wrestle87

Nothing, he’s just trying to invite people aboard the troller-coaster. The upper lower case is how little kids mock people online.

Jesus christ. Give the boards a rest and step out of the clown car my guy. You picked an interesting person to throw a fit at. There are few people who have rooted harder against fix in his NCAA tenure, and concurrently more for penn state, than me. No matter how you put it, J Smith/the culture of his room was an albatross around the necks of his athletes at the end of his tenure, he made them worse, not better. For fix to stay steady in that environment across that long of a tenure is extremely impressive because virtually every guy had a good first year or two, got injured, and then hated life bc of weight cut and mentally quit, or were too injured to compete. DT brings a penn state training ethos, which is much more centered around enjoyment and a balanced, emotionally stable approach to life, whereas J smith (and the brands/gable of old) were just rage, piss, vinegar, and lots of booze to numb your emotions. That’s basically how the entire sport was for most of its existence. The new guard is changing that, and absent that sort of a negative environment, I believe fix would have thrived far more than he did, and with the creativity of DT, would have innovated a great deal. That said, RBY came to cowboy rtc with taylor, ostensibly the coaching contingent there now is of meaningful importance to him. Minus taylor and friends, I don’t think RBY progresses above 3rd. And with DT, I think fix has the creativity and mindset, plus a better gameplan, for at least a 2-2 record in his finals matches.

Keuter is a classic heavy tweener, he has to push calories because being 215 is a liability at HWT. Tervel gave a great interview about this back in the day, he was a 220-30 tweener kind guy and really put on some mass after missing out on the olympics in '08. It immediately helped, but was quite onerous for him. Powerlifters, Strongmen etc also give major insight into what this is like. If you're REALLY putting in the time to be hwt competitive, eating is a full time job, and becomes pretty unpleasant.

Probably 2-3x champ if taylor is his coach. Fix regressed throughout college, carrying the brand, a struggling coach's career, and the ENTIRE Okie State brand is a really tall order for any person.

Even Zahid left.

VT is always a sneaky tough room. Stewart looked stale, maybe weight is an issue. I’m a jersey boy, gotta pull for hometown a bit, but not a lot to pill for. Poz is my favorite wrestler from rutgers in a long time. He looked like he was ready to hang up the shoes. The bump to 197 has not been positive for his performance. I get the weight thing, and he looks like he’s in much better shape this year, but he also looks like he mailed it in. He also practically just doesn’t have the style to make his smaller frame work against super lanky dudes. It’s a really tall task to attack the hips straight on at the big boy weights. Maybe he can give mark hall a ring and get some pointers about what to do when you are always the smaller dude.

The UFC broadcasts college wrestling matches on fight pass.

My guy realized pretty quickly but a season too late that he had it really really good up at Cornell.

Okie State will vie for a title out of the gate

I would go back and watch/listen to burroughs when he was putting it on dake and taylor before they turned the corner. He is very much in the old school J Smith style crush 'em and forget about 'em sort of camp, it may not have been what got him through, but he was definitely very big on buying into his own story (I'm trying to phrase it politely). He's never been immensely disrespectful, but he's also never been one to hide it when he had something to say about somebody either. Nature of competition certainly, but he has a strong "bitter competitor" muscle. He, J Smith, the Brands, Gable, are all cut from the same cloth. Massive respect to all of them, but when you become the type of dude who foams at the mouth when things get heated or who yells, mopes and pouts when you don't win, you often miss or lose the ability to give yourself a gentle farewell. Being pissed about losing clouds the ability to have the perspective to craft such a moment. It makes great winners, but great winners never want to be done winning.

Nearing the end of his 30's, I have to think we would have seen more involvement in the careers of others from JB if coaching was really on his mind. I could be completely incorrect, but he has always struck me as a very self-driven self-oriented lone wolf type of wrestler, much more like Sammy Henson or Cary Kolat more than DT or some of the other more team, group, room oriented wrestlers. Again, I could be very off base on this, but to me JB has always come across as being about JB and doing what is necessary to make JB successful. This is in no way bad, just an observation of personality types that succeed on certain paths vs others post competition.

Put another way, is competing really the highest and best use of his talents and experiences? Dude is a very experienced competitor, but the sport has clearly moved on. He is, however, an amazing voice and ambassador for the sport. I'm sure the fire will always be there, but he has the ability to be the actual face of the sport for the next many decades. We should definitely be actively encouraging of that, his is one of the top handful of wrestling minds to come out of our country in the past 50 years.

Well, good feeling's gone.

