Just curious, has anyone over on HR blamed the US losing to Russia in the team race on Zain yet?
2021 Olympic Wrestling Match Thread and USA Wrestlers.
- Thread starter Hotshoe
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I thought the same thing, what the hell am I doing tomorrow?
When are the seeding coming out for the Paris Games?
Again, most of the shot clock calls came as a result of the mandatory call (i.e., 2 minutes elapse with neither wrestler scoring offensive points). Shots and resulting scramble will count as offensive action, but moving backwards in a tie position will be counted as passive.... The Official will make the call based on which wrestler has spent more of 2 minutes elapsed time in the passive position.
Separating from the Taylor match, talking more generally:
Wrestling fans often fall into the trap of "my guy didn't stall, he took more shots." Stalling can happen at any moment in the match. As if taking 3 shots in a period is license to coast for 10 sec. The sport is better when the wrestlers are held accountable for action throughout. (Whether that's applied consistently is another story.)
As far as passivity goes: when NC State beat Iowa at CHA a few years ago. Max Rohskopf tweeted that Hawk fans didn't care if any wrestling occurred as long as they saw lots of hand fighting. That is the perfect description of UWW refs.
It just came to mind of this teams success. I thought of the movie Apollo 13, where they had an issue of being under weight due to no moon rocks on board. I hope the team's pilot takes account of the extra medal weight they are bringing back.
If only David Taylor III knew someone who could do the calculation. (AGAIN).
If only David Taylor III knew someone who could do the calculation. (AGAIN).
For the record, I enjoyed him on the mic. But he definitely had a heavy "American" interpretation of the rules that was contrary to how it was actually called. But overall a joy to listen to. I would have loved to see him and JB together for these big matches.
For the Snyder match, it's important to remember that the passivity call is mandatory in a scoreless match so they have to pick somebody. It was pretty even, but Snyder broke contact a little more often and Sadulaev was standing a little taller in his stance with his head up. That's another quirk that Americans get punished for. Our lower stance is often considered defensive in posture.
With the Hildebrandt match, my suspicion is that she was punished for tying up hands. That's also typically frowned upon. She took the only attack, but she also spent the first 1:30 tying up the wrists from neutral. Again, it's not like she was overwhelmingly aggressive to that point.
I 100% agree that this is how it should be, but it unfortunately isn't usually.
Yea, the best test of domination is medals won within a specific sport as a percentage of total medals awarded within the specific sport. The US does usually dominate Track & Field, but really shit the bed this year, especially in track. Believe US dominated the pool (i.e., swimming) as they usually do.
I appreciate the added explanation.
I like the rules with FS and passivity more so than stalling in college (to me stalling in college vs HS is a huge difference). I think college tried to do something similar with the change of rule regarding stepping out and it blew up the system and needed adjusted. This just points to your comment about people’s understanding of stall calls. It now has went to more referee decisions and I think that’s fine. It creates inconsistencies (see RBY vs. Fix), but it pushes kids to be more aggressive. I like it when refs bang kids for stalling aggressively. It flushes out who the better kid is. However, I don’t like that DT is put on the clock when his opponent hasn’t take a shot in 6 minutes. There has to be some adjustment to that.
Put the weight class count back to 10! There seems to be a lot of interest in wrestling. Kill standing canoe, canoe slalom, everything BMX, 3-on-3 basketball, skateboarding.
Yeah man I get the rule. I’m not arguing it by definition, I’m trying to explain why to a fan it creates disconnect. I’ll take JS and Casey as making comments that are very similar and know I am in good company.
And rhythmic gymnastics. And synchronized swimming (is that still a thing?).
I'm not disagreeing with you - I'm not saying Free Officials can't be, and are often, wrong in regards to their calculation of who spent more time in the "passive" position (after all, it is based on what they believe or feel in their head, which can be affected by the flow of a match - i.e., more recent action will effect most people more heavily.). It isn't like the on-mat Official has a stop-watch or something. Truth-be-told, they should probably have a second official at the table, or mat-side, who does nothing but calculate passivity for either wrestler (other wrestler will be mirror opposite such that after 2 minutes only one can have net-positive passivity) - given the percentage of time the 2-minute mandatory call comes into play - which is a high percentage of time in many elite matchups. IOW, it is too important of a call to leave to guessing in real close situations - they should just have an Official measure it and when the mat-official blows his whistle after 2 minutes, the official measuring it, can just tell him who is to be put on the clock.
