David Taylor vs. Logan Stieber

[VakAttack 2,764]

These are two great wrestlers who are contemporaries of one another. Logan had a more successful collegiate career and was a bonus point monster. They've had similar levels of success thusfar on the world stage, though Taylor is obviously still going. Yet, if you asked most wrestling fans who was better, I think they would say Taylor. Why? Am I wrong?

 

Is it due to the association with Penn State and their team championships? Is it because of their one high school match up kind of "cementing" a pecking order?

 

Maybe I'm just flat wrong, but I just found myself thinking about the two and automatically putting Taylor ahead, and then I started questioning myself.

 

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[dmm53 471]

 

[hammerlockthree 2,043]

Its a good question.

Taylor had the added appeal of dominating while looking like a 13 year old boy half his career, where as Stieber was often complimented (dismissively) for his freakish strength.

Taylor had a much more dynamic style, it seemed like you never knew what he was gonna pull out, meanwhile Stieber just fired off lefty off his lefty sweep/low double combo and no one could stop it. 

Fair or not, stiebers off year world title does not have anywhere near the luster of Taylors title at an olympic weight. Stieber also got completely clowned several times at the senior level which is hard to imagine happening to taylor.

In my mind the wins over Yazdani Chariti are what put Taylors career on another level.

[VakAttack 2,764]

Its a good question.
Taylor had the added appeal of dominating while looking like a 13 year old boy half his career, where as Stieber was often complimented (dismissively) for his freakish strength.
Taylor had a much more dynamic style, it seemed like you never knew what he was gonna pull out, meanwhile Stieber just fired off lefty off his lefty sweep/low double combo and no one could stop it. 
Fair or not, stiebers off year world title does not have anywhere near the luster of Taylors title at an olympic weight. Stieber also got completely clowned several times at the senior level which is hard to imagine happening to taylor.
In my mind the wins over Yazdani Chariti are what put Taylors career on another level.

I think Taylor is undoubtedly showing himself to be a better Freestyler. However, I feel like people held this opinion even while both were in college. Maybe it's because Taylor's loss to Bubba is perceived as a fluke and Dake is just a brighter light, whereas Stieber is perceived as having gotten lucky against Oliver (and having lost soundly to him before that) and then losing to a true freshman Zain. Maybe I just answered my own question, but I feel like we as a community default to NCAA results, but don't in this comparison?

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[hammerlockthree 2,043]

Well Taylor has more compelling narratives. The shocking loss to Bubba and "rivalry" with Dake were insanely dramatic moments, and as you said way more digestible than winning a NCAA title so ugly it inspired a rule change immediately.  

Another comparison, we still hear as much or more about Mark Perry as we do about Stieber, and the only reason is that his story had just about everything you could imagine packed into it. Was he in any way comparable to Stieber as a wrestler? No but he had a better narrative. 

We hear 10x as much about Downey as Stieber, and they aren't even in the same universe as wrestlers.

Edited July 8, 2020 by hammerlockthree

[ShakaAloha 118]

Taylor and its not close.  I made the same points as several of you in the other thread, but one poster (probably LS' family member) jumped all over me.

[headshuck 2,203]

Gotta win the tight matches. Psychologically, Steiber.

[madcat11 404]

Who is Taylor’s best folk style win?  Caldwell?

[VakAttack 2,764]

Who is Taylor’s best folk style win?  Caldwell?

St. John, probably.

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[madcat11 404]

Just now, VakAttack said:

St. John, probably.

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Ah true forgot about him.

[hammerlockthree 2,043]

15 minutes ago, VakAttack said:

St. John, probably.

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Fittery majored St. John immediately after getting beat badly by Taylor.

Obviously St. John got a title eventually, but we can do the side by side comparison when they actually wrestled Taylor.

Edited July 8, 2020 by hammerlockthree

[Hotkarl712 98]

Wasn't Stieber an eighth grader for that match?

[pamela 1,334]

4 hours ago, VakAttack said:

I think Taylor is undoubtedly showing himself to be a better Freestyler. However, I feel like people held this opinion even while both were in college. Maybe it's because Taylor's loss to Bubba is perceived as a fluke and Dake is just a brighter light, whereas Stieber is perceived as having gotten lucky against Oliver (and having lost soundly to him before that) and then losing to a true freshman Zain. Maybe I just answered my own question, but I feel like we as a community default to NCAA results, but don't in this comparison?

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I think during his time in college it was because DT was riding such a tidal wave of hype from his age-group accomplishments. Going up from 112 to 135(?) just for tougher competition, wrestling Colin Palmer at 140, Ironman, Junior FS & Greco, all the stories of flying around the country for wrestling practice every week, all that stuff. Stieber was a also stud entering college, so no disrespect, but the fanfare around Taylor was pretty unreal.