100% This is a really great move for Zahid. Show’s a maturity and openness I admit I would not have expected from him. Really tough for ASU, they just went down a solid two rungs, and this looks like an actual exodus now. Teemer, Parco and Zahid all bouncing in the same year? Bad news bears.

The math on Ivy educations for athletes is going to change a GREAT deal unless ivies throw actual NIL at their kids. So many kids can walk away from their career with enough scratch to become entrepreneurs, that it saves them 5-7 years professionally. Unless you are dead set on becoming so and so lawyer or business person, it really doesn't matter anymore. A quarter to half a yard invested and cashflowing makes for a much more enjoyable 20's, 30's and 40's.

I understand that sort of a feeling, but at the same time, being a college athlete has real monetary market value. It is an adjustment period, but I think the net positives for the athletes a far outweigh the negatives. We’re not used to it, and I do not mean to dismiss the notion that this has brought out new levels of sliminess, but those sorts of gross people have always been in the sport (I was def coached by a few of them.) It is weird to have wrestling be setting down its mantle as the “working man’s unsung rewardless gladiator sport”, which is an ethos it has carried for a century, but now kids can actually change their lives by being good at wrestling, instead of just getting injured, abused in the room, and having nothing to show for it. Things will adjust, and some rules are probably warranted, but at the same time our memories of the vision of the sport are from a made up marketing pipe dream peddled by the NCAA to line their own pockets. I love this sport dearly, and always will, but I have a hard time siding with NCAA institutions (the teams themselves) over individual athletes getting their fair and due at a market rate.

Yianni is from a different era. Kids get paid nowadays, this is change your life money for many of these kids, and will completely overhaul the old narrative for what it meant to be a college athlete (broken and retired coaching at a high school because your dreams didn't pan out.) Now it can be independent small landlord and entrepreneur...that's an amazing shift. Go pursue the kids coaches, do your thing!

The fascinating trend of wrestlers adopting the mannerisms of their coaches continues in fascinating fashion, Plott sounds an AWFUL LOT like DT and Cael in his most recent interview. I find this trend so amusing. So many Okie State guys used to sound like angry short cowboys (J Smith), ditto for iowa guys using the highly idiosyncratic cadence of the brands bros. Now it continues in the DT era. What are some other notable coach speaking styles that get passed onto athletes that I'm forgetting?

The major hindrance to US wrestling is that currently, we structurally subordinate ourselves to an established system which we have seen is terribly corrupt. This kneecaps 99% of the talent and experience that comes out of US college wrestling, and just leaves it to wither and die on the side of the road. YET...folkstyle is the heart and soul of American wrestling. We should establish, monetize and elevate folkstyle beyond college. Folkstyle is the #1 grappling style for MMA, and is overly structurally limited at present. Folkstyle is the best, most creative form of wrestling that exists currently, and it deserves better. We should change this somehow. Other countries do a far better job of celebrating their domestic grappling style. We should as well. Because, frankly...the Olympics is dead. The shine is off it the concept. Not to mentioned current NIL money makes pursuit of olympic medals once again a comparative pauper's pursuit. The US has an ENORMOUS pool of wrestlers to pull from to keep folkstyle going further. This should happen.

As it turns out, the coaches and organizations giving out that NIL money care about those very results. I don’t disagree that the spirit of that stuff is in rather bad faith, but it's what is allowed.

Except that athletes completely forego the ability to accumulate better high school accolades as a result of getting that year of training/growth in earlier on.

This entire argument of “he should just teach techniques, he has no business giving life advice” is just out of date. Mediocre coaches teach technique. Great coaches show you the path objectively. As long as these are the rules in place, it behooves athletes to make the most of the ruleset. If a 19 year old can compete in high school, that kid will also be a year closer to physical preparedness to compete. NIL has effectively removed the viability of redshirt years, so it makes sense that the deferred year for physical maturation would still get worked in somewhere.

There are some club coaches who will give advice that is meaningfully practical for their athlete’s success, and some who will just teach techniques. The two are allowed, and go hand-in-hand. From a physical development and technique development perspective, a whole year makes an enormous difference, especially when you don’t have to spend that whole year just sitting in middle school classes, basically big group babysitting with some reading lessons. The coach is giving practical advice, if these athletes get good, they can make far more from NIL than they will with whatever “degree” they will earn. AA status—> half a mil—>investible assets and a property portfolio before you graduate college. What’s wrong with raising your kids to be smart entrepreneurs?

Getting held back is market standard for competitive athletes in wrestling, and has been for a long time now. They spend some time talking about that in the RBY documentary Flo did.

Gomez has the body of an 80 year old. I love watching him wrestle, but he doesn't have much left in him. His knees just can't take the torsion anymore.