US weaker in freestyle than in past Why?

I wasn't watching them but I remember seeing the text updates from several people and thinking that Burroughs had a quick turn around for several of his matches.

His first 3 matches were super close. Rd 2 against Gentry he looked the most sluggish.

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Originally Posted by arm-spin

Depends on the tournament, maybe, but at the Olympics conditioning was hugely important due to the matches being wrestled close together. Big name guys- Urishev, Aldatov, Gayzumov, even Americans Lester and Pireziwho (spelling?) looked very exhausted. From personal experience, I haven't wrestled much folkstyle but I found freestyle matches that went 3 rounds more exhausting than 6 minutes under the old format. It's all wrestling- no going out of bounds, injury time outs, wasting time on the ground, etc.

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I love the Olympic blitz style tournament format where the matches come right after each so the prelimins through the semis are wrestled in a little over 2 hours. Conditioning catches up with you in a big way in your third match in two hours.

To me it seems like a great balance if you rely to much on conditioning, you will get beat in the early rounds on technique and if you are not in great shape you will wear down in the later rounds.

Does anyone know if this format came at the same time as the best of three period etc. rule changes?

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Originally Posted by Snackem

Agreed, on the timing. If Herbert gets a different call and wins the match, or if Trevel wins either of the matches he dropped, if Sam picks up just one win then I think we take the unofficial team title. Granted Varner came through big time and probably over performed but still I'd say that this was a pretty good showing for us.

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Herbert was not one call away from winning the match. He was already down a period and even if the call went his way he still would have only been up 3-2. I did not think it was a terrible call, i thought it was bad tactics by Herbert. I still have not heard any explanation of the scoring for Herbert's repecharge match.

I grant you that this was a great performance by Team USA, but it drives me crazy to be happy with it when we have the potential, in my mind, to be every bit as good as Russia if we wrestled the same style. I think our collegiate guys are among the best wrestlers in the world then they go international and many of them look completely lost against guys who have been wrestling Freestyle all their lives.

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Originally Posted by ODH

Herbert was not one call away from winning the match. He was already down a period and even if the call went his way he still would have only been up 3-2. I did not think it was a terrible call, i thought it was bad tactics by Herbert. I still have not heard any explanation of the scoring for Herbert's repecharge match.

I grant you that this was a great performance by Team USA, but it drives me crazy to be happy with it when we have the potential, in my mind, to be every bit as good as Russia if we wrestled the same style. I think our collegiate guys are among the best wrestlers in the world then they go international and many of them look completely lost against guys who have been wrestling Freestyle all their lives.

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I think folk is such an easy cop out. I just dont accept it.

You are right about Herbert though. His reluctance to change his tactics however, is not a product of folkstyle wrestling, rather his unwillingness to adapt to a more successful style.

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Originally Posted by vaisforlovers

I think folk is such an easy cop out. I just dont accept it.

You are right about Herbert though. His reluctance to change his tactics however, is not a product of folkstyle wrestling, rather his unwillingness to adapt to a more successful style.

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You call it easy cop out, I call it an obvious fact. If you want to be the best in the world in Freestyle you need to train Freestyle.
Do you truly believe that if the US only wrestled Freestyle, we would not have better results?

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Originally Posted by vaisforlovers

His first 3 matches were super close. Rd 2 against Gentry he looked the most sluggish.

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I only got to watch some of the matches, but I know there was a delay in the start of one match because the one wrestler needed the minimum 15 wait between matches. Fifteen minutes between matches is a quick turnaround!! You have to be in good shape to do that.

On a different note. I wonder how much of a difference the weigh-in 24 hours in advance plays in? You can certainly balloon up in 24 hours, but everyone has the same opportunity to do so. Expect it balances out in the end.

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Originally Posted by ODH

You call it easy cop out, I call it an obvious fact. If you want to be the best in the world in Freestyle you need to train Freestyle.
Do you truly believe that if the US only wrestled Freestyle, we would not have better results?

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I think we would have better freestyle results. But, I don't think freestyle would catch on to the general public here (folkstyle has enough problems). If we didn't have folkstyle we would have even fewer guys going into wrestling and I think we would overall be weaker. I'm concerned that MMA is going to pull more and more of our good college wrestlers away from going into freestyle post-college. The old Willie Sutton story as to why he robbed banks, "Because that's where the money is"!

Burroughs gold medal match was the first time I EVER saw an American look more tired than a Russian ! The changes in match duration made in the early 80s was ( according to Coach Blubaugh ) the russians getting worried about the US catching up to them through sheer conditioning .