Top 10 Greatest Indiv Sports Upsets (2 Wrestling Matches Make The List!)

[ideamark]

This was being discussed on The Other Forum (but had gotten way off topic)

Gotta give the writer, Jeff D Gordon, some credit for including two epic wrestling upsets on his list

http://community.foxsports.com/jeffd...ts_upsets_ever



Ten Greatest Individual Sports Upsets Ever
Monday, August 17, 2009, 10:30 AM CST [General]

Y.E. Yang made history by picking off Tiger Woods at the PGA Championship. Not only was that one of the great golf upsets ever, it was one of the great sports upsets of all time.

Here is my top 10 upsets by individual competitors.

Journeyman Buster Douglas pummeling Mike Tyson in Toyko in 1990.
American Rulon Gardner vanquishing Greco-Roman wrestling legend Alexander Karelin at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
Yang rallying to beat Woods at the PGA Championship. Tiger had been 14-0 when leading a major after 54 holes.

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Andre Phillips shocking fellow American Edwin Moses in the 400-meter hurdles at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Moses had won 107 consecutive 400-meter hurdles finals, beating Phillips more than 20 times in the process.
University of Washington wrestler Larry Owings toppling Dan Gable at the 1970 NCAA Tournament. Gable had won all 118 of his college matches for Iowa State.
Mark Edmondson, ranked 212th in the world, throttling defend champion John Newcombe in the 1976 Australian Open final. He was (and still is) the lowest-seeded player to win a major.
The thoroughbred Upset, um, upsets Man O? War in the Sanford Memorial. Man O? War was a 100-to-1 favorite and had never loss a race.
Jack Fleck shocking Ben Hogan in the 1955 U.S. Open. Hogan had won four Open titles and Jack was, well, just a Fleck on the golf scene.
Young Leon Spinks outpointing heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali in 1978.
Unseeded Mats Wilander, 17 at the time, winning the 1982 French Open at Roland Garros. To do so, Wilander managed to upset the second, third, fourth and fifth seeds.

[arm-spin]

Wonder what a list of the "greatest WRESTLING upsets" of all time would look like.

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[mhs189]

Larry Owings would be number one
followed by garner
also, caldwell over metcalf twice could possibly make the list

[therick]

Some that come to mind:

Owings over Gable
Marianetti over Mcllravy
Percival over Zadick
Mcllravy over Abas
Everett over Jones
Webster over Kish
Daniels over Azevedo
Blubaugh over Habibi
Slay over Saitiev and Leipold
Angle over Jadidi
Gardner over Karelin

Some of those are a stretch, but they certainly were upsets at the time they happened. Some like the Mcllravy win over Abas don't seem as big a deal now, but I remember watching that match and I was shocked. Same for the Percival win over Zadick. It was huge then and people still talk about how they were shocked, not just because Percival won, but because of how he did it.

[ODH]

Some that come to mind:

Owings over Gable
Marianetti over Mcllravy
Percival over Zadick
Mcllravy over Abas
Everett over Jones
Webster over Kish
Daniels over Azevedo
Blubaugh over Habibi
Slay over Saitiev and Leipold
Angle over Jadidi
Gardner over Karelin

Some of those are a stretch, but they certainly were upsets at the time they happened. Some like the Mcllravy win over Abas don't seem as big a deal now, but I remember watching that match and I was shocked. Same for the Percival win over Zadick. It was huge then and people still talk about how they were shocked, not just because Percival won, but because of how he did it.

Slay's victory over Leipold via failed drug does not really fit the upset category. His win over Satiev, considering the seperate paths their wrestling careers went, may qualify as a bigger upset than Gardner over Karelin.

[therick]

Not sure what I was thinking about when I put Leipold in there. Anyway, I agree that the win over Satiev may be bigger, given that Satiev was in his prime and Slay actually scored offensive points to win the match.

[ODH]

Can we add Herbert over Gadisov to the list?

Did a quick mental review and internationally came up with a good number of big US upsets over Russians:

Scherr over Khardetsev (World Cup?)
Kelley over Murtazaliev (2004 Olympics)
Neal over Shumilin (1999 Worlds)
M. Zadick over Batirov (2006(?) Worlds)
Plus Slay over Satiev (2000 Olympics) and Gardner over Karelin (2000 Olympics).

Interesting with at least three of the Olympics upsets, the American beat a heavily favored wrestler just to make the US team: Gardner beat Ghaffari, Slay went over Joe Williams, and Jamil Kelley cam from nowhere.

edit: Kelley did not come from nowhere, since we was on the 2003 World team, but I remember him still regarded as a long shot to make the team.