheme of things would be nothing. Masoumi would be 23? That's super young for a heavyweight.

Wow, sudden pneumonia that is that severe? For someone seemingly healthy, physically fit, and at a relatively young age like Ben. Hopefully he pulls through, stark reminder of just how moral we are despite advancements in medicine.

Both folkstyle and freestyle are decadents of catch can wrestling. Modified to be safer or more viewer friendly. Catch can wrestling was an anglo country activity, but it died out in the 20th century and its descendants today include the aforementioned wrestling styles as well as professional wresting (WWE, some catch can wrestlers emphasized theatrics, entertainment values and that line eventually evolved into full blown acting, theater).

Hasn't that all turned out to be noise and meaningless grandstanding? The flo people seem very sure that the 86 kg transfer will continue competing. Bulgaria have been like this for 30 years, it's not going to be easy to change. Bulgaria is also an extreme case of going from the second best greco nation in the world, to a complete paper tiger that only stays afloat by buying wrestlers from foreign countries. I don't think Armenia has that freestyle wrestling tradition. They didn't even send anyone to 125kg at 2023 worlds.

Azerbaijan are one the biggest mercenary teams around. I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up there.

It does border China, so....? The stan countries you listed range from ok to bad and one is primarily Greco. It's hard enough to get Japanese wrestlers to compete at worlds, let alone a ranking series. I would't say so. It's quite a bit farther east or just not close to the wrestling hotbeds. I guess the point was more for American wrestlers, since Mongolia is annoyingly far away with no real draw to it. I think it's understandable why most wrestlers skipped this one.

Do you blame them? Who wants fly all the way to Mongolia for a tournament no one will remember. There are like no good wrestling areas near Mongolia. And Mongolia is a Tier 2 or 3 wrestling nation itself. And for what, ranking points? They don't even matter since many of the best wrestlers go unseeded for Worlds and the Olympics.

He is a talented public speaker.

There is a decent amount of footage of him. Below is a match he had with Bruce. I think he had a strong case for being the best Freestyle wrestler to never win an Olympic Gold medal. We've lost a lot of great wrestlers recently. I think Medved and Saitiev both died within the past two years. Ivanitsky died not that long ago.

I dislike that term, all it means usually in common speak is the best current/very recently retired player (people like Christian Pyles revel in being prisoner of the moment hype mongers and will angrily dismiss anyone from older generations). People try to conflate it with most decorated. Even when the modern athlete is objectively not the most decorated, some like Pyles will still just lie about that or proudly spout wrong information. If you corner the Pyles of the world, they love the strategy of saying current athletes are objectively higher level so the facts, details don't matter (by that logic, nothing he is hyping now matters since 50 years from now today's athletes will be inferior to the future ones, but funny enough he doesn't take that stand). So the "GOAT" is Yazdani. And in 15 years it will be someone else. The closest thing to Gable might be Takhti. He was one of the (or the first?) Iranian Olympic gold medalists. He transcended just wrestling by becoming something of a political figure, revered as an ideal of a courteous-chivalrous wrestler. He had a famous exhibition match against Medved. I think the cultural impact is most Gable esque. Of course Takhti had silverware to back it up, but that's how I associate it more. If it's just most decorated, Movahed is a six time world level medalist, with 2 asian games, and won the Olympics. He's objectively number one in that regard, pretty clearly imo. But Gable is not America's most decorated wrestler, so I wouldn't think of Movahed as an Iranian Gable.

The only nations or regions that can churn out elite wrestlers across the weight spectrum (light, middle heavy) are the US, Mazandaran, and Dagestan/Ossetia. So everyone else has a problem, somewhere (or everywhere). I think Arsan Fadzaev was an example of a dominant wrestler from this weight range historically. It's probably still true that average man in high level wrestling regions, when in shape, is somewhere around 70ish kg. This lends itself to 65 kg for competition purposes.

