Takedown Report

Hand Raised – 4th Season, Column 4: Going All Upper Body; Left Coast Lunacy; And an Olympic viewpoint

USA MENS GRECO ROMAN TEAM READY TO BODYLOCK OLYMPIC SPOTS

As of the last weekend in April and a scant few months prior to Tokyo 2021 our Greco Roman team has qualified four of six wt. classes for the Games. The USA needs veteran 130kg Adam Coon and suprising, supremely talented 77kg Jesse Porter to finish top 2 at the last chance Olympic Qualifier this month in Bulgaria to get in. Odds are against them, especially it seems against Coon. The giant 3x AA and 2x NCAA finalist for Michigan was a Senior World Championships finalist his first time up on that stage, pinning his way to the finals and securing a Silver medal for the USA. For reasons unknown to this author Coon, and indeed many of America’s young GR stars, have seemed to shine brightest at their first international outings. Afterwards a disturbing trend of diminishing returns seems to emerge. Adam (on Instagram adam_coooon) did secure a 2019 Pam American Championship Gold(1) but since then it’s been slim pickings for the 6’5″ future astronaut. Its more likely that he will bring a medal home at the World Championships that will be held late this year after the Games. That is IF he can hold off our hard charging young superstar GR heavyweight, Arizona St’s Cohlton Schultz. Cited as a once in a generation talent and a wrestler who makes everyone around him better, Cohlton placed 4th at the NCAAs this year, his RS freshman campaign for the Sun Devils. Add that to his 3 medals in GR World level competitions before he turned 20 and his barely acceptable 188-2, 4 state titles record for Ponderosa (CO) HS, and you can easily see why so many people are still in doubt. Thats a joke, BTW. What’s seriously accurate is that the USA has really good GR big guys who need to show that several years running. Standing salty at #3 is Jacob Mitchell, who went the Clackamas (Oregon) CC/Colorado State-Pueblo route before linking up with the Army WCAP.(2) Ohio States Tate Orndorff will push to break through soon for us as well. The Buckeye, a Utah Valley transfer, was a National Runner-up in 2019 and a 2X United States Champ at age group level competitions. With all that high quality flesh Arbys is the logical sponsor for this weight class. At 77kg Jesse Porter came from WAAY back in the pack as he claimed our #1 spot from the 10th and last seed. There’s fascinating storylines attached to the affable Porter, and one of the more interesting ones concerns his sister, American FS star and wrestling Twitter personality/podcaster Alexis Porter. Big younger bro, a grad student at Northern Michigan, has been the top dog for the US at the U-23 level four years straight. Find him on Twitter @jporter_2015 and in Sofia, Bulgaria, in May as he, Coon, and FS 65kg American rep Jordan Oliver all attempt to qualify their wt class spots for Tokyo. It’s called the Last Chance Qualifier for a reason, folks. Wish them luck! The rest of Team USAs upper body bombers line up this way…60kg, Ildar Hafizov, WCAP. Thats SGT. Ildar Hafizov, US Army, thank you very much, former superstar and 2008 Olympian….for Uzbekhistan. This #StraightOuttaTashkent terror took multiple years off in the prime of his career to become an American citizen-soldier. He’s carried the Red, White, and Blue into battle since 2015. Can he medal? Maybe. He’s already won his biggest and best triumph, and you know what that was. 67kg: Alejando Sancho, WCAP. Sense a trend here? Our military men and women have been at the forefront of our World wrestling squads for a minute now, actually then some. SPC Sancho traces his roots back to a tough part of south Florida where Judo piqued his interests and helped put him off the streets and in the sights of a Sunshine State Hall of Famer. Albert Pardo terrorized opponents in the mid 80s as a South Miami Sr. High Cobra, going from there in 85 to graduating from SJSU in ’92. Pardo came home and built a juggernaut that ran 25 years. This real Cobra Kai was the 180 degree opposite of the movie version, as through a quarter century of wrestling intensity exactly NONE of Pardos … rest of story at https://morewrestlingplease.wordpress.com/2021/05/04/4th-season-column-4-going-all-upper-body-left-coast-lunacy-and-an-olympic-viewpoint/?mc_cid=f2268a753e&mc_eid=2ef7cbca4b

May 18, 2021 - Posted by The TakeDown Report | Uncategorized