fishbane

If he gets it out in 2024 I'll be sure and send him my apology without mentioning any of my haters.

In today's NCAA landscape the OSU infractions would likely not result in a post season ban or perhaps more accurately be totally unnecessary to begin with. Diakomihalis could also fall into the coulda category too. He won his first two years out of high school then sat out in 2020 for an Olympic redshirt and again in 2021 as the Ivies didn't participate. Perhaps he wouldn't have wrestled even without the Ivy League's decision to focus on his Olympic goals. Lewis reversing course and competing in 2021 after taking an Olympic redshirt in 2020 didn't work out for him. He got injured and missed the trials all together. Even what Smith actually accomplished 4 win 5 years immediately out of high school distinguishes him from some other 4xers. Brooks and Diakomihalis only won 4 out of their first 6 years after high school and winning his first three years out of high school is second best behind Dake.

Minnow was also entirely correct in the tweet he made. "Someone is getting in trouble!" Someone did get in trouble. Spey admitted that in the discussion on FRL. He said "We took the responsible party out back in the alley earlier and beat the crap out of him as punishment." Were they talking about Minnow in the white knight discussion? It doesn't really make sense to call Minnow's tweet that was copied here that of a "white knight." Minnow is closer to schadenfreude than standing up for Blaze or outrage on his behalf. If Pyles is actually talking about people who expressed outrage on behalf of Blaze on twitter ahead of the announcement, he is addressing fewer than 10 individuals of limited social media reach. Why even bother to address them? If he's talking about Minnow then I think he is incorrect. From Minnow's vantage point I understand the amusement. Before calling out the "white knights" Pyles said they had Blaze's decision earlier from indirect sources (Not the Blaze family, not Perrysburg, not PSU), but didn't talk about it publicly like "other podcasts." I get the impression Flo considers themselves to be above that and better than Minnow and "other podcasts" (to a certain extent they are correct), but to hold that opinion and then accidentally leak the biggest recruiting announcement of the year... I would be laughing too.

Yeah, but the ironic part isn't Minnow amplifying their error - that was totally expected. The unexpected bit is that Flo was the source of the leak that preempted the announcement this time. Calling Minnow out as the one that ruined the announcement isn't any kind of gotcha on Minnow it's literally something he does on the regular. The thing that ruined it more than a normal Minnow tweet/post was that was that he was able to quote Flo as a source instead of an unnamed source which may have just been a rumor or straight up guess. For Minnow to make a gaff of similar gravity to Flo's misstep he'd have to accidentally include the name of an insider source in a tweet for something like that. It sounds like they are blame shifting. Like they are implying the people talking about it are more to blame than Flo for preempting the announcement. Only 200 people got it directly from Flo and if they didn't tell anyone it would have been fine, but 100,000 people found out early because of the white knight haters. Of course people are going to talk about it - it's big news and they got it early from Flo a reputable source. I am sure more people were talking about it from its newsworthiness than simply a hating on Flo angle and when there was hate it was often a mixed with a response to the news itself. I think the thing to do is to apologize and it's fine to say the steps taken to address it - edit the article promptly, reach out to the family, etc. but end it there. Could you imagine a legitimate news outlet doing this? Like an anchor at NBC, CNN, Fox News, ESPN, ect trying to argue people criticizing their mistake was somehow more damaging than the mistake itself. It makes no sense and it wouldn't go good.

Exactly. Just apologize. To many the call out will sounds like they are attempting to shift blame. Like they were really saying "We're sorry, but fewer than 200 people say our mistake directly. It was all you haters calling us out that really ruined the announcement." This will only fuel more criticism by their haters.

