GrandOlm

In John Smith's era and before, it was not uncommon for Americans to view "amateur wrestling" as something like post grad or an overseas study trip. You did it for a couple years (wherever you happened to land in the Olympics cycle after college wrestling), hopefully you medaled at the Olympics and then you'd move on with your life to get a "real job". The economic situation was that these guys were getting nothing for wrestling. A fully paid head coaching job opens up and you're not wrestling anymore. If Smith and wrestlers of that era were given the economic security to wrestle as long as they were competitively viable like every Burroughs or Snyder can today, they wouldn't have retired at 26 and probably would have had much larger medal hauls (I think the Eastern Bloc won so much more medals in the cold war era partly because their wrestlers were professionals in all but name, like modern American wrestlers). Yeah there were a couple counter examples like Baumgartner or Rulon and the like. But it was bleak being an international wrestler in the US all the way to the 2000s. You were just hoping to cash in on the notoriety of the Olympics.

This isn't about figure heads of national teams or getting wrestlers who were already good and taking credit for them. Who was the best at developing wrestlers?

Not sure why everyone ignores Medved (who also died not that long ago). He has one more world medal than Saitiev despite the disadvantage of being the bygone era wrestler and he went undefeated in the last 7 years of his career.

I think Japanese wrestlers value Worlds less than most top nations. I think this has been the case for a long time and why they are underrepresented in world medal counts for their best wrestlers.

He competes a lot. I don't hold losses against wrestlers unless it's an important tournament. Worlds last year proved that 86 isn't " super deep" like all its defenders insisted. Yazdani and Taylor are not meta humans who could tech everyone in the world but themselves.

Kyle's main similarities to Bruce are that he medals a lot, while losing a lot, and is untouchable domestically. But I think their standing at their respective weight and the trajectories differ. Bruce was ambiguously the best wrestler in the world for most of his career, with a 4 year window in his 30s where he had a mini reign as the clear top guy. Snyder peaked early and had his mini reign very young. He was then overshadowed by another wrestler moving up and seemed to regress as he moved into his later 20s.

I didn't think anything of it. Before I even saw his response, I was almost certain that he'd pick Spencer. I think it's just the culture of senior level wrestlers in the US. If you're American, you back the American publicly. It's still not that rare for senior level wrestlers to call their opponents "the Russian" or "the Turk". Not exactly a mindset that lends itself to heaping praise on foreign opponents.

My read on Spencer is that if he continues with Freestyle in the long run and stays mostly healthy, he'll be in that Bruce Baumgartner tier: Possibly the best all around wrestler at his weight but with no seperation and has losses in him against the other medalists. I think the Zhou matches prove already that he's not going to destroy the field. So I don't really think that close win/loss to Ono would reveal much of anything.

Some of it is just blatant buying, but a lot of it is athlete driven I think. They will immigrate and try out for a team. If your options are might never get a chance in Dagestan or go to a middling wrestling nation (like a Poland or Hungary) where you can wrestle in all the big tournaments and win medals, it's not hard to understand why they do it. Some of these mediocre wrestling countries are fairly generous about rewarding athletes who contribute to their total olympic medal counts. That this attracts foreign wrestlers is an unintended consequence and not something these nations were thinking about when making these structures. Now, I think these foreign wrestlers do absolutely nothing for the transfer nation's growth in wrestling, but I'm not convinced that they're super detrimental. Maybe if they chain migrate a lot of their friends from home and completely shut out native wrestlers, but has that happened yet? Freestyle is a bad investment if you're trying to up your Olympic medal anyways. Greco is much less optimized and the far better choice if you want to go the wrestling route.

I kind of have the same feeling. I think Zare might be just the wrong combination of still too slow to counteract his offense, without any of the advantages of a bigger body. Masoumi's long octopus arms might actually help against someone like Gable. If he really is only 20 he should still have the potential to jump levels and I don't think the best hw at FS has ever been an under 20 year old (unless I'm forgetting someone).

Semenov got gold at Euros in 2024, he came in way out of shape, overweight , and still won. I was thinking there are like 3 men in Iran who could have beaten him that tournament .... Europe can't even produce one person anymore at that level? Mirzazadeh, Yousefi, and Hedayati are fine wrestlers, but they're not some once in a generation anomalies. Or how did someone like Alin win gold at Euros? Alin almost lost to an unremarkable American wrestler who was a beginner at Greco. The European championships used to be almost as strong as the world championships and now? Bulgaria if you take away the transfers, is about the same level as America (not good). Their home grown flagship was Milov and he was lower level than Hancock.