Anyway, again I'm not disagreeing with you, just pointing out that passivity can be registered in more situations than just defending a shot.
You guys railing on stupid sports are not watching the ratings. Same with the comments regarding John. If you want to see the sport grow, you need new fans. Exactly why John made the comments about warnings. Over and over, refs were stopping matches for really no reason, and it's very inconsistent. John's point was he didn't even know why they were being stopped. John knows what he's talking about. The fans need to understand why for the sport to grow.
Olympics are based on ratings which generate money through advertising. Wrestling needs fans to generate more money. Look at the commercials during gymnastics, track and field, basketball, and even volleyball. Equestrian has major sponsors like Rolex, IBM, and many others. Wrestling doesn't have that. The other thing is women. Women watch all the gymnastics. Want to grow Wrestling, grow the women's side. I wish Penn State would start a female team. I guarantee, Tamrya is far more widely known than any of our male wrestlers.
I agree. I used to get butt hurt when I first started watching freestyle, but now that I understand what passivity is my butt hurts less.
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The crazy thing about her is that she looks tiny even at 50KG. They had a special on NHK about her when she was 14 and I’ve been following her ever since.
IOW, I like the Free rules regarding passivity and the mandatory shot-clock (really mislabeled... should be "mandatory score clock"). However, I do agree with you that the determination of the "more passive" wrestler is way too subjective - and unnecessarily so. Would be easy to set up a procedure to make it much more objective. You only need to measure the "net passivity" of one wrestler (if you deem both wrestlers to be equally passive at points during the 2 minutes, you simply reflect nothing to the net passivity of wrestler you are measuring) - if at the end of 2 minutes, the wrestler you're measuring has positive "net passivity", that's the wrestler put on clock. If the measured wrestler reflects net negative passivity, his opponent is put on clock. It really doesn't matter which wrestler is measured as the other wrestler will be mirror opposite - i.e., they will net each other out to zero.
"Over and over, refs were stopping matches for really no reason, and it's very inconsistent. John's point was he didn't even know why they were being stopped. John knows what he's talking about. The fans need to understand why for the sport to grow."
hotshoe is right, let the action unfold.
it would not be hard to do all 10 weights. have the next competitors ready to go....wrestling doesn't need the pageantry.
somebody write a check so Cael can hire a GR coach. PSU needs a womens team. Sandy is missing a huge opportunity here. You have the best program.......on the planet.....yet nothing.
typing with your arm in a sling sucks
hotshoe is right, let the action unfold.
it would not be hard to do all 10 weights. have the next competitors ready to go....wrestling doesn't need the pageantry.
somebody write a check so Cael can hire a GR coach. PSU needs a womens team. Sandy is missing a huge opportunity here. You have the best program.......on the planet.....yet nothing.
typing with your arm in a sling sucks
And Kyle would still have silver after that …
^^ This -- and it's not enough to just watch Olympic wrestling more.
Every new sport gets introduced because some empty suit at NBC ran a focus group that shows it might draw an audience, or at least an audience in some target demographic. The IOC doesn't know a sport from a root vegetable. They know what their masters at NBC tell them.
Same with slot allocations -- entirely based upon actual or projected ratings.
So we need to watch more of it in whatever form -- Rokfin, Flo, ESPN, FS1, in-person, Facebook Live, local streaming, YouTube, whatever. And USA Wrestling needs to figure out how to compile all of that data, to show NBC what ratings the sport can generate.
Wrestling will likely never generate the ratings of basketball, gymnastics, and track. But it can get the best slots of the remaining time, and be something more than filler to NBC.
Vacation pics and recipes.
FULL COURT PRESS ON MEYER SHAPIRO !!!!
All this arguing about passivity, but passivity didn’t cause Snyder to lose the match, and the passivity calls did exactly what they are supposed to do (create action).
