wrestle87

There are many which are really interesting, matter of fact, and informative from Dave. This is the one I always think of first though.

The college season is way too long. The only athletes who compete in a sport as brutal as wrestling with similar frequency are muay thai fighters, and they are done and dusted largely within their early 20’s. Also, the standard within most D1 programs is that if you are good, you should be competing internationally as well, even during the season. That’s insane. Folkstyle wrestling is great, but the season is waaaaay too long. It effectively stretches from September through to March, for D1 guys it effectively never stops. You either wrestle everyday until you graduate, or your body breaks. Even at the D3 level “unofficial” practice 5-7 days a week starts as soon as school opens, and you’re flat out through NCAA’s. Coaches are learning that it doesn’t pay to tell most wrestlers to be practice room heroes, it makes a big difference to be salty but fresh, and enthusiasm stays way way higher for different parts of the year because, if your coach tells you we have 4 major events this year instead of “NCAA champ or your soul is worthless!” like in the old days, it develops a better wrestler, a happier person and a healthier human being.

Flo continues to be trash. I stopped my membership a month ago. My life is better without the endless cycle of excitement turning to disappointment bc of broadcast quality only to be met with corporate gaslighting.

I haven’t heard anyone mention this, but I have to imagine that it will lead to a significant increase in the amount of sports-focused chemistry at the now NCAA and now high-school level. Dave Tate of former westside and now EliteFTS fame has some really good discussions about the practical use cases and the reality of “chemistry” being a useful switch that will only raise you a certain amount. Considering that being a high school stud now gets you PAID, has High School now become what college used to be, and youth levels what high school used to be?

Lol, I trust the cauliflower ears, but that’s him with a goofy filter.

I was nodding “mhm this might be 100% plausible” until the last paragraph, when it became ”ah, another (not entirely unfounded) hit piece against one of the poorer representatives the sport has seen in a very long time.”

This situation is a major failure on both the side of the athlete, and definitely the coaching staff. Kids bouncing from programs is a major failure and waste of resources on the part of coaches, and shows underdeveloped analysis and decision-making. Understanding who kids are, what they want out of your program, and how they’ll adjust and integrate to your coaching style is a major part of athlete success, especially in one of the few remaining “wrestling is war, wrestling is life, anger and sacrifice are the key to victory” rooms around the country. Chance was 171 his senior year IIRC, and and they tried to shoehorn him into 157. Throwing an extreme cut at a new freshman who is away from a very intense home situation for the first time is a textbook recipe for exactly what happened. Destroy a kid’s confidence, suck the joy out of life, perfect recipe for a spiral, especially for athletes who use sports to battle or ignore demons. If an athlete can leave a place and find success elsewhere, but has to endure potential hardship along the way, some of that gets laid at the feet of the coaching staff, at a bare minimum for not doing sufficient homework on the psychology of their potential recruits. This is an area that I think is great about NIL. NIL makes immediate returns tangible, and motivates a level of professional and mental preparation that exceeds that from days of yore.

I don’t mean to be mr grumpy gills, but GOAT is a pretty straightforward moniker. I have never heard anyone refer to any of these people, or make a well-defended argument, about how any of them are the greatest of all time in college wrestling. That conversation really starts and ends with one dude. But then when we get to international wrestling, all bets are off. Hard to account for some crazy guy out of the mountains who is juiced to the gills.

Can confirm, from the north, been to other places. The north has bad tacos no doubt, and mediocre bbq at best, but the pizza, bagels, and delis are very on point.

Anything that would legitimately compete for a national title.

