Jon_Kozak
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Ben Askren calls Greco dumb, compares it to pickleball
Jon_Kozak replied to Bacanator's topic in International Wrestling
I will say - the Greco matches at Worlds have been better this year. I've called matches here for a day and a half and haven't had one 1-1 match yet! -
Ben Askren calls Greco dumb, compares it to pickleball
Jon_Kozak replied to Bacanator's topic in International Wrestling
A no-hitter, something that happens in .1% of mlb games compared to a 1-1 or 2-1 score in Greco that happens in over 10% of matches at worlds lol -
Ben Askren calls Greco dumb, compares it to pickleball
Jon_Kozak replied to Bacanator's topic in International Wrestling
Yes I know - his sons are awesome. And in @LJB's defense, I'd place his sons in the "more entertaining to watch" category. -
Ben Askren calls Greco dumb, compares it to pickleball
Jon_Kozak replied to Bacanator's topic in International Wrestling
Yes - when folkstyle makes rule changes, it's acknowledging something is wrong, and there needs to be a fix. UWW is doing the same thing with Greco with forced par terre, first-point-scored holding criteria, etc. You can't acknowledge that, and then you point the finger outward and say that everyone who doesn't think Greco is exciting is the problem. We don't understand it like you do. And then when I say, "help me understand". Nope, my mind is made up and I'll never change my mind. Do you really want more people to love Greco like you? Feels like having honest conversations and acknowledging where Greco can improve would be something someone who loves Greco would embrace. Again, I want Greco to be exciting - nothing would be better for me and the company I work for! -
Yes I had one that had essentially all the results from 2018-2021. I recently made another one that has results from 2018-present (has a total of over 55,000 results). Hoping to get it on Flo soon...just using it internally for now. More goes into it than just pushing it live, so not sure how long it will take, but I'm optimistic!
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Ben Askren calls Greco dumb, compares it to pickleball
Jon_Kozak replied to Bacanator's topic in International Wrestling
I'm a 37-year-old dad with 4 kids, I have no desire (or time) to get bounced on my head lol -
Ben Askren calls Greco dumb, compares it to pickleball
Jon_Kozak replied to Bacanator's topic in International Wrestling
Clearly not my rationale. You can use point-scoring analysis to compare freestyle and greco because they have almost identical scoring rules. If you love Greco and think it's exciting, help me understand what I'm missing in these 1-1 and 2-1 matches. I want to love Greco. I want it to be exciting. I have incredible respect for the work Greco wrestlers put in and the talent they possess. But to me, there's a real problem with the product on the mat, and I know many share this sentiment. UWW recognizes this, and it's the reason they've played around with so many rule changes in the past 10 years. -
Ben Askren calls Greco dumb, compares it to pickleball
Jon_Kozak replied to Bacanator's topic in International Wrestling
Match scores aren't a made-up justification, and you ignoring data again just shows your bias. There were a total of 12 matches that ended 1-1, 2-1, or 2-0 in freestyle last year at Worlds. There were 32 in Greco. How do you explain that difference? You can say that a lack of scoring isn't ALWAYS a metric of a lack of action in a match. Sure, there are outliers. But most of the time, when a match is low-scoring, it's boring. -
Ben Askren calls Greco dumb, compares it to pickleball
Jon_Kozak replied to Bacanator's topic in International Wrestling
Referencing a 1-1 final score is not an "arbitrary value" - it illustrates exactly my point. Greco wrestlers at the highest level are so good at holding position, handfighting, etc...that "exciting wrestling" doesn't happen. This is an expected and realized outcome for a ruleset that eliminates attacking half the body. -
Ben Askren calls Greco dumb, compares it to pickleball
Jon_Kozak replied to Bacanator's topic in International Wrestling
You are wrong - matches in freestyle can end 1-1, it's rare but it happens once at almost every tournament. It's also not a perception problem or silly, and the fact that you can't acknowledge that it's a problem shows your bias far more than it shows mine. -
Ben Askren calls Greco dumb, compares it to pickleball
Jon_Kozak replied to Bacanator's topic in International Wrestling
That's not the argument here. You said I'm really hating on Greco, and I gave you the reason - it's not an entertaining product when compared to freestyle. 21 matches ended 1-1 in Greco compared to 1 match in freestyle. My point is clearly that there's a lack of action in Greco compared to freestyle. That is a HUGE problem. Yes, one of Greco's biggest problems in America is that the skill set it builds is not as transferable to folkstyle as freestyle is. -
Ben Askren calls Greco dumb, compares it to pickleball
Jon_Kozak replied to Bacanator's topic in International Wrestling
Greco at the highest level is not an entertaining product. It reminds me of the freestyle ball draw era. At worlds last year, there were 21 matches in Greco that ended 1-1. In freestyle, there was 1. If you don't think this is a problem, I'm not sure what to tell you. -
Will not be Nov 1 this year - announcement coming very soon!
