International/Olympic wrestling discussion.

[Xuh]

Kawai sisters win gold, becoming the first sisters to win Olympic wrestling gold.
(pictured a year or two ago with some j-pop-tart they stan)

Having watched Yukako (the younger/bigger) for a few years, she usually seemed better than her opponents, but would then make a calamitous mistake that lead to her losing (often by pin); the very first match I saw her in being a particularly funny case, at the junior worlds (2017) where she racked up a 13-4 lead against a Russian opponent who was injured and in tears, only to get suckered, pinned, and not medal. But I had a feeling by the time of the Olympics, she might have those mistakes more under control and win her first international gold (excepting one u23 title), and she did.

With that in mind, and also knowing her sister has been the most dominant female wrestler over the last ~5 years, I like her pre-event quote on her Olympic athlete bio page:
"I know that I'm not that talented. I think I've come this far by continuing to work steadily. I will do my best as a tortoise, as I can't become a hare."

(also the quotes from John Smith on commentary, that she seems 'very fit' with 'strong legs').

There've been quite a few brother teams winning world championships together but usually not quite Olympics:
Beloglazovs both won in 1980 (but the capitalist running-dog lackies of the west boycotted those games)
Schultzes in 1984 (but the godless commies of the east boycotted those games)
any others?
Peterson bros in 1972 won a gold and a silver
Saitievs didn't make it at the same games funnily enough - the year Adam won, happened to be that one Olympics where Buvaisar infamously crashed and burned against Slay...

It's a sport where it's very helpful to have a sibling you can grow up with pounding each other behind the barn...

 

[Xuh]

Chamizo:
I went to spectate the 2017 worlds in Paris. While I was there my mother looked up the matches online and would phone me the next day to talk about them. I thought it funny that my elderly mother who had never even seen 'real' wrestling could do this, given the number of 'how TF can I watch?' posts from (presumably) young dudes on the 'net you see over the years. Even funnier to me was when she said her favorite wrestler to watch was Chamizo.

Everyone seems to love Chamizo but TBH I've found him boring to watch in the majority of matches I've seen him in. He has that annoying (to me) Cuban style where he can do something super spectacular but 95% of the rest of the time he does nothing and seems do be acting overly nonchalant, sometimes to the extent of not doing anything at all (and losing). Personally I find it irritating to watch (Yoel Romero seemed to carry over this Cuban riddim to his MMA style).

I didn't see his two earlier matches but being low scoring, I assume they were fairly boring which is why I'm writing this I guess.
I did see his match vs the Dag-o-belarussian though, and that was fun (because he was forced to try hard).

Compare that to a guy like Sidakov who is out there trying to do his best to score as much as possible, it seems, which is what I dig (too bad @ArtemV isn't around to see his boy do gud, where ya at Artem?)

Chamizo vs Dake should be good, anyway...

 

[Xuh]

The Italian strategy has a big hole. You have one top athlete and with a failure (like today) you have destroyed 4 years of work and resources. I think that the right way is the development of young wrestlers but this is not easy in Italy.

when watching cadet/jr level competitions Italy seems to have a number of decent girls who can pick up a bronze here and there, even at world level. I think one of your girls won the 'young european olympics' a few years ago. & I also saw some Italian boy make it to the finals in freestyle at the euro juniors a few years back - he got crushed by a Georgian, but reaching the final is still pretty good.

But all those completely disappear at the senior level, so, I assume (as a non-Italian) there is decent development of young wrestlers, but nothing to develop them from young wrestlers into adult/senior wrestlers when kids start leaving school/college environment (where sports is usually freely available) and have to try and fend for themselves.

Ppl often say getting foreign stars can help get eyes on the game and develop sport locally, I think this is often exaggerated but with Chamizo, he's charismatic and popular, so I do think having him does help the sport grow in Italy, plus all those Cuban coaching bros he brings with him which seems to have helped the Italian teams in recent years.

