GrandOlm

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.

This really successful player who everyone keeps comparing Gable to wasn't a prodigy like Gable was in wrestling, from the bio I saw in wiki. The player was a three star (it's out of 5 right?) recruit in high school and was a backup his college freshman year. He was picked 13th in a draft. So it looks like he grew into it and kept getting better. And I guess he started playing when he was 5 from people's comments. I don't see the Gable comparison, is he going to start his career at 40?

My high school gym teacher (mid to late 20's) had been signed by an NFL team. It is a big deal, but it's not the same as "making it".

Whatever Iran is doing with Greco they're doing it right. I don't think it's just luck that the depth they have is two different world champions at heavyweight and a third guy who just beat Riza. There's been a power vacuum in Greco since the collapse of the soviet union and no one has stepped up to take its place ... yet. Riza's aura is gone. He can still medal I think but several guys can stalemate him, a few could beat him. From 2011 to 2021 it was only Lopez stopping him, but the losses are just piling on since Tokyo. Semenov by throw and pin, Amin by pushouts, Kend by pin. His endurance is looking bad, he was tired out by both Amin and Semonov of all people (who looks like aged 20 years and put on 40 lbs of fat sine 2021). The gold medal's Riza has won have been ref heavy. Coon loses. This is a low ceiling US team.

Geno's gun slinger style is prone a wide variance of results. One tournament he loses a nail biter to Taha and then the next tournament he gets destroyed by Taha. He'll almost lose to someone like Dziannis but then almost beats Gable, who annihilated everyone else.

I think we are already there with Freestyle. 57 kg: Akbarov, Micic, RBY 65 kg: Musukaev, Islam Dudaev 74: Tsabablov, Kadz, Salk 86 kg: Myles, Osman, Kurugliev 97: Taz, Magomedov To name a couple . And these are people winning medals, they have no actual connection to the wrestling systems in the countries they rep.

I think it's unequivocably true. You would never see an adult athlete from another sport pick up tennis and then win Wimbledon a couple years later. Some sports are just more skill based, others require just more in general athleticism and body types.

His seemingly inhuman strength. Rulon compared it to wrestling a draft horse. But it was also his downfall. Karelin's game was built around the 5 point suplex. Once he lost his great strength due to aging and injuries, he was no longer the same wrestler and needed to retire.