This syndrome is why transfers always take a step down their first year, and why PSU grad transfers have such a low success rate at PSU. Nobody talks about it, but every new wrestler to that room looks like a whipped puppy their first year. Happened to taylor and bo, I specifically remember looking at their first matches being underwhelmed based on all the hype around them. Happened to Hall in his first dual against Iowa.
Yeah, kid got ridden like a dog, but he’s a RS, and being resilient to getting scrubbed is definitely a part of progressing in the room. Go listen to any of the guys who win titles there. The process to an NCAA title is being the ragdoll for a whole roster of olympic medalists. If you can have olympic gold medalists just embarrass you all day and you still love wrestling, you’re going to be good when it matters. But the dismantling and reassembly of the ego is a difficult process.