wrestle87

Dude is hilarious... "when are you gonna pick up your end of the coach?"

If they were to paint with a broad brush, I'd say the average evaluation is "wealthy bulldozers with good gas tanks and sub-par match tactics" would be my guess. My guess though is they don't actually say anything about any one wrestler more than our guys do about any one of their wrestlers.

To answer the actual question...he definitely has people who beat him in that room, that's why he moved there. Dake can try to do what he wants to someone like brooks, that dude's neck is almost as big as his waist, no matter what happens, he's coming forward at you. Also, considering he's the #2 wrestling mind in the country, being around the #1 wrestling mind in the country very likely had something to do with it. People who beat dake right now I'd say include Cael Varner Snyder Brooks Nickal But realistically, I don't think anybody below 197 is giving him a go. He's just too smart, too good at putting together game plans.

I think it would be way more entertaining if everyone bad to be good in both styles, and if they coin flipped the day of to decide if they would be wrestling freestyle or greco. One of the big problems with greco is the most entertaining and/or most successful young greco guys wind up going freestyle bc folkstyle requires and rewards it more. It is a must acknowledge, that folkstyle really limits greco’s development.

I really hope he goes to minnesota or michigan...they both have a track record of doing right by their big guys. He would have access to multiple olympians at heavy in whichever room he goes to

Wrestling should really start working towards something like the X games or the UFC. I am a not a fan of Flo overall, but what they did with Final X was really really good. That level of production for the most significant matches in the sport is important. NBC is absolutely an artificial lid/limiter on the sport. Long term, sports that stick around cannot be in a place where they just let some random dudes show up and grenade all semblance of logic for weight class order in pursuit of…I guess ratings and gender equality? That was horsecrap.

The followinb are questions simply so we (I) can understand what is taking place with the olympics, and whether wrestling will eventually need to evolve to celebrate its best competition outside an event like the olympics. Wrestling’s biggest handicap is that it’s most meaningful event piggybacks off of a larger gathering to garner significance. Nobody really cares about American football not being in the olympics, and nobody really cares too much about the basketball or baseball medals. Similarly, MMA sure as heck doesn’t lack for gravity or atmosphere at its events. So is the pushback on athlete headcount entirely from the perspective of managing overhead costs and driving towards an overhead dollars per event or dollars per medal awarded scenario? Makes me wonder what they’re doing for events like the marathon and triathlon, are they shrinking the fields for those events too? Lastly, are host countries entirely responsible for all costs associated with hosting those olympics? If economic and traffic practicalities for the home country are the driving force, it is lame, but makes sense why rosters and total team headcounts would get capped.

Just so we're clear, Greco doesn't HAVE to be boring...it is a stylistic choice that wrestlers make. I know it doesn't HAVE to be boring because I do everything that I can to make sure I watch every match that Jesse Porter and Kamal Bey wrestle. Those dudes are must watch entertainment whether they win or lose EVERY time. So...again...doesn't have to be boring, because those two are the most exciting wrestlers in ALL of USA wrestling, more than anybody in freestyle.

Wrestling has been plagued for its entire existence by the influence of officiating. International wrestling, just like other international/olympic competitions, suffers from influence and sheisty officiating in one direction or another. The situation where you have to beat the official and your opponent is all too common. Just ask Vito (domestically) or Chamizo (internationally) what that's like. Officiating inconsistency and/or poor preparation is terrible. Obviously, this is aimed to talk about the Zahid/Brooks match, which was just a salad of terrible inconsistency. I have never actually seen a ref be so unprepared or out of place that he got run over by the wrestlers. A sidestep is a miraculous thing. One of the best things about folkstyle is that the officiating is so precise compared to freestyle/greco. The international styles are just a messy shitshow of bribery, incompetence, and inconsistency in enforcing already stupid rules.

It's tough for coaches in some sense, but my goodness is it liberating for athletes. It's so incredible that wrestling can be a legit career, dudes can do well, save money, and legit be well on their way towards a down payment or an investment portfolio before they're done with college. That is unprecedented progress by leaps and bounds for wrestling. No longer being a poor man's sport only loved by the spartan monks of the hinterlands is real progress. It does make it tough for coaches...but it also forces coaches and schools to be competitive, and will incentivize longer term relationship building from an earlier age, similar to the Asken Mizzou pipeline (and now...PSU potential pipeline). Mainly, I relish how much this defangs the NCAA. Because, pardon my language, f*@k those people.

