Jim L

Except that he has a Olympic gold medal, so its not like he failed at the next level. More like the baseball player who dominates AAA and then goes to the big leagues and is MVP in his first year and takes a few years off to pursue an acting career and decides to return to baseball but returns to AAA

Yes making weight has been easy post-college, losing weight is the hard part

If I recall correctly, they come from a Land of Up Over

A middle schooler training with a DII wresler is insane

Famously though the 7 Tour de France victories were not give to the runner-up or anyone else because virtually all of the top riders in those races were caught doping, confessed dopers (like Lance) or at least credibly accused dopers.

No. I really don't get what you are trying to say. BBall and Football are not stealing all the best athletes, just the majority of the unusually tall/large ones.

Only if you equate size with being the best.

Seems logical, but the top average-sized US athletes (5'8"ish, 160lbs or so) are not going to be football or bball stars. Coaching and competion is why regions excel in a particular sports

USA wrestling does fair much better than USA soccer. well at than men's soccer. Do or women's soccer results mean that we are doing youth development right right for girls, or is it more likely that there is just less competition worldwide for woman's soccer, similar to wrestling.

Wasn't part of the controversy in Kurt Angle's gold medal match that his opponent could have got two points for a turn where the ref ruled it hand to hand, but his elbow possibly touch so it should have been 2 points instead the 1 that was scored?

Wasn't it a single leg? The upper body clinch was horrible as well. I think the best tiebreaker ever was the original thirty second ride out. I know it was not perfect, though the many changes have made it worse. Also for folkstyle, my opinion is that tiebreakers should only be for tournaments, bring back draws for dual meets.

Unlimited OT is not a good option IMO. Judo has this rule and it has become a travesty. In big matches it seems like more than 50% matches go into OT as competitors seem to wait for OT to really try to score (I see this is Folkstyle matches with tied matches later in the third period, both wrestlers seem to slow down saving a good attack for OT) Additionally with close matches in Judo it is really hard to score and then as competitors tire, it is even harder to score. Too many big matches end up being decided on penalties.

Using Chrome and ridiculous number of ads. Is there a setting to block ads?

There was a time when hand to hand turns where one point and turns with true back exposure was two points. Seems logical that if you are sitting up going hand to hand and actually not exposing your back there should not be points being scored

Its actually more than just weights and measures, lots of US standards are weird and arcane while metric (ISO) standard almost always make intuitive sense. Really hard to make any coherent argument for the Imperial system besides MERICA!!

I was in general agreement with you until the end. The imperial system is much, much worse than the metric system

The better wrestler would not have been taken down and put in a leg lace. Part of being a better wrestler in FS is not getting leg laced. How is that different than hating to see someone taken down and pinned in the first period in a folk style match and we never get to see who the better wrestler is? I get that you and many US wrestling fans don't think that exposure should be scoring moves. I don't see how FS exposure is that different from Folkstyle cheap tilts, to me see like similar level of control/dominance. I do prefer the old rules that locks had to be released And finally I have not watched that many FS matches decided by a shot clock, probably about the same number of folk style matches that get decided by a referee's arbitrary stall calls.

Sounds like definitive proof MFS is more popular.

I suspect in the most populous countries especially India and China neither FS or GR is widely popular. I have read that even in Russia wrestling is a niche sport and wrestlers are mostly unknown except in the Caucus regions.

Don't think so as I am not smart enough to find info from sites that have gone dark. I did check number of entries on a bunch of tournaments through the UWW and remember that in generals for most international level tournaments and many continental championships there were more FS entries than. Another hypothetical - if the US states were to split up into fifty different countries and then each new country send a full FS team did FS just get much more popular worldwide? Yugoslavia split into 7 countries and the USSR into 15. I think in some (most?) of these new countries GR is more popular than FS. Most of though have populations smaller than US states.

Henry Cejudo agrees

I looked for this evidence and never found it. Numbers of entries does not equate to world wide popularity. I am not sure what would be a better metric, but that does not mean we should rely on a meaningless one. I think You Tube view numbers might be more reasonable. For instance, there are three countries in the Baltics with a combined population of ~6 million, where I believe GR is the most popular style (but still probably not widely popular) and if they all send complete teams to the World GR championship that means GR is 3X more popular than FS is in Iran with a population of 88 million and a passionate fan base.

Most years, GR has more entries at Worlds than MFS … If there are more entries in Fargo GR than Folkstyle nationals, does that mean GR is more popular?

It is hard for me to watch a 6 minute wrestling match without hitting a FF if I have recorded it, I know IBBJJF black belt were 10 minutes which was always way too long for me, nevermind 20 minutes. There is no incentive to go hard and take chances, lots of waiting. Five minutes is plenty of time to decide who is the better grappler

I think the IBJJF rules are about right on the points systems. TDs count less than establishing a dominant position but count more than positive actions that does not results in scoring. An almost sweep, guard pass or submission attempt is an advantage than only serve as a tie breaker. And there are reasonable standards on how good the attempt has to be to count as an advantage. A successful TD is my opinion should count for more than a good attempt that was ultimately unsuccessful. I hate guard pulling but it makes sense it the context of most BJJ mathcces There are lots of other issues with the BJJ rules sets and how strategies have evolved around them. IMO BJJ is just not a spectator friendly sport and not sure how much they should really change the rules to make it more exciting for spectators.