That's a good point as I would have included O'Toole in 2023 and missed that. I think if Lewis had won 4 out of 5 NCAA tournaments I'd view that feat a little differently too, but still a 4xer. It would be a similar to the difference in how I view Greg Jones and Earl McCready as 3x champs. Your explanation got me thinking about how infrequently 4xers and near 4xers wrestle 4 seasons in a row right out of high school or 4 straight years at all. Dake is the only person to win 4 straight years right out of high school. Sanderson, Stieber, Brooks and Staroocci all won 4 consecutive years, but not the 4 immediately following high school graduation. This got me thinking about that standout 2022 year again. Should Lee and Diakomihalis be counted this year? Diakomihalis didn't wrestle at all that season as the Ivies sat out winter sports due to COVID. He won his 4th the following year in 2023. Lee wrestled something like two matches and then shut it down taking an injury redshirt. He lost at NCAAs in 2023. Only 4 of those 7 guys actually wrestled at NCAAs in 2022 and only 5 of the 7 used a year of eligibility in 2022 (Ferrari used a competition year). If O'Toole and Lewis are viewed differently by you perhaps Ferrari should too. He used a year of eligibility in 2022 and if successful will be the first to win 4 that failed to win NCAAs in a season where a year of eligibility was burned. He was injured too late to take an injury redshirt in 2022. This is very similar to Lewis in 2021 the only difference was Lewis's injury allowed him to compete albeit at a reduced capacity and Ferrari was not cleared to compete.

Flo announcing it early is news. It would have received its own thread here and tweets with screen captures regardless of people dunking on Flo. If Mineo had worded his tweet in a more neutral way like "Flowrestling announces Marcus Blaze's commitment to PSU in a since edited article." It would have had the same effect as "Someone is getting in trouble" with a laughing emoji. I don't even think Mineo taking pleasure in Flo's screw up fits the definition of white knighting. Nor do I consider this post to be that. So who exactly is Pyles calling out and what reach do they have? A few replies in thread like this or retweet/comments on Mineo's tweet. That's likely in the noise and not worth doing since Pyles and Spey explaining it took longer than the actual apology. This reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where George was expecting an apology and didn't exactly get what he wanted. "All right, George, all right, I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. I'm so sorry that I didn't want your rather bulbous head struggling to find its way through the normal-sized neckhole of my finely knit sweater." George should have been happy with that! Lol.

At least they don't have any backups wrestling in it this year.

I think you're missing a wrestler for 2022. Lewis won his title in 2019 then took an Olympic redshirt in 2020. In 2021 he was competing as a Sophomore, but it was a free year so he still had three years remaining into into 2022. Because 2021 didn't count no one could have been eliminated between 2021 and 2022, so there were actually 8 wrestlers (Lee, Diakomihalis, Lewis, Ferrari, Carr Griffith, Starocci, and Brooks) with a shot at winning 4 titles going into 2022 NCAAs.

Does Steveson's return settle this?

Good to see Flo finally reporting the news when they learn it rather than not reporting and/or delaying it so as to not ruffle feathers.

You are picking the things that back your point of view and ignoring things that contradict it. MMA has weigh in rules that are different. There are also significant cultural differences at play in MMA. Not many parents send their elementary school age kids to MMA class. Athletes get into the sport later than wrestlers. Winning a world title isn't an annual competition that anyone can enter. Fighters have to work their way up a ladder fighting maybe a handful of times a year. It takes years to get to the top. Just look at how long it has taken Bo Nickal to still not have a meaningful fight. There is also a financial incentive for an MMA fighter to move up in weight that doesn't exist in freestyle wrestling. None of that stops you from bringing MMA into the discussion. Women's freestyle doesn't have any of those issues and I don't even know if there is data to back up your MMA claim that "guys tend to stay around longer in the upper weights." Let's bring it back to the original discussion. Which was if Spencer Lee and/or Vito Arujau would make the team in 2028. They are going to be 29 and someone - maybe you - said that was old for 57kg. Below is the list of our reps at the Olympics and World championships at 55 and 57kg since the weight classed changed in 2002. Twenty nine is older than average, but far less than 1 standard deviation away. Out of USA's last 8 men's freestyle Olympians below 60kg half have them have been older than 29. Three others defeated someone that was over 30 years of age in the trials final to make the team.