I don't believe I'm being biased, I do think it's awfully convenient that Zahid just happens, once again...to be in the middle of another one of these situations. Fool me five times, shame on you...but eventually, we are responsible for pattern recognition. I just don't find it hard to believe that it's something zahid would resort to based on past track record as 1) having done it before and 2) wrestling (and living life) in a way that tends towards finding the limits of which rules will actually be enforced, vs which rules are just given lip service. Again, so many thousands of hours of wrestling happen regularly, so many wrestlers have zero problem NOT grabbing a singlet, headgear, etc...throughout their entire careers(!) Buuuut...somehow this dude regularly winds up in spats, penalties, rules infractions... It's like asking if Penn State has wrestling or if Jordan Burroughs hits double legs.

Dude would get absolutely buzz-sawed by keckeisen. I can’t imagine it would go better with cstar

That very much depends on the situation and the intention. If a ref can reach in and change the situation without affecting action, they can, they can also just call a point. So, a little thought experiment, I wrestled all the way through college, including tons of freestyle and greco, I never once pulled on a singlet, intentionally or otherwise, and I never once had it happen against me either. Come to think of it…I also didn’t see any other singlet penalties throughout the entire tournament. Now, I may have missed one…but I’d also find it very easy to believe that there weren’t any. Also…just watched NCAA’s last month, singlet grabs again…not a major issue. It’s almost like singlets are pretty good at their job and you have to go in search of the singlet to be able to grab it… I also notice that none of brooks’ other opponents found grabbing the singlet difficult to avoid. Come to think of it, off the top of my head, I can think of three wrestlers who so notably grabbed a singlet. 1) tsargush against burroughs 2) Yazdani against Taylor…and 3) valencia once again un-clutching himself in big moments. The dude just always finds a way to lose by a takedown in the big matches. …did anybody on here who wrestled have repeated chronic issues with grabbing headgear or singlets? I swear these gear designers might actually design them to be minimally invasive and hard to grab, almost like that was the point from the beginning… I have zero tears to spill for the captain of team nose-beers. Zahid ended his college career bc he overindulged in the good ol’ colombian pre-workout. Oh, he also very intentionally grabbed that singlet…he was the one who waived off the challenge.

I'm not worried about spencer so long as he doesn't put his knees in dumb positions. He looked so motivated but unconcerned at OTT's, I think he rides that to an olympic medal pretty nicely. He looks like he's mostly through his transformation from the "college dan gable" stage to the "olympic ass-beating dan gable" stage of his career. I'm hopeful for Zain, but I unfortunately would also not be surprised if somehow the weight caught up with him. He has a rough track record at 65kg, and my heart hopes but my head is hesitant to trust just yet.

Can somebody explain this one?

Oklahoma State Loud and obnoxious, both belligerent and whiny, and they always put the most verbally abusive and screechy loud women right by the mic for the match broadcasts.

They are getting better, and they are definitely better than a 1-1 criteria situation.

I love the first half of what you said, but this half I gotta disagree with, only because the exact same thing happens, and it's ENTIRELY IN THE REFEREES HANDS who they put on the shot clock first. If we admit that "you losing a one point match is a you problem", that means that somebody is taking down an equally low quality win which they had handed to them. That is gross, and bad, and everything that wrestling is not about.

I'm going to assume this is Pitt-sized big news, so...they bought some new wrestling mats

I was talking about JB being so competitive it makes him a pretty well established dick. To call taylor a competitive d-bag and then…not call jb or dake that is silly. They all showed up in the same canoe to that party. They’re all so competitive that to be anything other than the best ruins every minute of their day. We saw lots of that early on from Dake when JB beat him and everyone called him a whiner for years. But then he got a world team spot and chilled a bit…then he beat JB and became outwardly much more chill, and JB started seeming like the competitive dbag. They’ve all been this way all along, it’s just whether or not they win some tournaments esch year which determines how they behave. It’s one of the things that was so awesome about J’den, and is awesome about snyder too, they’re really composed and gentlemanly even when they lose. And, even if disappointed or angry, it is at themselves, they may express it but it is towards nobody but themselves, never at anyone else. It’s that lesson we all teach to little kids when they play sports. The irony is some of these guys are so good, they forget that lesson until they are re-taught it in their 30’s.

It’s funny, but I don’t think so. He lost his shit bc J’den got on a sweaty bicycle in their matches and was never penalized for it. J’den’s a great human being, definition of an “ambassador for the sport”, but 2015-16-17 he was allowed to legit RUN away from people in his matches and never got dinged. Go watch the 2017 matches against taylor. It was…generous officiating I believe is the top comment on the 3rd match. Dude just ran and backed up for 2 minutes.

Brooks is a bad matchup against Zahid, but you're also right, it's weird that I believe Brooks would pull down 8 or 9 of ten matches against Taylor, but he would probably be 50/50 against Zahid. But at the same time, I think zahid would be lucky to get 2 from Taylor. Wrestling math is always a mess.

…yes you do…

Pulling in that tay-tay money

So now that Bono got his extension, what’s Tanelli’s path forward looking like?