wrestle87

That sounds like the weight of a lifetime coming off his shoulders. This stuff does have a real human element for some of these guys, you see the story of the rest of their life getting written in real time.

Probably under pain of significant punishment. "Man move over, you know what happens to my parents if he puts his arm around me?"

Saw that one on the way as soon as they scored that first exchange a stepout. Nowhere else in the entire tournament has that been a stepout. Hate to say it, but hidlay and his coaches should have smelled that one. No action calls, just standing in the middle, setting him up to lose on any score by the russian in the final minute. That was reminiscent of the 90's.

Because I'm trying to watch it on the only device I have available at the moment, my phone, and the streams don't even load. It just says "an error occurred" for every stream. Same to you Dark Energy...strong stance to take when you have no idea what someone's talking about.

Absolutely elated to have restarted my Flo account to be able to watch none of this. Fuck you Flo.

I think because track, swimming, etc are (largely) non-reactive, time-based performances. If someone in lane 8 runs 1/10th faster but popped hot on the test, and you ran the best time in lane 2, perfect, we just pretend lane 8 didn’t exist. But wrestling’s tournament structure is a pyramid of interactions between competitors. If you remove a pillar, then different dominoes would slide into place in each round, all the wrestlers who ran into that athlete have no recourse. I think the best way to illustrate what irks me about this is who do you slide into 8th place if you bump everyone up one place? I don’t think it is a bad decision in spirit. I just think it is an ineffective paper-based mechanism that achieves little.

I respect the concept, but this is dumb. This isn’t like track and field. He won the tournament after they made the decision to let him back in. This is like “stripping” international wrestlers of medals 10 years after the fact. Nobody takes it seriously, because the matches were actually wrestled. You can’t go back and reconstruct the bracket.

Yeah, I smelled this too, you can see it in the eyes, the intensity of the match, etc.

This is a sneaky good thought.

Greco, when it’s actually being wrestled instead of just being singlet sumo, is way more fun to watch. But scoring is a real problem. The concrete t-rex komodo dragons in mating season display that happens at the international level is brutal. So, I think greco should be amended to not end until at least one person goes ass over tea kettle, and rules should be adjusted to allow for same. Referees whistle and standing chest to chest clinch at a minute, double overs vs double unders, and then standing reverse bodylock clinch at the start of the second period. That rare position where a guy lifts his opponent for a reverse lift, only to have his opponent lock their hands around his waste and take him for a ride. Greco is the spectacle, it’s just hidden beneath shitty rule structure.

This right here. Using all the adjectives that are rammed into every bit of corporate and social media content written by and for modern 30 year olds. Barf.

Flo’s main advantage is brand and access. They are leaving a LOT on the table with the retiring coaches and older generation. Off the top of my head, I am sad that a bobby douglas documentary didn’t get made. There are a lot of similar amazing stories out there that they really could be highlighting and telling. Their international stories have disappeared. San Marino, the whole michigan cliff keen wrestling club, the latin american teams who are doing better thanks to US transplants, seabass, gomez. And then teams which have surged in the past ten years, and have untold stories, Japan, India. And then the shotgun blast of russian expats to the middle east who took down gold. There are some great anthony bourdain style stories to be told, the world through wrestling, in Turkiye, Georgia, Mongolia, Armenia and Azerbaijian. Wrestling is VERY global, and it spans a ton of amazing stories.

Certified did the thing juuust enough in high school to certified do the thing with great mediocrity in college. Highlights include scoring a whopping 1 point across Enid and Fargo the only time I went. Weight cutting in college was a huge problem for me. The cut to 174 was pretty bad, but I was nowhere big enough to have a real go at 184.

Dake made him look very one dimensional. Zahid made stupid mid-match decisions. Kinda reminded me of watching the Air Force era wyatt hendrickson, just a few moments of “dude why would you do that?” Trying to throw dake instead of bellying down was the ultimate terry brands moment. I think if he wrestles his matches, and probably manages his weight better, he puts it on Dake. But it kinda looked like zahid slept on dake, which is always always a bad move. Dake is like the T1000. He’s not perfect, but he never stops, and he is very good at learning and making adjustments very quickly.

based on the number of shoulder harnesses he wore in high school, it might be a wrap (no pun intended). At some point you need to respect your body and what it is telling you.