peanut

Kasak got third last year. Seems like another AA finish would be expected.

How does this go down? 125- Lilledahl vs. Ramos (Purdue) 133- Davis vs. Byrd (Michigan) 141- Bartlett vs. Mendez (tOSU) 149- SVN vs. Parco (Iowa) 157- Kasak vs. Taylor (Nebraska) 165- MM vs. Caliendo (Iowa) 174- Haines vs. Kharchla (tOSU) 184- CStar vs. Allred (Nebraska) 197- Barr vs. Buchanan (Iowa) 285- Kerk vs. Gable (Minn)

That's interesting. I wonder why interest in wrestling seems to fall off at the border.

There is a piece of land in Southern Ontario that is near to places where lots of tough wrestlers come from. It stretches from Michigan to NY State, and it runs along Lake Erie, which borders Pennsylvania and Ohio. What is going on there? Is freestyle wrestling a thing there? Does the interest in wrestling just stop at the US-Canada border?

With NIL money on the table, why aren't more foreign wrestlers competing in NCAA wrestling? Echemendia and Bastida have done just fine for Iowa State. Imagine what a guy like Masanosuke Ono could do.

Why not get rid of weight classes and placement, except for #1. While we’re at it we could also get rid rules against submissions, rules against striking, and time limits. Each team could bring their baddest athlete to the NCAA tournament, and only one will remain standing at the end of it all. That single individual would be worthy of an NCAA title. Imagine the excitement!

This year, Japan's five lightest weights were totally in beast mode: 57- Higuchi (28) -- gold 61- Ono (20) -- gold (10-2 over Uguev; 12-0 over Vito) 65- Kiyooka (23) -- gold (10-3 over Amouzad) 70- Aoyagi (22) -- silver 74- Takatani (29) -- silver What are they doing that makes them so good?

If NCAA wrestling switched to freestyle we’d probably be able to attract some high-end international talent. It would make college wrestling more exciting IMO.

If that's true, it would be nice to just get the feed directly from UWW.

Ben Honis (Italy) is in the semis with Maisuradze, Ghasempour, and Sadulaev.

Crazy that Sadulaev is only 28 and is looking to win his eighth gold medal. (And that includes 2022, when it appears that he didn’t compete.)

Do these guys get money for competing? If not, why do they do it? Seems like it would disrupt studying, sleep, training, and possibly diet.

The comparison is not perfect, but there are some similarities. MJ played when there were awful expansion teams, meaning less competition. Smith wrestled exclusively in an era of ten weight classes. MJ played before Europeans were commonly in star roles. Smith competed before the post-Soviet era with a bunch of new countries and Russians leaving Russia. MJ played where skills and tactics were less evolved. So did Smith. MJ has the advantage of being retired and properly assessed (rather than still active and dealing with fans whose interests are adverse to theirs). Ditto for Smith. At any rate, no matter how you slice it, MJ and Smith are legends. All respect.

Online, there is a constant debate over whether Jordan or LeBron are the basketball goats. And those two are the only serious contenders for the title. Here, there seems to be some debate as to whether Smith or JB are the goat American wrestlers. And those two are the only serious contenders for the title. (Not to minimize all the other greats. It is really is a petty topic.) So I started to wonder whether there is a correlation between Smith stans and MJ stans, and so on. Let's see what the poll says.

Winning worlds is actually more difficult than winning the Olympics (at least at Olympic weight classes). The Olympics is thought of as having more prestige simply because it has a much wider audience. Aside from more medals, what JB has on Smith is that he won a number of golds in era of only six weight classes (Smith had ten) and after the fall of the USSR. Of course, winning six straight has an undeniable appeal. At the end of the day, GOAT talk is fun but doesn't mean much in reality. Wrestling a chain reaction, a constantly evolving endeavor. If someone inspires you by their work ethic and by their grit and by their performances, that's really all the sport can offer fans.