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Agreed. Jason Welch was great.

I disagree with every single point. Using Bo Nickal has invalidated your entire argument. Freestyle is the best. I've said my piece.

This entire conversation is dumb, because folkstyle will never change. If we switched to freestyle, our national team would be more competitive. I wish people cared about that. No, there's no conspiracy. The reason we do folkstyle is because it's tradition/an American thing. Which I said in that quote you highlighted. People do have a financial incentive to keep folkstyle. Granby school of wrestling and Ben Askren's top camps back in the day. That's probably super minor though. When I said football was 10x more dangerous, I was using hyperbole. Football is more dangerous. Plenty of statistics and studies to back this up. You say freestyle is more dangerous than folk. It very well might be. This isn't a fact. And you may be wrong. I haven't seen any statistics on this. Just because one dude can't defend a Fireman's doesn't make it more dangerous. I was just saying I don't see why the danger level would hold anyone back, when the most popular HS sport is way more dangerous.

I'm not sure freestyle wrestling is any more dangerous than folkstyle. Football is 10x more dangerous. Way more kids are playing football. Why would switching from folkstyle to freestyle mean less kids would go out for it? Outside of rare edge cases.

I just want us to have a better chance to succeed at the highest level of the sport. Which is the Olympics. I don't think folkstyle's popularity has anything to do with how fun it is. Folkstyle is tradition. Ono wants to get paid.

This thread is all hypotheticals anyway. But that's fair.

Pico beat a senior level world champ at 18. He also beat Frank Molinaro, Jayson Ness, Jordan Oliver, and Reece Humphrey after those guys had graduated. I'm sure he would've done fine in college.

Someone on Reddit told me he signed an NIL deal with Nike in HS, which is why he couldn't wrestle in college.

I think we do folkstyle because of tradition. I don't think it has anything to do with more wrestlers and fans preferring folkstyle. If college and high school wrestling magically became freestyle tomorrow, no one is going to quit wrestling. Or not sign up to wrestle. Folkstyle and freestyle are pretty similar.

Folkstyle is junk. It should have been killed long ago. If we only did freestyle, our national team would be more competitive. I'm tired of us losing to the Soviet countries. Now we can't even beat Japan. I don't think folkstyle will ever go away because it's an American thing, and too many coaches/camps have a financial incentive to keep top/bottom wrestling.

I could see this

Very cool

Real US Dollars

My top 3: Yianni Diakomihalis: https://wrestlingrecords.com/wrestler/yianni-diakomihalis/ Cael Sanderson: https://wrestlingrecords.com/wrestler/cael-sanderson/ Jordan Oliver: https://wrestlingrecords.com/wrestler/jordan-oliver/