One of the biggest upsets in Olympic History

What do wrestlers consider the biggest upset? Karelins?

 

Rulon won World's the next year and added another Silver and Bronze. Karelin never competed again after the loss.

Satiev won 4 golds before Slay beat him and 5 after. Slay never made a team a before that and didn't try for another.

 

To be honest, most wrestlers who know whats going on dont even think Rulon beat Karelin. He won on an extremely subjective call to a completely goofy rule. But, yes I would say most wrestlers say that is the biggest upset.

As others have said, Slay over Satiev is huge.

My pick would be Mike Wilson over Arsen FAdzaev. FAdzaev was a 6x world champ, world silver, and 2x Olympic Champ. Mike Wilson was an unknown who beat him twice.

 

What a fun/confusing match this is as well:

 

Id also say Jamill Kelly taking 2nd at the 2004 Olympics, beating the Russian and Azerbaijani in the process was an upset of sorts. Also, Mike Zadick winning the silver in 2006, beating Mavlet Batirov was a pretty big upset as well.

 

What was confusing about it?

 

Fadzaev seems to give the first take-down up super easily, then he gets that comedy massive lift at 4:44 and just sort of stands there with it? He looks tired or injured but then proceeds to go the last quarter of the match absolutely balls to the wall.

Must admit I haven't watched much Fadzaev, perhaps he often/always wrestled this way?

 

I definitely don't think he wrestled that way often. He was a bit.........different though. By his own admission he only trained hard 3 months a year. He really was incredible though. Watch his matches against Andre Metzger for a great example of his style. Fadzaev was like all the good Russians of his era, wrestled like he had cheat codes or some shit. He regularly executed moves that require a ton of strength and it didn't seem like he was even exerting himself.