 

[Grappler111]

some Italian boy make it to the finals in freestyle at the euro juniors a few years back - he got crushed by a Georgian, but reaching the final is still pretty good.

But all those completely disappear at the senior level, so, I assume (as a non-Italian) there is decent development of young wrestlers, but nothing to develop them from young wrestlers into adult/senior wrestlers when kids start leaving school/college environment (where sports is usually freely available) and have to try and fend for themselves.

Totally aree. A lot of national good wrestlers at junior level and zero at senior level. The Italian federation has a lot of confusion inside...

 

[jack36767]

With USA Wrestling resources probably.

The US just pulled funding from Greco from two major locations/programs. USA wrestling doesn’t have resources you think. most wrestlers train at RTCs

 

[Mulletenthusiast]

UWW has made regional and world championships in all age brackets viewable via web and quickly reviewable after the event on youtube for years now (I think since the 2014 worlds - you can still view all of that on youtube) so that has also changed far, far for the better.

however some parties have been getting in on the distribution rights for certain areas in recent years so those also get withheld for about a year (this was the case in the USA due to flowrestling buying the rights for world events in the USA) - still fine for me (since noone is gonna buy the exclusive distribution rights for the UK!) however it's now happening in several other big countries too and I notice some events are not being made accessible yet (like the cadet worlds a few weeks ago - the matches have all been uploaded to youtube, but they're 'unlisted' so you can only find them by sneaking) - not sure if it's some pandemic shenanigans or copyrights slowing down the upload of matches, but things have gone a little backwards in that regard in the last year or so - a shame because it's so much better for the sport if everyone can view the matches as soon as possible.

I don't wanna be obvious, but do you use vpn?

 

[Boss HM-2]

Chamizo:
I went to spectate the 2017 worlds in Paris. While I was there my mother looked up the matches online and would phone me the next day to talk about them. I thought it funny that my elderly mother who had never even seen 'real' wrestling could do this, given the number of 'how TF can I watch?' posts from (presumably) young dudes on the 'net you see over the years. Even funnier to me was when she said her favorite wrestler to watch was Chamizo.

Everyone seems to love Chamizo but TBH I've found him boring to watch in the majority of matches I've seen him in. He has that annoying (to me) Cuban style where he can do something super spectacular but 95% of the rest of the time he does nothing and seems do be acting overly nonchalant, sometimes to the extent of not doing anything at all (and losing). Personally I find it irritating to watch (Yoel Romero seemed to carry over this Cuban riddim to his MMA style).

I didn't see his two earlier matches but being low scoring, I assume they were fairly boring which is why I'm writing this I guess.
I did see his match vs the Dag-o-belarussian though, and that was fun (because he was forced to try hard).

Compare that to a guy like Sidakov who is out there trying to do his best to score as much as possible, it seems, which is what I dig (too bad @ArtemV isn't around to see his boy do gud, where ya at Artem?)

Chamizo vs Dake should be good, anyway...

Chamizo just feints and stalls and shoots at the last second to score. Boring ass wrestler and I always hope he gets beaten quickly tbh

 

[Xuh]

I don't wanna be obvious, but do you use vpn?

I'm in the UK so no, I don't need to use a VPN to watch any content UWW uploads (noone is stupid enough to buy exclusive rights to a market where there aren't any customers )

As I understand it, flowrestling & trackwrestling sometimes brought the rights to show world championships (cadet, junior, & senior) in the USA, so you'd need a VPN to watch them on the UWW youtube channel (or live on the UWW website) until about a year afterwards (when the rights would have expired) if you lived in the US (else you'd have to subscribe to one of those sites). I understand similar deals have since happened in other places where ppl care enough about wrestling that they might pay for it (Russia, India).

