GrandOlm

I was thinking about the most credentialed match in FS history and wether DT vs Sad would be it. Off the top of my head Medved's was Ivanitsky at Soviet Nationals in 1966 - 9 world level golds and a Euro gold heading into the match. This would be 11 world level golds and 4 euro golds. Don't think Saitiev, Beloglazov or Yordanov had super marquee matches in a big tournament.

I think Greco is down, not just in the US. Freestyle is going to have Sadulaev, Taylor, Burroughs; Greco has only people hard cores would know about or badly struggling wrestlers. Just not many stars left in Greco. I guess Aleksanjan, and RIza are the closest things left. Besides that there is a lot of parity, new champions: I don't think that's good. Decline could be the new normal for Russia in this style. They don't have a single gold medalist (again). Center of Greco is moving firmly east, past Eastern Europe.

Vlasov, Emelin, and Evloev are all probably gone. The only name left is Semenov and he has trouble with his weight and motivation. Greco sub 80ish kg is such a meat grinder. Just one cycle can finish a great wrestler. Maybe they have a young star or even better in the pipeline, but I'm doubtful. Russian Greco doesn't have the reservoir of their FS system.

No. Sad has only 3 losses in his career. Snyder, Taz, and an early career defeat in small tournament.

That's not what David meant. He wasn't just talking about Americans.

Not enough titles and way too many losses to be in the same tier as people like Medved, Saitiev, or Fadzaev. They have double his (or more) medal count. Maybe if he went 4/4 undefeated but no, he has a lot of domestic losses and those count as well.

He looks old. A lot of the wrestlers that won 7+ medals kept themselves in tremendous shape and were always so disciplined. Sadulaev likes to balloon up and get chunky. The flo people were saying that Sadulaev might not go because he doesn't want to take a loss? He doesn't care about that. Maybe he did before the Snyder loss and a little before the Taz loss. Undefeated Sadulaev ship sailed already. He is chasing Medved's 10 medals. It's why he wrestled worlds after the Olympics in 2021.

A lot of the things people believe about him are word of mouth things American coaches and wrestlers from that time said. These people were truthfully not in a good position to know these things. The only time they would have seen Karelin is at worlds or a random tournament once or twice a year. I've never seen a Russian originating source claim that he went un scored on for X (6 or 10) years. They do say that he went undefeated for a long period and that his only two losses were controversial. And this un scored on claim from the English speaking internet can be debunked. See this (time stamp 2:22). So he was scored on in 1996 and the olympics, which keep good records, say Karelin was scored on in 1992. So there goes the 10 and 6 years possibility working back from Rulon. See, how could an American wrestler/coach have known about what happened at the Euros let alone internal Russian marches, but they still make these claims. I think the 13 years undefeated part is true, at least for his official record. In that he went undefeated in big tournaments (let's say Olympics, Worlds, Euros, Soviet/Russian nationals). Karelin did have a couple controversial wins (who hasn't to be honest) and I think they all happened with Sergei Mureiko. Ahokas, a Finnish wrestler, said this about Karelin's match in 1997 worlds against Murekio "was a gift from the referee". Karelin then had the match in 1999 with Mureiko that was overturned. To be fair to Karelin though, Ahokas could just be sour grapes, and that was there challenge system in the 90s. You couldn't challenge a live call so if a mistake did happen that was your only recourse. The article I saw regarding this did not go into specifics of the match and I don't think there is footage so who knows what happened. The only thing you can do is interview the wrestlers that took part in the match, but they will have their biases. Mureiko for his part does not seem to feel he was cheated with his career by Karelin. I saw an interview where Mureiko was asked about always losing to Karelin and he said something to the effect of "what can I do was facing a super man". And Karelin did demolish Mureiko on many occasions, including pinning him multiple times. The 887-2 was probably another American coach/wrestler tall tale that spread on the internet. Karelin lived for a while and competed in Sweden, who is recording these matches in 1991 and also following him around in Russia ha. Maybe you can come up with something close to 887 but who knows what the real number is.

I've often wondered about Karelin's 887-2 record. It's plausible, but who on Earth was keeping track of this. It's not like the mainstream sports where everything is recorded in print or even digitally. And how was this compiled? Newspaper clippings and interviewing the athlete to confirm some random tour or small tournament wasn't missed?

I think for this thread to work you'd need at least 3 active users who follow Iranian wrestling media.

I think that group might be winding down. The Olympics were happening and there was barely any posting activity.

Sick Soviet team as well. Most decorated freestyle wrestler in history at +100 kg capping his career off with a 7 year undefeated streak. Absolute monster Ivan Yarygin who pinned everyone in his gold run that tournament . Levan was in the beginning of his 5 year unbeaten run. Big Dagestan contingent as well.

Wrestling would die everywhere but the US and worlds would become an amateur event that the US techs and pins everyone at.

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.