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Hey friends, appreciate y'alls input, and on many of the critiques, the content team agrees and is actively putting the problems in front of the people that can solve them or make our product better. We're with you on next gen and UI/UX tweaks. Before I worked at Flo, I was just an obsessed wrestling fan and was of course annoyed by streams dropping. It's more annoying now that I'm in this position because we (the content team) don't have any control over the streams, but interface the most with fans/community. I do think we've made huge improvements on streams staying up over the past 3-5 years. I absolutely agree that Flo's database needs to be better. I would prefer our data to look more similar to Wrestlestats. @killdozer had a great post on that in this thread, and I agree mostly with what he said. Agree with adding a multiview on the app - great idea. The suggestion about giving new members 50% off is an interesting idea. I don't know what would stop someone from just creating a new email every year tho to get the discount lol. It's worth noting that we "give away" more content for free now than we ever have. All of our content on the site is free, we frequently livestream portions of events on youtube for free, and we post most of the best matches from events to YT. Concerning "clickbait" articles mentioned in the thread, those are SEO articles designed to help wrestling fans googling "how to watch (fill in the blank) tournament". That's not clickbait, that's just how search works, and we're trying to help wrestling fans find what they're looking for. I do understand it's probably annoying as a hardcore fan, but if you look at our college, high school, international, and women's tabs, all the articles are about what's going on in wrestling right now. Look at our socials - we post cool wrestling clips and videos/graphics of the latest wrestling news. On some of the other things, I respectfully and fundamentally disagree. For instance, the above poster saying our wrestling knowledge is lacking is wild. We live and breathe wrestling. CP is a college wrestling freak when it comes to results over the past 20 years. Kyle Klingman is a walking version of the National Wrestling Hall Of Fame and no one covers women's wrestling better than Kyle. Andy Hamilton is a GOAT when it comes to wrestling journalists. I'd like to believe no one follows international wrestling closer than I do. David Bray is locked in on high school results/rankings. Who's editing wrestling videos better than Tyler and Connor right now? JD and Spey both have a pretty wide knowledge on all things high school, college, international, and women's wrestling. And then there's Bader, who has covered everything. The above poster saying are rankings are "off most of the time" is wild. Most of the time, our college rankings look VERY similar to Intermats. In fact, this year, our college rankings performed the best at predicting All-Americans - 50 top 8 seeds earned All-American honors, Intermat had 52, Crystal Ball had 54, Flo had 55. I also saw a post saying we should do more previews - we do every pre-season. Last year, I think we previewed 20 different programs. @TNwrestlingsays we need to work WITH ESPN and Big 10 rather than against them. That sounds great, but also makes the assumption we're the one's trying to work against them. We pay the NCAA a ton just to get clips of the NCAA Tournament. We had a contract with the Big 10 and they wanted to keep it exclusive. We've tried to work out streaming contracts with them, but they don't want to share their rights. We cover everything - preview top duals every week, and often attend them even when we don't stream them, and send people to every conference tournament. Again, I appreciate this thread and don't take for granted y'alls love for wrestling. We're not ignorant to the improvements that need to be made and are always trying to think of new/better ways to cover wrestling.
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I'm not sure what you mean here. JD had Penn State ranked #1 in the 2025 recruiting class rankings that included Marcus Blaze, PJ Duke, Will Henckel, Asher Cunningham, Nate Desmond, and Dalton Perry. He also had Penn State ranked #1 in 2024 with Luke Lilledahl, Zack Ryder, Joe Sealey, Connor Mirasola, and Cole Mirasola.
