billyhoyle

I thought it was the Schlatter claw?

Yes, and better methods of training to allow athletes to compete later and have less of a drop-off. I still think the absolute peak for the combination of endurance and strength required is ages 22-26. The older these guys get, the more likely they are to have to overcome significant injuries as well (see Yazdani)

Exactly. There is nothing special about the water in Dagestan. In fact, they have significantly worse training conditions than athletes in the U.S. and a smaller pool of athletes. There are really three questions that need to be asked. 1. Should the U.S. be the best country in the world for freestyle? (I think yes, but many seem to not think so) 2. Do you want the U.S. to be the best country for freestyle? (I do, but some seem to not care about U.S. athletes once they graduate from college and stop scoring team points) 3. What changes need to be made so that the U.S. is #1? (This is where it gets contentious. The simple solution is to switch to freestyle, but tweaking the folkstyle rules may be enough, as would some other changes that incentivize better training environments and additional international experience).

The prime of wrestlers is 22-26. The prime of U.S. wrestlers, unfortunately, is 25-29 for this exact reason. And that's because it takes time to adjust to freestyle. The sad reality is that most don't fully adjust and still have terrible habits from folkstyle/never had the opportunity to develop their own style in freestyle.

There are multiple forms of student loan forgiveness written into current law that authorizes the federal government to provide student loans. These are public service loan forgiveness and forgiveness forgiveness from income driven repayment. These aren't handouts but part of the "deal" that people make when they take out student loans. These programs allow for social mobility and for poor people to attend college and graduate/professional schools. Many students believe that the requirements for forgiveness should be less stringent (e.g. decreasing the required payments or years for IDR or PSLF). It's perfectly fine to think that the current law is fine and doesn't need to be made less stringent, but the concept of loan forgiveness is already written into law. BTW, I agree that all student loans shouldn't just be magically forgiven, but I don't think something like the SAVE plan that was implemented is ridiculous. The concept of just saying "tips aren't taxable" is pulled out of thin air, and it's pure populism. What is the point of that? Why do one specific class of workers no longer have to pay income tax on their income?

In some states, servers are required to be paid at least minimum wage (not counting tips) + benefits if they are full time. The solution to restaurants not paying a living wage isn’t to create an arbitrary group of tax-free employees-it’s to pay actual salary.

But neither are Russia’s or Irans. The best athletes in those countries are playing soccer.

I’m sure they saw a poll in Nevada showing how popular it is. It’s idiotic populism to just deem tips as a form of tax free income. Why should waiters pay no taxes while janitors and cooks do?

The reason the Russians are better isn’t because they weight train differently. And it’s not because there are chemicals in the water in Dagestan. You can succeed in wrestling without doing heavy weight training, but it helps a lot to do it. And yes, the elite athletes are doing different types of lifts than just curls and bench press, so you don’t have to worry about that.

130 Kg final is easily the answer from an entertainment standpoint. The 65 Kg final from a standpoint of it being absolutely great wrestling. That low single to lace sequence against a guy who was heavily favored and demolished everyone was the most unexpected thing I’ve seen in the sport in a long time. And it was executed beautifully. The wrestling equivalent of a perfect spiral on an end zone fade route or a 90 mph slider that paints the corner.

From raw numbers of course there will be more folkstyle wrestlers- because Americans wrestle Folkstyle and U.S. wrestlers have been a significant percentage of MMA fighters. As more Russians are entering UFC, it is becoming more clear that freestyle is the better style for MMA. It's not a coincidence that despite the prevalence of folkstyle in the U.S., the most successful American wrestlers in UFC had a strong freestyle (Cormier, Cejudo) background. Then when you factor in GSP and Khabib, I think it becomes pretty clear.

If Ohio State fans are bitter at all about how Kyle Snyder left Ohio State, they need to reassess their priorities. The guy is the greatest wrestler the university has ever produced and one of their greatest athletes. If he wanted to move, regardless of the reason and whatever the timing, that's his choice and the fans should support him. He gave so much to that program, and he did it before NIL existed. And it's not as if he was somebody that wasn't heavily recruited that they largely developed in house, he was the biggest can't miss recruit in our lifetime.

So based on talent, participation, and training resources, would you say we should be #1? But based on our approach to developing this talent and using these resources, it makes sense that we aren't?

So do you think if the U.S. switched to Greco/Freestyle, we would be the best in the world at both?