The number of wrestler with more than 5 world level golds in greco is only 5. That's a small number. You're right that there other 4 are upper eights. So I think you can say the most dominant greco roman wrestlers have been disproportionately upper weights, but I don't think any stat you gave really leads to the conclusion that upper weights have better longevity. Certainly outliers that have >5 World titles have good longevity, but a statement like "upper wights have better longevity in Greco than light weights." should be based on something more than a few extreme outliers. The oldest world champ this year was of course Mijain Lopez, but the second oldest was at the lightest weight class, 55kg. Furthermore if you expand the field from >5 greco world level titles to all wrestlers with 3 or more greco world level titles the distribution is far more even across weights. He won 8 world level golds. If that's not dominant enough you have an insanely high standard. Pretty much all his piers had off years where they were not the best in the world. Medved has a world bronze and silver too. He also didn't win his first world title until he was 24. Satiev only has gold medals, but DNP two years and did not make the Russian team two other times. Sadulaev has a silver and a 5th. Fadzaev has a silver (up a weight) and DNPed at the 1996 Olympics. Beloglasov only got a silver in 1979 and didn't make the Russian team until he was 22.

Arujau and Lee are close to the same age and will both be 29 at the next Olympics. Neither would be particularly young for a world champ. I suspect the average age for a world champ is probably 26 with a standard deviation of around 3. My concerns with them making the next Olympic team or next three world teams has less to do with their age. For Lee it would be injury concerns. He's torn 3 ACLs that we know of. For Arujau don't think he can make 57kg. If he stays at 61kg I think he can make the next three teams, but he may well move up in preparation for 2028. If so it could take some time for him to adjust and he may never make the team as Diakomihalis has had his number in the past. This same topic came up after the Olympics and I had made this table of the oldest World/Olympics men's freestyle champions since the breakup of the USSR. You'll notice that the oldest champions have been at 52-61kg. I don't know, but I am sure that more had weigh ins on the day of competition than the MMA fighters you keep bringing up. Also as I understand it, women have the same weigh in schedule as men in freestyle wrestling so I'd expect that to be perhaps more relevant to the discussion at hand. Especially if you consider weigh in schedule to be a significant factor. If there were a significant difference in the distribution of ages of women and men wrestling at the world championships that would be an interesting fact. What could be the underlying cause? I've calculated the average age of the 55/57, 60/61, 96/97, and 120/125kg world champs since 2002 inclusive. It is a little lower for 57kg. However the last 4 world champs at 57kg have been some of the oldest in the evaluation period at 27.4, 29.2, 27.5, and 28.6 years. He is 38.

Interesting, but I'm not sure what that has to do with the price of tea in China. Recently there have been more dominant wrestlers at the heavier weights, but there are plenty of counter examples. Ebrahim Javadi - 4x champo at 48kg Vladimir Yumin - 5x champ at 57kg/62kg Anatoly Beloglasov - 4x champ 48/52/57kg Yuji Takada - 5x champ at 52kg Sergey Kornilayev - 4x champ at 48kg Sergei Beloglazov - 8x champ at 57/62kg Valentine Yordanov - 8x champ at 52kg John Smith - 6x champ at 62kg Elbrus Tedeyev - 4x champ at 62/63kg Mavlet Batirov - 3x champ including Olympic champ at 55/60kg Besik Kudukhov - 4x champ at 55/60kg In Greco roman there are plenty of recent examples Hamid Sourian won 7 titles at 55/59kg between 2005 and 2014. Armen Nazaryan won 5 titles at 52/55/60kg. His first world medal came in 1993 and his last in 2005. Eldaniz Azizli won 4 world titles at 55kg between 2018 and 2024. The 60kg Olympic champ Kenichiro Fumita has 3 world titles with his first coming in 2017. If you look at women's freestyle, the most successful wrestlers have been at the lighter weights under 60kg. But I think you've kind of moved the goalposts to dominance over an extended period/multiple quads. Where I came into this discussion people were discussing who would be on the team in 2028 and some said Spencer Lee would be 29 which is old for a lightweight. He won a a silver in 2016 at 57kg at 20 years old. What happened in 2020/2021? I thought he had beaten Otoguro and was going to the rep at 65kg. Did he miss weight or fail to qualify at the Asia qualifier and get replaced or something? Either way he won gold at 57kg 8 years after his initial silver, so that's multiple quads. Not really. Mighty Mouse was undefeated at Flyweight until losing that split decision to Cejudo. His 11 consecutive title defenses are the most in UFC history. Heavyweight has had particularly high turnover at the top in the UFC. It seems like whenever a guy looks set to dominate he takes a loss - Brock Lesnar, Cain Velazquez, Miocic, etc. No fighter has more than 3 consecutive defenses at the division. Three is the fewest consecutive defenses at any division.t The conventional wisdom I hear to explain thi is that heavyweights have more power and one punch can change the fight which adds randomness not seen at the lower weights.