You see in folk, stalling is supposed to be much more of a earned thing. In Free passivity is far less about who earned it, rather than we need to give someone a point so these guys start wrestling. And it works almost every time.
It’s also why you never see stalling called in folk. Both guys do nothing and it’s splitting hairs who is and isn’t stalling, so the refs just sit on the whistle.
You see in folk, stalling is supposed to be much more of a earned thing. In Free passivity is far less about who earned it, rather than we need to give someone a point so these guys start wrestling. And it works almost every time.
It’s also why you never see stalling called in folk. Both guys do nothing and it’s splitting hairs who is and isn’t stalling, so the refs just sit on the whistle.
This is so hard for our folk-centric system to understand because we have this obsession with “perceived-meritocracy” in regards to activity during a match.
Yes, agreed. People need to change that mindset. Passivity is all about forcing action, not really about deservedness. And you know what, it works.
Do you know that David Taylor's dad is a Delta airlines pilot? I'm sure he has had to do weight calculations a lot.
About 4-5 years ago, I took a Delta flight from Florida into Atlanta for a change over. Atlanta is Delta's home base. I was wearing a Penn State sweatshirt, and when we got into the main terminal, I saw a Delta pilot sitting down and looking right at me pretty intently. Unfortunately, I was in a pretty big hurry to catch my connecting flight or I would have stopped to chat. I'm pretty sure it was Dave Taylor Sr.
I wonder how many of the masses of people that watch gymnastics really understand the nuanced intricacies of scoring in gymnastics? Same for ice skating. Like wrestling, I’m sure that former competitors and parents of competitors know the rules, but I’m guessing that most of the rest of the fans have the same understanding that most of us here have about passivity. Or that Steveson probably should not have been stopped so quickly after that first, last minute takedow.
Understanding the rules is only one, small part of the equation.
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Yea, I think KD was very negatively effected by the weight cut to 74 (both strength- & energy-wise). He was completely spent and just hanging on at the end of his Bronze Medal Match. He dominated in the 1st Period but was unable to finish-off and tech an opponent he was just mauling - very Un-Dake like.... He just ran out of gas and settled for a 6-0 shutout, but man did he look utterly gassed directly after match.
I have my list of beefs with freestyle and it's format for sure, but by far at the top of my list of gripes is the refs.
Their influence is far from invisible to nearly every match, which is what they should be. Too many matches have a head scratcher moment if not an outrageous one.
It's hard to become a populist sport when fans, coaches, contestants all get pissed off or frustrated so frequently at the match to match inconsistency of the officials.
Never been to a baseball game?
The US seems to get put on the clock a lot more than their opponents. And I don't think it's a bias, but exactly how you describe it being called. Maybe it's an adjustment they need to make going forward. On the other hand, it almost seems like they don't care too much about it and have the philosophy of we're going to shoot and score and 1 point isn't going to beat us. It almost beat DT though until his heroics.
As for those exposures by Sadulaev. There's a difference between not understanding it and just thinking it's lame. It doesn't really demonstrate any kind of superiority in the position (or control for that matter). But as somebody said, those are the rules and we're certainly aware of them.
Agree to disagree on those exposures. Can you imagine how hard it is to move Kyle Snyder somewhere against his will?
Pretty crafty way to do it as that was not the normal chest wrap we see from him. He went for the big 4 and had Kyle floating in mid air for a couple seconds (which was insane) and then made the adjustment to go for more of a hip tip/belly whizzer motion straight to the side. I'll have to rewatch, but I think he used his free leg to hook Kyle under the armpit to get those last few inches to 90.
I know absolutely nothing about swimming, but I watch it religiously every 4 years. It’s not all Michael Phelps either, I enjoyed this year just as much. I hope wrestling can figure it out. JB, J’Den, the stars need to be there competing for medals.
Cael’s next step is women. He’s already taken over the world with men’s FS. Having Helen is a start, just wait for those pieces to fall. That should be the easiest pitch to get University support from Sandy. How it looks I’m not sure. It may just be NLWC and Freestyle.
The consistency I saw from this Olympics was that if a US wrestler was in a match and there was a passivity call then the US wrestler was almost always hit with it. We should just have our guys and gals start their matches at 0-1 and get rid of the pretense of fairness.
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