Swimming emphasizes all the different strokes, which is why overall they are the best program in the world.

It is worse than a clean sprawl/spin around or countershot, which Freestyle encourages. Folkstyle wrestlers who get in the habit of letting their opponents get to their leg are not as good defensively in MMA because scrambling doesn't work as well.

Folkstyler because I know if they get up, they are going to be way less dangerous from neutral. I'm assuming a freestyler can know a basic stand up technique.

But do you think we should be #1? I'm not asking whether we are doing the right things to be #1, but whether based on participants/resources/etc, you think we ought to be.

Yoel Romero was like 40 when he joined MMA. Couture was great-I guess Greco is helpful too (Lingland more evidence of this). I just don't think Folkstyle is special when the Russians seem to be great MMA fighters and the folkstyle specialists like Rosholt, Konrad, Hendricks, Palmer etc were good but not as successful as the freestylers.

Both JBs did a great job! I actually liked this duo better than when Smith was there. Smith is a wealth of knowledge, but from a pure announcing standpoint, I think he rambled too much. Burroughs was to the point and had great insights on the rules/scoring. He was able to predict most of the replay results, and also allowed the main play by play announcer to do his thing.

Khabib was probably the best wrestler in MMA history, along with GSP. They definitely did not have a folkstyle background. Cormier had done folkstyle, but was a much better freestyler than he was at folkstyle (0X NCAA champion, but long time world team member with medals), and had not done folkstyle for about a decade when he transitioned to MMA. Cejudo barely wrestled any folkstyle. When he was competing in HS tournaments in AZ, he was taking people down and letting them up-basically practicing his freestyle wrestling. The best way to train for MMA with wrestling would be to do freestyle neutral (as it discourages rolling across your back with scrambling and encourages clean finishes) and then to also train BJJ. Folkstyle top/bottom does not substitute for BJJ and if anything might just teach some bad habits.

There has been a lot of discussion about whether the U.S. Men's Freestyle team underperformed, performed to expectations, or outperformed expectations. I think the answer depends on how good you think U.S. Freestyle wrestling "should" be. If the answer is that the U.S. should be in good years at best on par with Iran and still worse than Russia, then this was an average or good performance for the team. Based on my expectations going into the tournament, I was disappointed. But in retrospect, I think they performed about as well as we could have expected, and as fans we should all appreciate that effort. But why do we have these expectations? In Iran, soccer is the most popular sport. Wrestling is more popular in Iran than it is in other countries, but Iran itself struggles resource-wise to support athletics. The only sports they medal in are wrestling, Taekwondo/Karate, and Weightlifting. In Russia, of course Dagestan is the absolute best place in the world for wrestling. But the population of Dagestan is 3 million. They are the gold standard in the world from a relatively small number of participants, who like Iran, are under resourced. What about the U.S.? There are youth wrestling clubs throughout the country. 300,000 high school students participate in wrestling. We have a number of very well funded NCAA programs, and avenues for our athletes to compete on the international circuit if they are the best in the country. We have more participants and better resources than every other country in the world. So, based on this, should the U.S. be the #1? If not, why shouldn't we be?

The best wrestlers in MMA have been Cormier, Cejudo, and Khabib, so the answer to your question is freestyle.

And neither did the US until recently. 0 gold medals until 2016, and only now is women’s wrestling starting at the D1 collegiate level. The difference is the women are focusing on freestyle their entire lives. If women’s NCAA wrestling gains traction, and we get even 1/5th of the participation numbers of men’s wrestling, there’s no doubt in my mind US will surpass Japan. BTW, the countries that are supposedly impossible to surpass in men’s FS like Russia and Iran barely support the men’s sport as well. I was talking to a friend from Japan (lived there his entire life until 4 years ago), and he had no clue Japan even is good at wrestling and had no idea how people in Japan learn it. We have orders of magnitude more athletes competing in wrestling at the youth level compared to these better countries, and our ncaa athletes have significantly more resources. The difference is we compete in a completely different style that kneecaps our athletes against the best in the world.

You can ban high amplitude throws. Or maybe ban them in HS but not college. Or maybe allow them if the attacking wrestler can ensure the opponent lands on his back and not neck, kind of like we have now with folkstyle where you can throw and mat return, but only if it’s under control. There are ways to adjust the rules so that there are still the awesome throws we see in freestyle, but not the ones that are super dangerous.