I don't think that's a coincidence. I think Greco has been begging for some country to take advantage of the weak international scene since the fall of the eastern bloc (and now Cuba with their financial problems). Iran also has the 97 kg champion and the 67 kg champ? I've said it so many times but there is no Greco version of Dagestan, Ossetia, American folk system or Mazandaran. So any country that trains kids from a decently young age, well, and does it to a wide enough talent pool, should dominate. Russia has been coasting on fumes for over 30 year, and it looks like Iran is kind of stepping up slowly.

Sometimes people are just bad matchups. Zare and Taha always wrestled each other close and while Taha and Gwiz could have decently competitive matches, Zare always absolutely destroyed Gwiz.

Freestyle is popular in certain Caucus countries/regions. Greco is somewhat popular in Hungary. Greco also has marginal followings in Scandinavia, Estonia, Germany, Georgia, and Russia. That's about it. I don't think any European country comes anywhere close to the US in terms of wrestling popularity. Maybe Iran does. No one in Europe though.

Yousefi is facing Semonov tomorrow. I wonder how it goes. i could easily see Semenov coming in fat and way out of shape and Yousefi just pushing and cardioing him to death. But then again Yousefi has taken some bad losses himself. If Semenov does lose, that means Iran has maybe the three best Super heavyweights in the world and they are all keeping each other off medal winning runs.

Truer representation of the "world level" than the American, Dagestan, and Ossetian transfer artificially boosted version.

Sumo is most analogous to baseball in America, a national past time with an aging fan base and decreasing youth interest. Like baseball, a lot of grey heads at games and events. It also has religious-cultural aspects not found in any American or European sports (maybe bullfighting aside, though they call themselves an art not sport). It's also being dominated by Mongolians. This new yokozuna is the nephew of another mongolian yokozuna who along with a fellow mongolian dominated the sport in the 00s and 10s. The last ethnic Japanese super champion, Takanohana, was reigning all the way back in the 90s. So you'd have to be well into your 40s to remember a great Japanese champion. I think until Japan produces another Takanohana, Chiyonofuji, Kitnoumi, or Taiho like wrestler, the sport will continue losing popularity (maybe long term even a great champion wont save it from deeper rooted trends).

You'd either need a really good young heavyweight to emerge (like someone who goes on to win 5+ world championships and not in the Riza Kayaalp way) who could beat him or Lopez's age would need to make him too injured, diminished to gut people or make weight. The Soviets and the Bulgarians used to produce good to great heavyweights. They're both gone. Russia hasn't filled the gap left by those two. And the center of Greco is moving east, to regions not slanted towards heavyweights.

I wonder what Riza's plan is. He has an enormous ego and I wouldn't put it past him to return just to get the European medal record. The continent is still pitiful at that weight (a lot of weights now) and he probably would be favorite. I don't think old man Kayaalp fancies his chances against Iran's heavyweights in 28, maybe for the better for Riza since he'd put himself through the grind again. Riza's not a naturally big guy, holding all that weight can't be healthy for him.

People say that (and I agree for FS), but what about Bulgaria and Romania collapsing during Gogi's time? How is that not weaker competition in the 90s and and 2000s? Bulgaria was an excellent Greco Roman country, they could beat the Soviet 2s (and run of the mill 1s). Romania was really good. Nothing replaced those two countries... which is probably why America had a golden era in the during those decades. It took also took Cuba a while to arise and they don't like sending full teams. Tomov is easily the best GR wrestler without a gold medal imo. 3x Olympic Silver Medalist, faced strong competition (Soviets, Romanians), beat great wrestlers, and was probably denied a gold because of politics in 84. He was voted into the hall of fame in the inaugural class.

I purposely left out wrestlers who got popped.

I think I remember him. He is the one who bear Kayaalp in his last tournament before the drug ban. Maybe he will beat Mirzazadeh . That's why I think Mirzazadeh is this era's Baroev.

I purposely left Greco out since 1. I thought barely anyone here would care about GR wrestlers. 2. FS and GR are different sports. If it's Greco though I think Tomov wins easily. Dominant Superheavy of the 70s. 5x world gold 5x euro gold. Dominated h2h against fellow Bulgarian and strong wreslter Nikola Dinev. Has a win against Rostortorky (Karelin's greatest foe) during a comeback when Rosotsky was destroying everyone. But a terrible choker with 3 Olympic silver medals. And he would have been teh favorite in 84, but the boycott derailed that.

So which one is it? You listed 4 wrestlers.

Almost everyone who won at least 5 world golds has one.