He's very old for a wrestler, especially at his weight class. Maybe he's just quietly retiring and doesn't want a big sob tour. It's going to come up naturally when he's 45 and gets inducted into whatever society after not competing for a long time, then you can have all the retrospectives and congratulations. Plus maybe a small part of him is still itching to try for 2028, even if realistically he feels he can't do it and in the present day isn't training for making a world team. But he doesn't want to be that guy who retires 4 times (Gable, jk).

Bruce was born in 1960. He won his first full strength, major tournament at a month shy of 26 (1986 worlds). He did win the Olympics at age 23, but that was a boycott year and more like the pan ams. He wasn't good enough to win with a full field in the first half of his 20s. I'd say Bruce's prime was at the ages of 31-35. That's when he had his best career results.

Bruce's 84 Olympic Gold is not a world level medal. I don't think it merits being mentioned over even his performances in forgotten tournaments. I guess you could try to say that about 1980, but the favorite at that weight was not an American. A wrestling tournament with no Soviets is akin to a modern ping pong tourney without Chinese players. Bruce would have been a big underdog to Salman (whose name I butchered above). Soslan was the best heavyweight of the 70s. He dominated that decade winning 5 wold level medals in a row and swept most of the soviet national championships (where he had a winning h2h over the man that Bruce could not beat). He was clearly the best at his weight for an extended period of time, Bruce was never. He always took a loss to someone or failed to defend his title. I think sustained dominance (plus the degree of dominance, thought you have to first go on unbeaten streaks for that to really matter) trump longevity and a high floor (constantly getting at least bronze). So I think Bruce is not on Soslan's level. I don't think he's even clearly the best of the group I put him in. You could make a strong case that Salman separated himself from Bruce (given their h2h results).

Bruce only defended a world level title once. Bruce had amazing longevity and was highly decorated over his career, but there are much stronger candidates than him. Medved (who is in a tier of his own among heavies), Ivanitsky, and Soslan are at least a level above Bruce. I think Bruce belongs in this thread. I think of Bruce as in that Khalimov (who was 6-0 against Bruce h2h), Akgul, and Taymazov tier of wrestlers.

I was wondering if Masoumi would jump levels, given his age and weight class. What gave me trepidations was that he didn't look like the great past immature super heavyweight who were either thin-stringy teenish or soft with baby fat. Masoumi has the body and mass of a mature male, and he's had that for a while now. I think the question is more now if Masoumi has a bad match up against Zare, or is he a tier below the creme de la creme tier of international 125kg ers? We'll never see him against taha now, but my guess is he'd be competitive against Geno. Zare was an absolute nightmare for Gwiz, and Gwiz had respectable matches against everyone else. So there is precedent for Zare's style being unusually difficult for some wrestlers.

How any other professions or hobbies are there where you can be the second best in the world and functionally not have a career or accolades? A few maybe, but wrestling is on that very sparse shortlist.

Two wrestler stand out to me. Ivan Yarygin. It's not just the name of a tournament. A great siberian wrestler, extremely strong, and built like a greek god. Pinned everyone at runs at the Europeans, Worlds, and Olympics. He doesn't have the medal haul of other wrestlers, but he was so special. The other one is Tomov. Best wrestler to never win an Olympic Gold. Three times silver medalist and was number one in the world for 15 years. He was so talented that he beat a giant like Rostorotsky, after a 5 year lay off at his first tourney back. Choked terribly at the Olympics each time. If it wasn't for politics, I think he would have finally won at the 84 games.

MMA, like boxing, is run as prizefighting and not purely a sport. Very different from the tennises, badmitons, judos, or amateur wrestlings of the world. There are perks to it (money), but also massive downsides and distractions like woven into the fabric corruption, the showmanship and show business aspects. It's a different mindset and skillset to thrive in something that's in some ways a giant popularity contest masquerading as a sport. In sportive systems, all you have to worry about is your athletic performance (at least in most individual sports, team sports have interpersonal politics with team selection). In prize fighting, you have to worry about how boring your style is perceived as and how many ppvs you sell.