Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins
Houdashelt won his match comfortably.
I have a question for the knowledgeable wrestling posters:
It seems like Missouri is eking out of a bunch of close wins, and their dominant wrestlers are only barely winning point-wise, even thought they dominate most of the match.
Do they normally wrestle a conservative style as a team? It seems like it cost them a lot of potential points.
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The perception of Mizzou wrestlers seems to vary from fan base to fan base. The fan base I am exposed to/around most often is the Iowa fan base. I am kind of neutral about Iowa Hawkeye wrestling and have been, pretty much since the early 2000's, when a bunch of the friends I made through wrestling kind of scattered, in terms of where they wrestled...not to mention, the college I wrestled for, although not D1, met up with Iowa 3 times per year...and my brother who graduated high school in 2003, wrestled D1 for an in-state University (UNI), so I kind of developed an affinity for them. Iowa seemed to end up with all the guys I considered to be dickheads on a personal level. They've had guys wrestle for them in the past 15 years who are very cool on a personal level...It's difficult to think of nicer, better people than guys like Daniel Ereckson, Derek St. John, Ryan Morningstar (regardless of how frustrated Iowa fans were of his style, he is a nice and GOOD person), etc. My God though, Iowa in the past 15 years (and probably much longer) has had some guys who make you cringe when you see them out at the ped mall or in any social atmosphere...they tend to be wrestling robots that are programmed to start fights after they've had a mere sip of alcohol. I can't count the number of times I've had to break up, mediate, hear about, etc. fights involving various Iowa wrestlers and my friends. A lot of college wrestling teams have these types of guys, to some extent...I've been around a ton of different wrestler groups. However, Iowa, for whatever reason has always had the biggest assholes that I've personally interacted with. The fan base is not much different.
Back to your question, I interact with Hawkeye wrestling fans all of the time. Hawkeye fans have been adamant since Mizzou beat Iowa in the National Dual finals a few weeks ago, that the entire Mizzou team consists of nothing, but stallers and/or defensive wrestlers. I personally feel that the Iowa fan base was being excessively whiney after that dual. Do I think Mizzou had some wrestlers/moments in that particular dual where the Mizzou wrestlers were stallish? Sure. Do I think Iowa had those same moments? You betcha. Iowa has some stalling, defensive motor scooters in their lineup. I don't think either team consists entirely of stallish, defensive, or offensive wrestlers. I think with both lineups, it just kind of varies from wrestler to wrestler. Both teams, in this year's NCAA tournament haven't exactly squeezed an abundance of bonus points from their wrestlers, generally speaking...which at this point, with the way OSU has performed (ugh), I don't know if it would have made much of a difference, but it obviously wouldn't have hurt to have scored those bonus points...which are generally racked up by the wrestlers being offensive and dominant due to their offense.
Following the Mizzou vs. Iowa dual, the Iowa fans complained about the Mizzou wrestlers stalling, to the point where it caught the attention of MU wrestling legend, Ben Askren...and he responded to them via video rant. It is pretty entertaining and I agree with him. I mentioned in an earlier post that Askren was a wrestling celebrity guest at the Iowa Grade School State tournament a couple years ago and my youngest 2 brothers who wrestled in the tournament, met him and now idolize him because of how cool and funny of a person they thought he was... Here is the rant video:
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