Chicks Heart Fights

Mark from Rev Wrestling pointed out an interesting trend to me-wrestling has more coverage from the media than it has in the past. Well, it seems so. I have no empirical data to support this claim, but there have been many great profiles of wrestlers in large publications, including:

• T.C. Dantzler in the Sun-Times
• Jake Deitchler in USA Today
• Henry Cejudo in the Arizona Republic
• A visit by Cejudo and Deitchler to the offices of ESPN the Magazine
• Steve Mocco in USA Today
• Dremiel Byers in the Charlotte Observer
• Ali Bernard in the Pioneer Press
• Randi Miller in the Kansas City Star
• Best of all, you can download  Doug Schwab wallpapers at the  Des Moines Register.

I can’t explain the uptick in coverage, but I am not going to question it. Increased coverage for the sport can only be good for it.

As I begin to pack my suitcase for the Olympic Trials in Las Vegas this weekend, my mind wanders to my last trip to the Olympic Trials. I mentioned this over at Fourth Place Medal , but it’s worth bringing up again - go to the trials. During the 2004 Trials, I saw wrestlers who had knee surgery three days before the tournament hobble their way to the mat. I watched guys who had long retired come back out for one more chance. In one of the best ceremonies of all sports, I saw many wrestlers who I have respected for years announce their retirement by leaving their shoes on the mat. Best of all, I saw our Olympic team: eighteen young men and women who grabbed their chance to represent the United States in Athens. In August of 2004, I cried when the US wrestlers won medals, not only because I was proud of them as American wrestlers, but also because I had just watched all of the people who were left home.

This weekend, I can’t wait to see all this drama unfold again in Las Vegas. During this week, Chicks Heart Fights will have a preview of weight classes in each discipline. First up, men’s freestyle.

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- The Fighting Life asks why the UFC feels the need to manufacture rivalries between fighters. This seems a little more pro wrestling than UFC, and I’m not really a fan of the tactic. I enjoy some back story from time to time when watching a fight, but the main thing that I want to see is two guys who have trained really hard try to win by any (legal) means necessary.

- No Holds Barred has a podcast interview with one of my favorite US wrestlers, Mo Lawal. The sound quality isn’t the greatest, but Mo is always entertaining. Mo talks about his aspirations for MMA, his quest for Olympic Gold, etc. (Full disclosure, Mo is a friend of mine, and I will do back handsprings if he wins Olympic Gold.) In my opinion, Mo will easily make the transition into MMA due to his athletic wrestling style, and his previous experience with boxing. He will need to work hard on BJJ, but I don’t think he’ll have a problem with it.

- Steve Mocco and Damion Hahn both won the Medved in Belarus. Hahn defeated Lawal in the finals.

- Before I give you some links on Brock Lesnar signing with the UFC, I will give you my take. I first saw Brock Lesnar wrestle at an open tournament at Nebraska, and he is the most muscular man I have ever seen in person. I have spent my life around sports, and have been around countless wrestlers, football players, baseball players, basketball players (not that muscles ever really weigh them down), and Lesnar is the muscle head champion of them all. The thing that always surprised me about watching him wrestle for Minnesota is that his size never weighed him down, and he was a fast, agile heavyweight. I am very interested to see how powerful his punches are, and how he will handle being hit. Leland Rolling of UFC Daily believes that he Brock will make an immediate impact on the heavyweight division, and here is UFC Mania’s take. MMAScoops.com reports that Brock Lesnar’s first fight could be with Brad Imes. I don’t know if that’s the best fight to make Brock Lesnar a star. Imes matches up well with Lesnar’s size, and has some decent BJJ. I doubt that Imes would win because he couldn’t defend against Lesnar’s takedown, but I don’t think that this fight would be the dominating win that the UFC may want out of Lesnar in his first fight.

Cuba, who won the freestyle team title at the Pan-Am Games, absolutely dominated. held this past week in Brazil. They won five gold medals out of seven weight classes, winning five out of seven head-to-head match ups with the US over the tournament. The US came in second, with Joe Heskett, Andy Hrovat, Tommy Rowlands and Mike Zadick winning silver, and Doug Schwab and Daniel Cormier taking the bronze. Henry Cejudo (more on him later) won the only gold. Considering that Cuba and the US were the only countries of any true wrestling merit at the Games, this was not a great outing by Team USA. Cuba, a country of a little more than 11 million people. (For comparison, Illinois has 12 million people.)

This can’t bode well for the US team for the worlds in September. Granted, the US was missing a few of their top athletes, Joe Williams and Steve Mocco, but even with them, Cuba still would have been dominant. When you throw Iran and Russia into the mix, it’s just not pretty. How many freestyle champions can the US feasibly have? Any? Daniel Cormier and Joe Williams are the two most experienced wrestlers on the team. Cormier has shown flashes of brilliance, but that’s all they have been. Flashes. His conditioning and drive are completely unreliable. As for Joe, I look forward to seeing what he can do. He has some consistency, and I think he knows that the next Olympics may be his last chance.

Then of course, there’s Henry Cejudo, the 20 year old 55 kg-er who has stormed onto the wrestling scene. His win over Sammie Henson Matt Azevedo at World Team Trials was undoubtedly a passing of the torch. If he wins Olympic gold next year, he may clear the path for more high school wrestlers to skip college and go straight to Colorado Springs. (I’ll talk about that more in a future post.) He is being called the future of USA Wrestling, and for USA Wrestling’s sake, I hope he is. Our current crop of top wrestlers need to either step it up, or get out of the way. Otherwise, our fond memories of the USA taking home gold from Worlds and the Olympics will be only that, memories.