[nom 860]

I’d suggest that it is because, for the large majority of his matches, when you watched Taylor, you said ‘wow.’  The variety of his moves, excellence in every position, and his dominance created an aura.  Seemed untouchable outside of Dake.  
 

Stieber was awesome, but he just didn’t seem to create the same aura.

[pamela 1,334]

2 minutes ago, nom said:

I’d suggest that it is because, for the large majority of his matches, when you watched Taylor, you said ‘wow.’  The variety of his moves, excellence in every position, and his dominance created an aura.  Seemed untouchable outside of Dake.  
 

Stieber was awesome, but he just didn’t seem to create the same aura.

That's true, Taylor's chain wrestling was super slick and the way he enjoyed scoring was the start of a new era at PSU. I'll say Stieber was equally impressive, just in a different way. Every match looked brutal and really painful for his opponents. Zain was that way too. Not a DT kind of "wow, that was cool" more like, "wow, I can't believe Zain didn't rip that guy's arms right off".

[nhs67 1,077]

1 hour ago, Hotkarl712 said:

Wasn't Stieber an eighth grader for that match?

 

[nhs67 1,077]

Crap meant to say it tells you in the vid they were both in HS.

[balanceseeker 95]

1 hour ago, nhs67 said:

 

Logan was in 9th grade and Taylor 10th.  This was Logan Stieber's only high school lost.  Taylor dropped dropped a match to Ben Sergent from Troy Christian early freshman year and also lost to Jamie Clark from St. Ed (a couple times I thought but I may be wrong).  I've watched both these guys since they were in middle school.  By any objective metric Logan had the better college career.  He had two more titles and had wins over much tougher competition (Oliver, Ramos, Retherford, Carter).  Both were extremely dominant even against AA caliber competition.  I agree Taylor has the edge in freestyle at this point due to consistency and winning at an Olympic weight.

[hammerlockthree 2,043]

I think Stieber was too predictable to be very successful at the senior level. Thats the defining difference between the two i think.

[balanceseeker 95]

1 hour ago, hammerlockthree said:

I think Stieber was too predictable to be very successful at the senior level. Thats the defining difference between the two i think.

He won a world title so I think that qualifies as very successful.  A agree that Taylor is definitely more dynamic in his attacks.  

[boconnell 1,422]

People love guys who score points.  Few people have ever scored more than Taylor.  Stieber scored a lot, but not like Taylor.  Margin of victory is king in our sport, even ahead of winning percentage.

[hammerlockthree 2,043]

Just now, balanceseeker said:

He won a world title so I think that qualifies as very successful.  A agree that Taylor is definitely more dynamic in his attacks.  

So you won a semantic argument and then piggy backed me on the actual argument.

 

[balanceseeker 95]

4 minutes ago, hammerlockthree said:

So you won a semantic argument and then piggy backed me on the actual argument.

 

I had already said that I believed Taylor had the superior freestyle career so I wasn't piggybacking on you.  You said a guy who won a world title wasn't successful when this is the epitome of success in the sport.  That is not a semantic argument it is a false statement presumably meant to diminish the accomplishments of Stieber.

[hammerlockthree 2,043]

25 minutes ago, balanceseeker said:

I had already said that I believed Taylor had the superior freestyle career so I wasn't piggybacking on you.  You said a guy who won a world title wasn't successful when this is the epitome of success in the sport.  That is not a semantic argument it is a false statement presumably meant to diminish the accomplishments of Stieber.

Why are you making false statements meant to diminish the accomplishments of Stieber?

[ShakaAloha 118]

1 hour ago, balanceseeker said:

I had already said that I believed Taylor had the superior freestyle career so I wasn't piggybacking on you.  You said a guy who won a world title wasn't successful when this is the epitome of success in the sport.  That is not a semantic argument it is a false statement presumably meant to diminish the accomplishments of Stieber.

Here we go again...

Winning a world title is NOT the epitome of success in our sport.  Winning an Olympic gold medal is the epitome of success in wrestling.  

Logan missed making the Olympic Team in 2016.  Then he entered a "consolation" world championships that same year where he won the 61 kg category. That is nowhere near the same as David's 2018 world championship which was won at an Olympic weight in a year where every country could send one rep per weight.  

Also, if we are looking at college careers, yes, Logan won four titles to David's two.  But David only lost 3 matches, to Bubba Jenkins and Kyle Dake twice, whereas Logan lost to Jarrod Patterson, Jason Lara, Frank Perrelli, Chris Dardanes, Jordan Oliver, and Zain Retherford.  If we are going purely on accomplishments, then Logan was superior collegiate wrestler.  But if we are going off of the eyeball test, I would argue that David was superior as he faced better competition and was more dominant.