wrestle87

Seems all the communication around this situation is a bit…cryptic…

That’s justified. I just saw something similar about ronnie coleman, but at this point I also have a hard time believing anything coming out of my phone or computer at all.

100%. That was one of the most “there’s levels to this game” moments I remember seeing in college wrestling for a long time. It always looked like ruth was a bored big brother who was told to go play with his younger siblings for a while.

David Taylor and Ed Ruth no question. Two dudes who walked on the mat at every match and could kill everybody on every roster, except their coaches and one another. People don’t give him enough credit, but I think sophomore and junior season ed ruth is second only to senior season Cael in terms of being levels above everyone he stepped on the mat with. Big brothered every human under the sun.

Smallest of worlds, my high school coach coached baumgartner when he was in high school. I'm pretty sure he took 3rd in New Jersey, I assume in his senior year of high school.

In wrestling we are particularly given to holding up certain figures in borderline religious, certainly cult-like ways. The wrestling community doesn’t know what to do if it doesn’t have somebody to bow to as the next “gable”. This (apparently, I’m just hearing about most of this stuff this week) leads to narrow, myopic, and uncritical or highly unobjective lenses being applied to lots of situations. Sex-related and abuse-related topics all bursting forth at once smacks very much of a broader issue of a lack of accountability or standards maintenance as a community.

This is the most tired and trite of simultaneously defeatest and enabling comments you can make. It’s a wrestling specific issue in that this is a wrestling forum and we are talking about wrestling, and we care about the continued health and safety of the sport, and all athletes therein. The excessively physical nature of the sport needn’t be expounded upon, but respecting and protecting the physical wellbeing of your opponents is a fundamental tenet of the sport in a way that is extremely rare in sport. I’m pretty sure that is self-evident though.

They’re all *I poop my pants, don't laugh at me*ty, sex-based or sex-adjacent issues of power dynamics, all of which got covered up, swept under the rug, or otherwise ignored or minimized by other responsible adults, oftentimes for years even decades. The issue is that many of the people who were committing these acts, hiding these messes, or sidestepping responsibility for being a responsible adult are people who have been lionized as a considerable part of modern wrestling lore. That is all the same issue, and it is not a small one. The fact that in the span of a month Snyder’s situation went from “oh nooo bad bad bad” to “[shoulder shrug] eh, not much to write home about all things considered” is the big whiplash aspect of this.

100% this. We have seen how forward and opinionated all wrestling “journalists” are willing to be at times, and how they will, under certain circumstances, absolute hold underperforming teams and individuals accountable. Silence here on both this and Snyder is just so striking and out of character. There aren’t really any charitable options left for how we can look at previous (rightfully) aggressive, opinionated pieces, and then hear nothing but crickets here. All that remains is the “hmmm…did you guys get scared or bought off, or both?” This is a fat juicy journalistic t-bone steak and nobody in the wrestling community wants to report on it. Quite the disappointing head scratcher.

All due respect, you shouldn’t lump yourself in with these other folks Mr Saylor. Your forum is a last bastion of free and open discussion in an increasingly paywalled universe. Slow-pedaling certain news about high impact, high click-generating programs is what people are talking about. It’s the Brady Belichik T-swift Mahomes parade, but with wrestling shoes. Honest reporting on important issues gets dismissed or under-reported, because nobody is willing to risk being locked out of Ohio State or Penn State for a decade. But that’s no longer journalism. Why did it take a non-wrestling journalist break the Ohio State hellickson-era story? Because that journalist needed to be outside the sport to be impartial and unaffected by the potential backlash from programs and coaches. If this Starrocci news was breaking at oregon state or little rock or Chattanooga, it would be completely dissected and completely out in the open, no holds barred. But with state college in particular, people treat that room the way they treat the vatican. And that’s not good. The inherent societal value of journalism is asking the unseemly questions at the inappropriate times. It is the magnifying glass society simultaneously offers and levels at all individuals. Asymmetric application is where the disapproval comes from.

Why do people constantly create threads about topics, so they can be discussed, but not follow through on the "rumors" when people ask to know why this might be the case? You're curious enough to ask and/or participate, but not curious enough to put the information out on the wire that you heard from a dude who heard from another dude who heard from his friend at the deli. We all know lots of it tends to be played up or exaggerated, so if you make the thread and you have the info, at least be decent enough to provide the full context, instead of just leaving an "Ooooh, look, did you hear thing about person in place? Bc I heard person from other place said different thing about same person, and with a slightly different context..."

I have heard tell they are standard techniques in water polo. Apparently everybody leaves the pool with hands that smell of chlorine and 10W30

Ah yes, the Daton Fix defense. How is it that all these athletes who go to GNC just that one time always get the bad supplement, but people who have been going there for decades are never so lucky to find free steroids in a bottle of vitamin C? This world is so strange, all those jacked top level athletes getting tripped by not reading the label. Most people would intentionally seek out tainted supplements if they knew there was a free androgenic boost in them.

Lol I don’t Jesus hard enough to be allowed to be the bearer of the syringe of the holy Trenity.

Oooh, yeah definitely not me. Drugs are a tool with specific applied benefits, but also major long term downside risks. Saying all people should take drugs is like saying all people should be allowed to run around holding running chainsaws in my opinion.