steamboat_charlie v2

I don't think you could have possibly watched Pletcher throughout his career and not noticed a significant jump in his senior year, which he attributed to mindset, not weight. Agree to disagree I suppose.

30% might be high, but agreed, there's a chance. Now if it's actually true that Sadulaev was significantly hampered by injury at the Olympics, and is close to 100% now, we may look silly saying there was any chance at all.

"Some takedown defense" .... lmao. At least he's learned from Pico's early mistakes.

Seems pretty reasonable. If I had to nitpick, Snyder should be higher. Not because he has a great chance at beating Sadulaev, but I still think there's a reasonable chance he doesn't show or still isn't right. If he's not there, Snyder wins the weight. 4 or 5 guys would need to no show before Green wins that weight IMO. And I wouldn't move him up the list, but Fix is a bit of a wild card given his... history.

I'm not saying the weight wasn't a factor, because that does matter, but didn't make any sort of jump? That's ridiculous. He improved substantially between '19 and '20, starting with some really strong freestyle wins after the '19 season that helped flip a switch for him. He talked about it in multiple interviews during the '20 season and attributed his improvement to a change in his mentality... which was readily apparent for anyone watching. There have been many others like that that've made a career off of winning close matches, only to eventually unlock their offense when they realize guys shouldn't be able to hang with them in the first place.

I was alleging that Starocci already made his leap.

I think your premise is off just a little. You're viewing these guys through your own prism--and from that point of view, of course they should hang it up, enter the work force, save for retirement. Most of us here already made that decision a long time ago. Let's be real though... a lot of these guys are just wrestlers. That's all they're ever going to be. They don't know anything else, and they don't really care to. When they're forced to hang it up, wrestling isn't over, they just start coaching it. It's like me trying to convince my cousins from bumf!@k USA that they should put forth effort in school so that they can go to college and get out of there. It just doesn't compute.

Would love for him to just come out and say what he's thinking. All of this cryptic stuff is just weird. J'Den's whole vibe in the entire run up to OTT's was already bizarre. Do you guys remember that weird 15 minute "which weight am I going?" announcement video? Strange training situation. Then he misses weight. The whole ordeal will go down as one of the more bizarre "what if's" in US Olympic history. Now at trials... good lord. Looks like he's back.

Well, if you think about it, Zain jumped levels during his redshirt year. RS Sophomore Zain is still probably the best version of him we've ever seen... I don't even think he's a better wrestler today. Mark Hall never took a redshirt, and thus, never really improved. Following that logic, given that Starocci already burned his magical redshirt year, we can expect that he'll pretty much be the same guy he is today for the rest of eternity.

I added the caveat that it's not a perfect comparison, precisely because there is a weight difference. It's more that Amine was close to Ferrari's weight when they wrestled, and Ferrari beat him. And were Amos and Amine close to the same weight for a freestyle match, I think Amine wins that comfortably. And not just because he won Olympic bronze; Myles Amine has been a consistent competitor on the senior level for two years now, ranked in the top 10, with multiple wins over world medalists. On the other hand, Amos got 10-0'd by Kollin Moore in April. Moore is on the same level as Amine IMO (for their respective weight classes). There's no shame in that, and I like Amos. I think he will eventually be better than Amine... just not yet. Is O'Toole suddenly better than Bekzod, because he also won Juniors?

You're a !@#$ing punk, dude.

Far from a perfect comparison... but Amos isn't beating Amine in a freestyle match right now, while Ferrari was able to beat Amine in folk. Strange as it is considering, well, everything about him, Ferrari's match intelligence is one of his strengths. He knows where he's good and he knows where he's not--I see that being the difference in a tight match.

How dare they! And there's absolutely no track record (spanning many decades) of the most successful collegiate programs habitually bending, if not breaking, the rules. If that track record did exist, then maybe there would be cause for suspicion. Thank God it doesn't.

To be fair, that is a classic combo. Right up there with peanut butter and jelly... wings and beer... cookies and cream... biscuits and gravy...

Perhaps. I just don't think his game was particularly well suited for international competition. Relentless pace has its limits, and there are a lot of guys out there with better physical gifts, more athleticism, slicker technique, etc. Regardless, he had a solid 4 or 5 year run there. If he had gotten over the hump just once at Worlds, we would look at it differently.