I’m not saying this to be argumentative, I do think OSU is in a precarious situation to an under-appreciated extent. While historically a top 3 program in everyone’s mind who remembers wrestling before cael at penn state, I can’t recall the last time okie state had a real murderers row. In an era where the benefits of gentler(ie less insane) coaching and smarter programming have become abundantly clear, injury rates and outcomes for athletes in that program have taken a real nose dive in the past ten years. It seems like, increasingly each year, good kids go to that program and leave tired, exhausted, and injured. It is something you here in the voices of every graduate of that room, even the major bigtime studs like cormier, mark munoz, jordan oliver, esposito, pendleton, watch their faces when they tell John Smith stories. They all just sound shell shocked. Fear is no longer a legacy that maintains or builds programs. I think it says boatloads that munoz the younger is at oregon state with pendleton, and doing very well there. For whatever reason they showed Espo the door, even though he (must have) been carrying tons of water for that program for more than a decade. I can’t imagine anyone staying in the room very long if not for Espo. I guess they decided if you want the HC job you need an olympic medal. It’s nice to gloss over the situational specifics, but this isn’t tom ryan going to Ohio State after the graceful retirement of a long-time father figure to the program. This feels a lot more like a guy not wanting to take a hint, and the administration making moves to give him the old shoulder nudge. Is it a desirable place? Maybe, but he has been so monolithic there for so long, nobody knows what okie state is without him, and from the looks of it he’s turned so ornery that it’s not a lock that institutional knowledge, know-how, or relationships will be left in states of good repair upon his exit. Gable, while also a thoroughly nuts personality, maintained relationships and understood “big” wrestling rather well. The Iowa wrestling team is, from an admin level, very well managed, and Gable clearly has guided his successors and instilled the importance of communication and stewardship in them. I do not expect the same from the wizard of the low single. IMO, they wouldn’t have brought in a coach who knows how to start from scratch if the situation were better.

Does he really?(rhetorical question, that’s pretty cool) Is that dry year round or just dry for the season? And not being from Oklahoma, I’m going to ask the obnoxious question about why that would be difficult in Stillwater.

I would also like to understand what is happening here…

I hadn’t thought about this, but what about Dake? He was the anti-captain america for so much of his career, being the un-taylor, un-burroughs and un-cox, the shadowy mountain voodoo ninja who just kept at it for almost a decade before really breaking through.

I get that, but that’s also 1) still extremely difficult 2) a result of the best guys making use of prep and technology, and using everything that we have at our fingertips that wasn’t there in the past, which I think is largely mindset-driven. No coincidence that Yianni won after such extensive exposure to dake, and that Cael is passing along his knowledge to his guys. Also, this isn’t a new goal, Iowa guys in the 80’s were knocking on the 4x door, they just never got over the hump. Let’s keep in mind, with a real referee, Jordan oliver is a 3xer and logan steiber is also a 3xer. We’re not exactly swimming in 4x wrestlers.

I’m not sure, just remember reading gable’s books back in the day and he referenced having to show up at bars and straighten things out with the cops a few times, figured that is worthy of inclusion, but I don’t know who that would include

“Seeearch your leg attacks, you know the pick to be true…”

Razor thin, and I have an obnoxious answer. For college, I’d say Starocci. I predict that overall, however, it will be Brooks. It is such a fine line, but Starocci has more big moment wins over guys who at the time were legitimate contenders, and he has widened the gap against those he’s still competing against. However, 174 is arguably worst weight to be at for anyone with international aspirations, rivaled only by 133. The jumps are too big, and usually guys at 174 don’t have the frame for 86kg, and the cut to 74kg is too much of a pull for them.

I have to put cenzo as my 165, dude was always so positive and smiley around wrestling. Plus, decking Imar his freshman year was just epic.

Great call. Anybody around who remembers the 80’s Iowa teams? There have to be some guys from those teams, I just wasn’t around to watch them.

For Heavyweight, gotta be Mocco after he went to Okie State, that makes him double-heel, he was the bad guy at Iowa, but then went to potentially the most heel team to ever win an ncaa championship, even being a heel for the Iowa fanbase.

There was a very successful 125-133 lb wrestler for ISU and PSU in the early Cael days who was so uncouth in his unbridled disregard for personal space that he could probably take down both the 125 and 133 spots.

How deep are we going on this in terms of heel definition? There are a few athletes who fell rather far afoul of what is expected in decent society (even before gambling ), are we taking any of that into account?