GrandOlm

All of Dagestan has a smaller population than Los Angeles (3 million) and Ossetians are a rare ethnic group that numbers about 500k in total on the planet. Chechens are kind of like Siberian Greco-Roman wrestlers, a couple famous examples but most definitely not the engine of the system (and most Chechens, including the most famous ethnic Chechen wrestler, were molded as Dagestan born not in Chechnya - Dagestan is multi ethnic). There are over 250k high school male wrestlers in the US. I think the US has won the participation war already. It's training them up that's the issue. Look at what Askren is doing in Wisconsin.

Yes and no. Considering the amount of youth wrestlers, resources, and widespread distribution of that the US has over the rest of world, they should. For the three main competitors, an ethnic group that makes up about 70% of Russia's population has nothing to do with Freestyle wrestling and two fairly small regions carry the whole nation (Dagestan + Ossetia), Iranian wrestlers mostly come from a single province, and wrestling isn't popular anywhere in Japan, they're just a wealthy and well trained country. The no part, well the US does things a bit differently than everyone else.

It's not true to the Russian/Soviet wrestlers do not lift weights. A couple individuals Russian reps' quotes notwithstanding. Yarygin loved weight lifting so much that he would train with the Olympic Team on occasions.

37 is super old for Dake's weight class. Or will he have regressed to crawling by then?

Happy for Geno as well. Geno has now won every major title that a European based wrestler can win (and he won the crown jewel of that trifecta today). Geno is too old to chase medal hall records, but he can now retire having accomplished everything in wrestling. Many great wrestlers in history never won the Olympics. It's never a given, given their 4 year cycle.

My educated guesses. No Russia in Greco or Freestyle accentuated it. Generally a large wealthy country with low levels of emigration. Certain forms of grappling (judo and sumo) are culturally relevant and have mass participation (idk how much sumo still is among the younger crowd but it still is high school and college sport over there I think). People then get funneled from judo and sumo into the olympic wresting (cant make in judo, to small for sumo etc) and from the time they are teens, Japan's excellent program trains them up and competition is fierce enough to produce great wrestlers. That plus a culture of hard work, discipline, and excellence. Also just filling a natural vacuum, especially in Greco. Sweden and Finland used to rule greco with the Germans a tier below. They are as bad as the US in the modern day. Then Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland had strong programs before also falling. And wrestling is not popular in Japan. But they have a good system.

Happy for Novikov. Abandoning Ukraine was good. That's where wrestling is though, the Olympic Gold medalist can't have a career without changing nationalities.

Saravi finally beat Aleksanyan. That's two olympic golds he's cost him now.

One seeds aren't necessarily the best wrestlers, many top guys don't care about ranking series tournaments. Coon had the worst draw possible, yes. Could he have medaled if he swapped places with Jello. Maybe if wrestled his best tournament and had a lot of luck. That whole side was a lot parity. Mantas, Meng, Acosta all one oned each other. I think Acosta would beat Coon though. It doesn't help that Coon has below average par terre defense. So like 25% chance he medals, even on the easy side. Bey had the best guy at the weight (with a heavily taped up leg), but lower weight class greco is volatile and he didn't take his chances and didn't get pulled back in. Jacobson had a weight class with Losonczi, Komarov, Bisultanov, Novikov, Cengiz, and Zhan. All of them at least a level above Jacobson and all capable of beating each other. The best guy among them is probably Zhan by small margin, Jacobson got placed away from Zhan and in the half with more of the names. Don't think the draw made a difference. He's run into them eventually. Rau is not good enough to medal. Doesn't matter what draw you give him. If you can only comfortably beat like 2 other entrants in a 16 man bracket and 3 of them can smoke you, what is there to say?

Karelin by a mile. 13 years undefeated and never really lost a match in pure wrestling terms. Lopez lost many times. Karelin was also a prolific piner, utterly dominant, and actually exemplified the ideal of greco by having a game built around lifts and throws. But recency bias is strong and Karelin is starting to fade with the 90s. People can't even name wrestlers from the 70s even though they more accolades than modern wrestlers in some style.

Tough draw for Bey. Gets the favorite in his opening. Akzhol is about as dominant as you can get south of 80 kg. Levai and Sanan are tough. Rau and his atrocious pare terre defense have solid medal contender Saravi up first. Well Rau's had about a month at 33 years old to learn how not to get teched in 10 seconds since Saravi teched him this June, so looking good for repechage. The European Eastern bloc looking terrible in Greco, more dramatically so than the US. They used to be the epicenter of the style and now all they have left to salvage is 87 (and maybe 77 as a stretch). No Russia hurts, but there used to be others. Nordic countries barely have reps anymore.

