Eagle26

I was so mad about them not having scores and mat assignments on the big screen. At least they got that fixed now.

I agree it’s messed up, but how do consis work in your bracket?

I agree it’s not fair to pick both and I’d think it’s more relevant to do NLWC. Even so, NLWC has the best chances at each weight anyway.

They have pretty heavy favorites at 3 weights (74, 86, 97) and very legitimate contenders at the other 3. No one would be shocked to see anyone of Gilman, Retherford, or Kerk on the team. So it would be a very low chance they get all 6 but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. I’d say the over under should probably be set at 3.5 and I’d probably take the over.

Dake is my head pick but Burroughs is my heart pick. I voted for Burroughs lol. I was feeling a little better about it after the brackets came out, but then a little worse after O’toole dropped out. I don’t really like the matchup with Haines right off the scale. Haines is coming up from 157 so he will be fully energized and could be dangerous. Hopefully Burroughs is just that much better still.

I think if it’s going to happen it’s probably at 65 kg, and Alirez is a good bet. Also, Kerkvliet at 125 could do it. If you count Spencer Lee as “not established” he’s the easy pick but I’m not sure if he qualifies. Our team is just so tough right now, it’s hard to see too many other options

Of course we all understand that (or we all should). The point of this thread is that it appears USA wrestling is making an announcement about the expansion of Olympic weights. That doesn’t mean they were the ones in charge of any decisions, but they may have some inside info about potential changes after this cycle.

12-15 weights is overkill and probably not going to happen. However, IF IOC is stuck on 18 weights total, theoretically, you could go 9 weights each for Men’s and Women’s freestyle and dump Greco. Personally, I would rather have that than what we have now because I am not a Greco fan. However, there are a lot of Greco fans out there (especially in other parts of the world), so I don’t think it’s the right thing to do.

Well at least @nhs67 is honest about it in his sig In all seriousness, I can’t imagine that USA wrestling put this on the schedule at their Fan Fest to make an announcement that it’s never going to happen. That would be a pretty unpopular session for a fan fest lol.

Why do you guys think the executive director of USA is going to be talking about it if there’s no chance of it ever happening?

After I went on a rant in the Vito thread, I came across this article about the fan fest at OTT. This is on the schedule for Friday… “4:00-4:30 – Expansion of Olympic Weight Classes, State of Wrestling Internationally Discussion - USA Wrestling Executive Director Rich Bender with WIN Magazine’s Bryan Van Kley” https://www.themat.com/news/2024/april/12/fan-fest-set-between-sessions-at-u-s-olympic-team-trials-across-street-at-pegula-ice-arena-with-food-drink-vendors-signings-more Please, Please, Please let it not be just speculation!

First, for those saying he should just go up to 65, could you imagine him wrestling someone the size of Zain Retherford? The size/strength advantage would be too much to overcome. I’m sure he’s wrestled Yianni enough to know his only chance to make the team is to go down. Secondly, he was clearly injured before NCAAs but he found a way to peak for that competition despite the injury. I’m sure the Olympic trials are much more important to him, so he could find a way to do it if he didn’t also have to deal with the tremendous weight cut. So I’m blaming this one entirely on the IOC and the idiotic fact that they are only allowing 6 weights. I just don’t get it… if it’s too many over all medals or whatever, cut them from one of the ridiculous made up sports. Not from one of the original sports of the Olympic Games! I know they almost cut our sport altogether so we have to take what we can get blah, blah, blah. It’s still not right.

Man, I hate having only 6 weights so bad!! A guy like Vito could be Olympic gold medalist, but there’s just no weight class that exists for his body size.

I don’t always take my shoes off when I’m coaching, but when I do…

I can imagine back then he was probably literally killing himself to make 118. I know the knee jerk reaction would be to look down on him, but it’s probably a good thing he didn’t go through with it.