UWW used to upload the videos of continental/international championships quickly to youtube, which was great for watching all the matches you wanted to see not long after they happened, but in the last year or two they've been very slow for some major tournaments, I'm not sure if that was because of resources or because they were withholding them for a period eg to stop ppl with VPNs watching content that had been sold to other companies. That would be disappointing if it became the norm. The euro cadet championship was last month and hasn't been uploaded to youtube; the euro juniors, and the world cadets, were on shortly after, and have been uploaded to youtube, but all the videos are delisted, you can only find them because they've been added to a playlist which you can find (probably a loophole youtube will close one day...). Why upload them but not make them public, if they aren't withholding them for the benefit of companies which have paid for exclusive rights for 6-12...

 

[Xuh]

Is he really from Belorussia? In his social network profile you can see a lot of Dagestan...

apparently he's from the same village as Khabib

most male 'Belorussian' wrestlers are Dagestani or from somewhere else in the USSR (they had some mongol looking dude in their team for a while)
I read an interview (in Russian) with one of the guys organising their women's program and he said something about at least for their efforts they produce wrestlers for their country, while on the men's side 'there are 100 schools, but all the team are from Dagestan' (the same could be said of the Russian men's freestyle team - no ethnic Russians there, haven't been for a lonnnnng time - you'll see kavkaz trolls on wrestrus vk saying 'Russians can't wrestle', lol - but there are plenty in greco, though)

 

[wufabufa]

Bekzod crushing it.

 

[TheBigJuicyGuy]

I was pissed because Amazon didn't have good Olympic wrestling coverage. Then I googled - "Live stream Olympic wrestling" and BAM I watched this evenings Mens 97KG coverage. I know what I'm doing tomorrow...

And, I found the wrestling forum on Sherdog.

 

[Grappler111]

The US just pulled funding from Greco from two major locations/programs. USA wrestling doesn’t have resources you think. most wrestlers train at RTCs

Is there in USA a sort of professional army program for successful freestyle and greco roman wrestlers?

 

[Grappler111]

This Olympic edition is a complete failure for Italian wrestling team...

 

[Gabriel201]

Both gold and silver medalists of the 74kg division are dagestani.

Edit: wrong, the guy who represented Russia is ossetian

 

[Human Bass]

And Gable wins gold with a nice throw and trip.

 

[Xuh]

Both gold and silver medalists of the 74kg division are dagestani.

it's funny ppl keep saying this about Sidakov - he's Ossetian

there are more Ossetians (5) on the all time top medal table for freestyle, than there are Dagestanis (2) - or anyone else.

I guess they need a Khabib-like figure to raise their profile in the west though

 

[jack36767]

Is there in USA a sort of professional army program for successful freestyle and greco roman wrestlers?

The Marine corps just cut its support for Greco athletes. It was called the WCAP program. Which is super embarrassing because a Greco athlete was straight fucked over at trials to get a WCAP guy on Olympic team to help keep the WCAP program..

 

[jack36767]

it's funny ppl keep saying this about Sidakov - he's Ossetian

there are more Ossetians (5) on the all time top medal table for freestyle, than there are Dagestanis (2) - or anyone else.

I guess they need a Khabib-like figure to raise their profile in the west though

I’ve noticed how often Ossetia gets overlooked

 

[jack36767]

US men 5 for 5 on medals. 2 golds minimum. At least 3 medals on the women’s side.

Not bad. Obviously could see improvement. But I can’t wait for people from mediocre to terrible areas for wrestling or from mediocre wrestling countries to talk smack

 

[SuperLuigi]

it's funny ppl keep saying this about Sidakov - he's Ossetian

there are more Ossetians (5) on the all time top medal table for freestyle, than there are Dagestanis (2) - or anyone else.

I guess they need a Khabib-like figure to raise their profile in the west though

I was wondering something about this, his name is Zaurbek and the -bek element is a known element in Turkic names. Is it normal for Ossetians to have Turkic names, or is he perhaps a Dagestani who was born in Ossetia, or perhaps bi-ethnic?