wrestle87

taylor is notably less muscled this year than last year

mckenna just had the referees job his opponent out of another win...this dude should have been eating burgers yesterday. Slay must have put a special memo out to the refs that "this is our RTC guy this year, please give him all the special treatments"

the wrong leg hooked in merkle style negates a takedown by rule in freestyle

Lol usually its two raccoons in a feed sack

I’m gonna disagree with this. It’s not a standard of behavior that has historically been accepted in wrestling, and I have no interest in making it an accepted behavior in any way. ”It’s Ok to be a tone deaf d-bag” is not in any way what the sport is about.

Item number 1) PSU fans behaved terribly toward burroughs. Item number 2) Many people are demonstrating some impressive historic myopia in thinking about how this all balances with JB’s historical performances.

Unfortunately, that two handed shot he gave MM to the back of the head was the most dedicated attack he showed all tournament.

That guy was a trash human being in that moment.

Having never been to Penn State, is this for real?

PSU did a great deal to close that gap last night

Gilman in 3 (I would never choose this for freestyle, but Gilman sounds and looks a lot like he did for his 2021 run) Zain in 3 - Nick Lee has a lot of finesse moves (even though they don't look like it), and they require opponents who are willing to extend themselves. Zain is a squatted, balled up lump of muscle the entire time he is on the mat. Dake in 2 - Unfortunately, what I saw in the premier match today was the regression of a legend, not the progression of one of PSU's premier studs Taylor in 3 - Brooks has much better movement and defense, and Zahid gives everybody weird problems. I think he cracks the armor a bit, even if it isn't enough to fully get over the hump Snyder in 3 - Trumble is making a case that he's the next Snyder in waiting, at some point he may do to snyder what snyder did to varner Parris in 2 - I'm impressed in a feel-good way for zilmer, but also bummed for him, bc I think he will be the gatekeeper to this weight for a while. Parris is so big and so fast, I think zillmer just doesn't have a wide enough frame to be effective at defending parris' fireman's dump or his top game. Parris is a big big dude.

If Marstellar can make that weight. Homeboy got BIIIIIIG for this tournament. And it worked about as well as it could have with his frame. He made trent hidlay look average-sized, which is insane. He will be bringing a LOT of horsepower to bear down at 79kg.

I have a feeling that, for the domestic scene, this will go down as one of the most eventful days in the past decade of wrestling. This seemed like a real shift that happened slowly and then all at once...there is only one corner of domestic wrestling that is truly flourishing... With J'den officially retiring, and JB failing to make the finals for the first time in history, it feels like a real changing of the guard which is usually cool to see...but I didn't expect that it would happen this abruptly, or have the vibe that it does. J'den and JB were two of the great foils on the domestic scene, keeping balance and always able to show up and throw a wrench in the works for anyone who got too big for their britches. But more importantly, they also showed that you can cut your own path, and bootstrap your way through a program not named PSU to senior level success. I have a feeling we will look back, and see that this was the day the republic became an empire, this was the day anakin skywalker became darth vader, or....for those who have done right by themselves and seen this movie... This scene is exactly what today felt like...and I'm broadly a PSU fan. Today was impressive, it was jaw dropping, it was eye-catching, but it was not fun in the way I expected it to be.

I dunno about entirely. Dake made some pretty poor tactical decisions against Burroughs. For many years, Dake would find a way to lose against burroughs the same way that taylor would find a way to lose against Dake. That's what makes current Dake so impressive. He did what it took to find those extra levels when he was already THAT good at the outset of his senior career. But if you go back and watch the way he wrestled compared to how he moves now, he's an entirely different dude. Go back and watch his early 79kg worlds matches (~2018-19 I think), you can watch him finding his way to his current Ali-esque style, which is the only good way I can think of describing it.

Gives me flashbacks of bader being incensed at the burroughs tsargush match, can't remember if it was at worlds or the 2012 olympics, but the dude legit tore a fist-sized hole in JB's singlet

I definitely thought this...I thought I saw that on his face after he lost to Dake in 2021, and I thought Dake might have talked him out of it in the moment.

The ref tried to win that match for BOTH athletes...amazingly. This was just a hyper inflated 3-shot clock match.

That was an amazing match, but that is everything wrong with the rules of freestyle right now. Just so much inconsistency open to the whims of three random people who decided they wanted to officiate.

That ref was WAY too big a part of that match.

does wrestling use football rules about the official being a part of the mat?

Nothing like a few tempe nose beers for pre-match pep

heads up yall, it's on the mat 2 stream for peacock

I'm paranoid about missing part of the broadcast now...are they saving the 86kg match to be the final full screen match of the night?

That was so brutal for gwiz. He decided he was good just standing there and trying to take that kind of win...when he clearly had the speed and horsepower to mix it up enough to get points on the board. Play that game and I guess sometimes the fates line up against you. They both only put ~10% on the mat in that match.

This is...dare I say...the worst take about this match on this board...