Fortune incarnate intervened and decided to pay Coon back for the 2018 draw.

Rings is an olympic event. Seems like using the same muscles to do much harder motions. I'd take the specialist or even an all round competitor over a wrestler.

Worst possible draw for Coon. Gets the reigning world champion and then Lopez. On paper, won't even make it to repechage.

I'd guess it takes way too much time to develop the agility, dexterity, skill repetition to pull off the choreography that olympic level gymnasts perform to be useful for something like wrestling. Some level of gymnastics is good, probably. There is a trope that Olympic wresting winners do backflips. Hypothetical versions of these people would have made great wrestlers if they had done wrestling instead? Well then they wouldn't have developed their gymnastic attributes. Also gymnastics is an opponent less activity, you only face people indirectly. Quite different mentality from something like wrestling or tennis. It's also not that similar holistically. Judo or sumo, the overlap is obvious - to even something like football lineman. Gymnastics clusters much more with dancing, parkour, maybe rock climbing.

For all the grief Yazdani gets, most of the big international rivalries are pretty one sided. Snyder is like 1-3 vs Sad. Even Geno is about 3-10 against Akgul. And every time Geno won it was barely, by the skin of his teeth after tiring Akgul out, while Akgul has demolished Geno on occasions.

Weird h2h match ups can happen. Bruce was 4-2 (and one of the wins was a 1-1 judges decision) against someone who never medaled at the olympics or won worlds. It's relevant when you reach that "I don't lose for years level" where every loss gets magnified or if you are close to the same decorated.

Breaks his promise to retire at Tokyo. Commits to another Olympic cycle to get his dream Olympic Gold. Get pinned in the hometown tournament UWW stages with you as the centerpiece. In your one world championship win after Tokyo you can't score against your opponent in the final. That same opponent gasses you badly and beats you at the next world championship. After again lying about how you would stop at the European Championships and with premature overly lavish celebrations in a semifinal, you get pinned in the final when you were supposed to break the record. Oh and the much older guy who has been blocking you from winning olympic gold for a decade recommits to attending the olympics. Then you lose to Irans backup in warmup tournament. And then you get banned for PEDs, taking you out of the olympic forever? (38 seems like a stretch) and throwing away everything you had been working for over the last 3 years (not to mention the PED stain on your legacy).

I don't feel that anything is that surprising in Greco world, other than Lopez losing and an American winning gold. Russia's absence does make medaling easier. In MFS, all of them but Zain are solid Gold contenders but not favorites (besides Dake). But it's not like there is some Karelin like figure blocking a weight (I guess Taz could be that and we don't know it yet, but that's tbd). I guess the chance of all of them doing well as they could is bold?

Why Kadzi? He is a pretty minor figure in the grand scheme of senior level wrestling? Or do you just mean his form was that good at Tokyo.

I think he'll be forgotten. No one remembers Salman even though he achieved about the same and his career ended similarly due to politics.

My guesses as to what would have happened to the US golds in 1984 at some of the weights. MFS 100+: Salaman gold. Salman was the heavy favorite and owned Bruce 5-0 h2h. Almost all of Salman's losses were to other top soviets. I think Balla and Sandurski could have given Bruce tough outs. 100: Whoever the soviets sent. They won both worlds between the olympics. Young future legend Khabelov debuted in 85. Not a lot of data points for Banach. GR 100: Rostorotsky for Gold : Tomov would have been the nominal favorite but he was a notorious choker. If the soviets sent Rostorotsky; he was just too big and powerful for Blatnick to beat and silver would be his ceiling. If the soviets sent someone else because of seniority or whatever, maybe Blatnick could squeak by. He'd have to wrestle the tournament of his life, beat the Soviet, or hope Tomov chokes again. 90: The Soviet (Kanygin) and Bulgarian (Komchev) were the favorites. An American did win gold at 85 but it wasn't Fraser and Houck was an anomaly of a win.

The modern olympics have not been about the best vs the best in wrestling. The soviet championships brackets were higher level than the olympic tournament at many weights for decades. From a wrestling purist stand, of course there is an asterisk. Russia has the best MFS and maybe the best GR team in world. But the modern olympic games are not the ancient olympics and they are also not a wrestling purist organization or anything close to that. They dignify ping pong and gymnastics more in a sportive sense than wrestling, allowing multiple competitors if they have a high enough level. The olympics are a begrudging showcase and promotional event for wrestling. To audiences and politicians that don't care or know much about the sport. In that sense there is no asterisk since the public doesn't care enough to know Russia excels at wrestling.

The IOC should hire him.

There is an unusually high frequency of balding 20s and early 30s year olds in wrestling. And not all of them come from Russia.