dragit

I've been thinking a little about this since the Feldman match. Specifically at the 10:18 mark. I think it comes down to your half empty/half full take on what happened there. Feldman made a great shot and got in quite deep. So does that represent a glimmer of hope that an athletic heavy might be able to get a takedown against Steveson? Or does the fact that Steveson INSTANTLY, IMMEDIATELY broke out of it mean he is so f'ing good that even the very best move of a good opponent (at a time when Steveson's guard was down at the end of a match) is like child's play to him? I think it's probably the latter and agree that muscle man Hendrickson taking top and Gable taking bottom and Hendrickson with two chances somehow turning him is probably the only realistic chance, and it's somewhere in that 1/10,000 range mentioned above.

It's a good indication that Ferrari is very good and a real potential future champ, I don't think any of us aren't impressed. Some of us just don't think it says much about him being a threat to beat Starocci, who has a track record of wrestling carefully and tactically at times based on his read of the big picture. Enjoyable to watch? No. But that's what Mesenbrink is for.

These guys are only human. Finishing off history is really hard. We've seen it with Dan Gable and Spencer Lee. Mahomes looked like he was drunk going for his three peat in the Super Bowl. In tennis a few years back Djokovic played the worst match of his career when a win would have meant the Grand Slam. Serena Williams same thing, lost to a nobody. I think because he's so careful Starocci is better situated than most for this, but that pressure will be a wild card.

100% agree re Ferrari and the tiers but there is a basis for worry in that probably the third or fourth best PFP guy is in his weight class, and there will be a ton of pressure on the favorite going for 5. If not for Keck it would be worry free.

And certainly don't penalize the bottom guy!! Officiating wrestling is really hard, there are a lot of very tricky ambiguous positions, usually around control. But this isn't ambiguous, a parallel ride is easy to spot, and it's pretty obvious when the bottom man has no ability or means to build up to a base.

This is a good distinction and I agree the Ramos thing wasn't as bad for a few reasons, including no bad intent -- I believe it was driven by exuberance and joy and not really directed at his opponent. I'm fact I'm a big Ramos fan, just wish he had blown kisses to the crowd instead. But to me the point is that the opponent didn't "let him," he was overmatched and couldn't stop him, and didn't deserve to be humiliated because he's not a great wrestler.

I just don't see how Strickenberger or Ramos are OK, unacceptably disrespectful to the opponent. It's a sport where one guy establishes physical dominance over the other and then has his hand raised while the other has to stand there with their hand down, which is how you know you were the better man. Rubbing their nose in it is bad form for many reasons, including that, if it is done enough, it will lead to actual fights. Shouldn't the basic test be whether you'd be upset/humiliated/enraged if someone did it to you? Wouldn't you feel that way if either of those celebrations happened to you? I've got no problem with shaking a fist or flexing toward the crowd, but things like this that are directly at the opponent aren't cool.

On the whole I thought Ruth was not engaging and you have to defer to the ref on the mat. To nit-pick, though, I thought that two of the calls were arguably harsh. One was on the bottom, this is one I've seen a lot recently, the bottom man is flat, top has a lot of pressure on with a leg basically tied up and is parallel, not really sure what the bottom guy can do in that parallel position. The other was the second to last stalling, Ruth escaped very near the edge and then wasn't able to circle back to the middle. Not going to cry a river for Ruth, though, he wasn't really wrestling.

DQ'ing a Big Ten champ is pretty impressive, let's give him 5 TFs for it, and with Mesenbrink stymied today, that leaves Starocci only 2 TFs behind.

What a show. Was so great seeing him in person in Evanston last month. I really hope he sticks around and goes freestyle.

Then my hope is that in the NCAA final, after he does nothing for six and a half minutes and they are tied 1-1, his shoelace comes untied, he loses a point, then desperately attacks for 30 seconds, and when he ends up prostrate on the mat, Keckheisen stands over and does that to him, and he sends out a nice tweet about the awesome celly.

She is not a scholarship athlete.

Thanks for posting these. Seems like this is basically Terry gotta Terry, and although Terry Terrying is a pretty big topic (that's why Flo had such a hard job editing down their Terry movie to just a couple of hours), in this case with respect to these clips, I was far more impressed by who I assume was Moriah Marinelli, or to be more precise, Air Moriah, jumping to the ceiling during the pinning combination.

They look totally demoralized out there tonight.

Definitely losing his touch. Did you see that match last Friday?