Cherkov

I think Russia's greco program is heavily involved with their military. Semenov is a soldier, as is Evloev, I think Emelin as well There is no greco version of Dagestan or Ossetia.

2022 Still didn't come close to medaling even with the best team banned from worlds. Lost their only serious medal threat, who quit the sport in his 20s. Nothing exciting at age group events. Lost a head coach and GM. Amos. He doesn't have the hours in greco but I'm not convinced that even by the time Amos is 30 and finally caught up to the internationals with reps and technique exposure, that he's athletically talented enough to beat the best 97s. 97 is pretty tier striated. Evloev, Aleksanjan, and Saravi are separated from the the field. And Amos is a mid to lower field wrestler.

Well Adam Coon was, charitably assessing his abilities, perhaps the 6th best wrestler in the field when he won a world silver. And his level wasn't even competitive (tech loss type) against multiple entrants. So with double bronzes, one weight per country, and still no real ranking system to make fair draws.

The US could be strong enough domestically in Freestyle where they really don't need to at this point and it doesn't hurt them. The in room competition might be better than everyone but like three or four internationals that aren't at whatever event anyways. There is just being used to traveling and taking parts in tournaments that acclimation, but the US squad is pretty veteran and experienced. It's other styles that need out of country competition. The second best US guy at some Greco weights could be a tech loss against a non medalist from the field level.

They'd have to weight whether it's worth potentially giving up on a cushy job in politics or some admin role in the national wrestling federation. Not all of them get it, but the most successful ones traditionally do land these types of jobs after they retire from competing.

Uguev and Sidakov are both the nominal number 1s at their weight, but lets not mythologize what their standing was before. Uguev barely won at the Olympics and Sidakov was not that young when he won the Olympic gold. If they had competed at the big tournaments since Tokyo, both of them could have picked up losses imo. Especially Uguev, there was not much seperation between him and the field.

"other than the best wrestling country in the world who wasn't there"

Sadulaev has had some match up struggles with a couple wrestlers well below his league. Someone like Hushtyn can wrestle him close and score points against him. Sadulaev definitely doesn't tech fall or pin everyone, eventually a close match can go against you. I don't think Taylor would beat him, but he has 8-7, 3-1, 9-6 type wins on his record while not being a terribly active wrestler. He will skip euros and russian nationals.

I don't care so much where it is, but it would be nice to actually have a tournament where all the strongest wrestlers show up. We haven't seen that since 2021 Tokyo and it's not looking good so far.

/

I kind of like it. Most other sports are 24/7 affairs and all the top people face each other 5 million times and the matches don't mean anything and blend together. It makes int wrestling unique in the landscape. If it were to happen, I'd like it to exist outside of the UWW- IOC structure . Something like how tennis exists outside of the Olympics in any consideration. UWW trying to create two de facto WCs....,( which this blatantly is with the silly "all world" team addition) is pointless imo. Understand from your perspective, but it was kind of predictable that the top people wouldn't show up.

I don't blame them. The best FS country is still banned and the other world #1s -3s are mostly skipping it. A Taylor or Dake don't get anything out of that type of competition, training or legacy wise. The WC are special in wrestling because they are the only tournament where all the best people show up and compete (though that hasn't actually been the case for worlds since 2019). I don't get the need to recreate those conditions and dilute the WC's importance? Especially if wrestling keeps its current Olympic sport style format of competition.