wrestle87

Oof, I didn’t know about that. That’s so disappointing. Discussion of anything else feels instantaneously trivial in the face of that.

Doing it wrong, yeah obviously not for most of them, but the NBA is having trouble, and the MLB is just dead in the water. Supporting a positive engaged fanbase is really important, one of the real dangers in supporting what we saw from the Penn State crowd this weekend is it alienates the positive supportive crowd who grow the sport long term. I forget who on here referenced it, but the Iowa crowd, while enthusiastic, knows and respects the sport and any competitor who brings it. I felt like I was listening to the Okie State crowd rooting for NLWC athletes this weekend. Just biased nonsense at high persistent volume. That’s going to be a stain the program will have a very hard time wiping away.

All fair points. And, ultimately the heart of all this is how disappointing the crowd behavior was in Penn State. That warrants the most attention….in an entirely negative way. A trashy crowd only hurts events. JB didn’t deserve to be treated the way he was.

So, firstly if you are going to engage in an apples to oranges comparison, that’s never going to work. Leave everything at the door if that’s the game you want to play, bc that’s a big fat bait and switch. People didn’t give a hootin crap about LSU vs Iowa, they watched because Clark was setting records all time sport records, and was surpassing the records set by the best mens players. WBB will unfortunately most likely be back to playing on the Ocho next year. I’d love to be wrong, but the biggest draw will be gone. I think the best analogy is to compare the trash boosting effect to putting a good high school athlete on a constant heavy tren cycle. They will murder senior year and find their way onto a college roster, but they start snapping tendons, will spend half their college career in a wheelchair, and will be an orthopedic mess by 30. The NFL started this process with Brady, constantly needing a QB to have the media fellate, and they are working desperately to have Mahomes step into those shoes. They are on that ride now, pushing cult of personality instead of organic fan base growth, and they will struggle to get off that merry-go-round.

No, because Mesenbrink wasn’t a grown ass man who give himself internal dispensation to unload a free two handed wound up shot at the back of the head of a 20 year old he was stomping. ”He was going to hurt him!” Well…he could have just sprawled.

I hear this, but also MM was doing nothing compared to the stuff JB has handled over the course of his career. Russians, Iranians, Dake, et al have thrown WAY worse at him and he has handled it way better. But then, as we saw, he had no offense the next round, and I think that internal vulnerability got the best of him.

Leaning into trashy for the sake of numbers doesn’t help a sport, it makes money for the organizers, that is not the same thing. Any sport that had leaned into trashy instead of simply aiming to develop quality ultimately pays the price. All of the sports you mentioned are now struggling under the weight of their own “trashy” that they leaned into. Going that road is a one-way ticket, the media around the sport get addicted to trash instead of actually discussing and supporting the sport, and it hollows the entire artifice out top to bottom. Basketball was beloved 20 years ago, since then it has succeeded in becoming bloated, tired, and legitimately selling its soul at the feet of the almighty RMB. MLB was on par with the NFL and NBA, it is now much closer to the NHL, and CFB/CBB are dominated by trashy media who talk nonsense instead of actually discussing the sport. That will catch up with them big time. The NFL has taken its first major step in the trash direction by making pop-singers a part of every broadcast, and they are really starting to lean into the trash for cash marketing model too. The world as a whole is tiring of this…and the trouble with it becomes that trash for cash marketing is a different media orientation and skillset that completely supplants real analysis. It’s like eating nothing but oreos for a week. The first hour may be great, but it’s basically hell by day two. Wrestling has grown by leaps and bounds in the past 15 years. It is built into our bones to believe in a boogeyman that is coming for us, but there are now paid positions for good wrestlers right out of high school, wrestling is a legit career path in and of itself for both genders, more than it ever has been. Now, if you were to tell Greco to lean into that strategy for the sake of growth…I would have to say I agree with you, but the sport as a whole doesn’t need it.

I think I heard it on this board, but I believe one of his shoulders gave out prior to his jumping weight classes

Watching that final and realizing there were 7 ncaa titles on that mat was just preposterous.

That is a match I would love to see. Just 30 minutes of hard clubs ended with an angry handshake.

We also have to be real, Yazdani isn't a full 86kg wrestler, he's a 74 who didn't want to cut weight anymore. It's impressive what Yazdani has done, but could you imagine how good he would have been if he stayed down at 74? It's awesome that DT has been able to go on the run that he did, and this is going to come off very poorly, but I promise I am a very big DT fan, DT has pressure and flailed his way to his titles, and has done so in the weakest weight class of the 6. One thing that has always been evident about DT is he's an effort and volume guy. Dude's not exactly a precision wrestler. He made his money being the biggest guy on the mat, and missing 11 shots so he could land the 12th. This becomes a problem when you decide you're going to wrestle like Dake and only generate two or three scoring events in a match. Taylor has always been 14-4 or 18-8 tech fall guy, not a 10-0 tech fall guy.

Zain or nolf did not have to navigate any weight classes which were even 50% as good as what MM did this year. You can poopoo all you want, the kid went out and torched all but one person in the deepest weight at NCAA's by far.

Greco in its current iteration has no continuity. OB is such a penalty that the sport has become Sumo with Par-Terre, minus the cool parts of Sumo. Last point scoring criteria also ruins the sport (I think it's trash for freestyle too, I hate that criteria).

Love to see a program get saved. Guess we know now which side of things that last thread falls on...

I was pulling for DT bc I felt like this was his last real shot, and that his interest was clearly waning. I was hoping he'd go out on top. Brooks is many things, stalling and defensive isn't really one of them. Taylor did NOTHING in the first match. Legit just stood there and watched the clock run out. Then...he did...very little in the second match. Across 12 minutes of wrestling he wrestled less than he would in 20 seconds against Yazdani. He looked like he just didn't care. I am legitimately wondering if he stayed because him retiring would cost the US its olympic qualification credentials for this year. He looked like he was just ready to hand off the baton and be done with it. There's nothing wrong with that, wrestling is a very unrelenting sport, but you can see it on a wrestler's face when they are done. Mark Hall has been done for awhile, and this is the first time I've seen DT have the same look that Mark Hall did in his eyes. The "I'd like to be done with this and move on with life please" look.

I smelled it in March but didn’t call it, I didn‘t think DT would show up this untrained/under motivated. He looked like one of those old fighters the UFC drags out for old times’ sake to throw homie a paycheck and eat an ‘L’ This is not to be critical, we all have stages of life, and it is very hard to transition from something as all-consuming as wrestling. He looked like he made that transition mentally at some point since worlds.

I'd liked to say otherwise, but I think this DT finishes 5th/6th if he isn't given protection from the entire process. If taylor cared, I think he could very easily have taken this series from Brooks, but he looked like a dude who legit didn't give a crap. JB still had the fire at least, Taylor looked like he was more towards the Mark Hall end of the spectrum, ready to be done with the process.

Coon getting an olympic trip might be my favorite moment of this trials.

Sumo is very badass. Those dudes are animals.

Coon has some very fresh cauliflower ear going on.

I would be very curious to know where the level of Greco is globally right now. Has all greco gotten bad/cheap the way freestyle did during the ball grab era? Or has US greco just…done what US greco does…no offense intended to the athletes whatsoever.

Daton Fix’s nutritionist puts another athlete on the world team!

Tweedle dork and tweedle pork, go to another thread

“Grabbing hands…butting heads…grabbing hands…doing a dance…grabbing hands…stand and push…I…wrestle…Greco!”

I was about to ask, what the heck was that?