Yes. He left them on his feet.

It was cool see all three matches happen. Things kind of played out how most would have guessed. Sadulaev>Taylor>Ghassempour. However Ghassempour was closer than many would have thought.

I don't think so regarding 145. He fought at 135 early in his MMA career before cutting down to 125 where he fought for most of his career. He had a surprise win over Demetrius Johnson to win the title at 125. Then TJ Dillshaw cut down to fight him at 125 and rumors were that Dana White wanted to get rid of 125lbs because it's not a money maker and that Dillshaw was expected to win the belt and then go back up and continue fighting at 135 at which time the UFC would eliminate 125. It was the opposite that happened. Cejudo beat Dillshaw at 125lbs then he moved up and won the title at 135 I don't think he has fought above 135lbs. This is all a little unrelated to the original discussion which was perhaps off topic to begin with. I think there could a first weight effect going on at 125. One reason there are elder statesmen at for example 74kg is because wrestlers like Frank Chamizo and Chetag Tsabolov who have had success and won world titles at lower weights have moved up later in their career. So now at 32 they are still wrestling. At 57kg guys size-out as they age so they move up but there is no feeder weight below it which could depress the average age. Guys who are too small for 57kg don't have anywhere to wrestle and retire/stop competing. I don't know if there is an age difference between 57kg and the other weights that it is due to accumulated wear and tear/loss of speed and athleticism any more than at heavier weights or that there is no weight class below it. It would be interesting to look and see if there was a significant change in the average age of competitors at 57kg/55kg back when there were lower weights like 52kg and 48kg compared with now that it's the lowest weight.

In wrestling? He hasn't wrestled since 2015 and that was kind of a one off possibly at a catchweight. Earlier this year he fought in MMA at 135lbs at 37 years old.

I think the examples that 29 is old for a light weight are similarly anecdotal. It would be interesting to see the data. I'm sure people size out of the weight with time and unlike other weights no one really sizes into it. Still there are plenty of examples of older wrestlers finding success. Cejudo was our youngest Olympic champion in men's freestyle. Before he won the spot our rep at world was Sammie Henson was who won bronze in 2006 at 35 years old. After Cejudo won the Olympics in 2008 he took some time off. The US was represented by 35 year old Danny Felix at 55kg in 2009. The oldest freestyle world champ of the past two quads is Yowlys Bonne who won worlds at 61kg in 2018 a week or two shy of his 35th birthday. That same year a 33 year old Adam Batirov had a huge lead in the world final at 70kg until the wheels came off. Team USA's oldest freestyle world champions have been Baumgartner 35, Burroughs 34, and Bill Zadick 33. Zadick won at 66kg.

One of the oldest men's freestyle Olympic champions is Valentin Yordanov who won the 1996 games at 36 years old. He also won worlds in 1993, 1994, and 1995. All of those were at 52kg. Not sure why some posters are saying 29 is old for a lightweight.

Right and there is some merit to that. It could also be said of Nokhodi beating Burroughs.

If he beats DT tomorrow I am sure Ghassempour will be feeling pretty good.

Not currently, no.

Obtuse? lol. I asked you what NCAA wrestling event being streamed by Flo this season you are _most_ looking forward to watching? You then answered with every dual Flo has on the schedule this week. As if you are planning to watch every one and can't pick between them. My overall point is that Flo's NCAA wrestling offerings are 3rd rate and a poor value. I thought by asking you that question you'd figure it out for yourself. Apparently you got derailed when you couldn't figure out if you're more jazzed to watch Iowa wrestle Oregon State or Indiana take on Cal Poly.