wrestle87

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?

Oof, I didn’t know about that. That’s so disappointing. Discussion of anything else feels instantaneously trivial in the face of that.

Doing it wrong, yeah obviously not for most of them, but the NBA is having trouble, and the MLB is just dead in the water. Supporting a positive engaged fanbase is really important, one of the real dangers in supporting what we saw from the Penn State crowd this weekend is it alienates the positive supportive crowd who grow the sport long term. I forget who on here referenced it, but the Iowa crowd, while enthusiastic, knows and respects the sport and any competitor who brings it. I felt like I was listening to the Okie State crowd rooting for NLWC athletes this weekend. Just biased nonsense at high persistent volume. That’s going to be a stain the program will have a very hard time wiping away.

All fair points. And, ultimately the heart of all this is how disappointing the crowd behavior was in Penn State. That warrants the most attention….in an entirely negative way. A trashy crowd only hurts events. JB didn’t deserve to be treated the way he was.

So, firstly if you are going to engage in an apples to oranges comparison, that’s never going to work. Leave everything at the door if that’s the game you want to play, bc that’s a big fat bait and switch. People didn’t give a hootin crap about LSU vs Iowa, they watched because Clark was setting records all time sport records, and was surpassing the records set by the best mens players. WBB will unfortunately most likely be back to playing on the Ocho next year. I’d love to be wrong, but the biggest draw will be gone. I think the best analogy is to compare the trash boosting effect to putting a good high school athlete on a constant heavy tren cycle. They will murder senior year and find their way onto a college roster, but they start snapping tendons, will spend half their college career in a wheelchair, and will be an orthopedic mess by 30. The NFL started this process with Brady, constantly needing a QB to have the media fellate, and they are working desperately to have Mahomes step into those shoes. They are on that ride now, pushing cult of personality instead of organic fan base growth, and they will struggle to get off that merry-go-round.

No, because Mesenbrink wasn’t a grown ass man who give himself internal dispensation to unload a free two handed wound up shot at the back of the head of a 20 year old he was stomping. ”He was going to hurt him!” Well…he could have just sprawled.

I hear this, but also MM was doing nothing compared to the stuff JB has handled over the course of his career. Russians, Iranians, Dake, et al have thrown WAY worse at him and he has handled it way better. But then, as we saw, he had no offense the next round, and I think that internal vulnerability got the best of him.

Leaning into trashy for the sake of numbers doesn’t help a sport, it makes money for the organizers, that is not the same thing. Any sport that had leaned into trashy instead of simply aiming to develop quality ultimately pays the price. All of the sports you mentioned are now struggling under the weight of their own “trashy” that they leaned into. Going that road is a one-way ticket, the media around the sport get addicted to trash instead of actually discussing and supporting the sport, and it hollows the entire artifice out top to bottom. Basketball was beloved 20 years ago, since then it has succeeded in becoming bloated, tired, and legitimately selling its soul at the feet of the almighty RMB. MLB was on par with the NFL and NBA, it is now much closer to the NHL, and CFB/CBB are dominated by trashy media who talk nonsense instead of actually discussing the sport. That will catch up with them big time. The NFL has taken its first major step in the trash direction by making pop-singers a part of every broadcast, and they are really starting to lean into the trash for cash marketing model too. The world as a whole is tiring of this…and the trouble with it becomes that trash for cash marketing is a different media orientation and skillset that completely supplants real analysis. It’s like eating nothing but oreos for a week. The first hour may be great, but it’s basically hell by day two. Wrestling has grown by leaps and bounds in the past 15 years. It is built into our bones to believe in a boogeyman that is coming for us, but there are now paid positions for good wrestlers right out of high school, wrestling is a legit career path in and of itself for both genders, more than it ever has been. Now, if you were to tell Greco to lean into that strategy for the sake of growth…I would have to say I agree with you, but the sport as a whole doesn’t need it.

I think I heard it on this board, but I believe one of his shoulders gave out prior to his jumping weight classes

Watching that final and realizing there were 7 ncaa titles on that mat was just preposterous.

That is a match I would love to see. Just 30 minutes of hard clubs ended with an angry handshake.

We also have to be real, Yazdani isn't a full 86kg wrestler, he's a 74 who didn't want to cut weight anymore. It's impressive what Yazdani has done, but could you imagine how good he would have been if he stayed down at 74? It's awesome that DT has been able to go on the run that he did, and this is going to come off very poorly, but I promise I am a very big DT fan, DT has pressure and flailed his way to his titles, and has done so in the weakest weight class of the 6. One thing that has always been evident about DT is he's an effort and volume guy. Dude's not exactly a precision wrestler. He made his money being the biggest guy on the mat, and missing 11 shots so he could land the 12th. This becomes a problem when you decide you're going to wrestle like Dake and only generate two or three scoring events in a match. Taylor has always been 14-4 or 18-8 tech fall guy, not a 10-0 tech fall guy.

Zain or nolf did not have to navigate any weight classes which were even 50% as good as what MM did this year. You can poopoo all you want, the kid went out and torched all but one person in the deepest weight at NCAA's by far.

Greco in its current iteration has no continuity. OB is such a penalty that the sport has become Sumo with Par-Terre, minus the cool parts of Sumo. Last point scoring criteria also ruins the sport (I think it's trash for freestyle too, I hate that criteria).

Love to see a program get saved. Guess we know now which side of things that last thread falls on...