WrestlersGrind Podcast Episode 1

The Wrestler's Grind podcast had its first episode, discussing the All-Star Classic. They talked about the women's matches and the success of freestyle wrestling in women's college wrestling. They also discussed some notable matches and upsets, such as Matt Ramos getting back on track and Isaac Olenek defeating Dean Hamidi. They touched on the recent gambling investigation involving Iowa and Iowa State. They also mentioned the new scoring system in wrestling and how it is impacting matches. Overall, they were excited to bring news and updates about wrestling to their listeners. All right. I'll do the intro again. You want some water real quick? No. I'm gonna be late with work again. No you won't. We'll get it done. You put it on the vault? Yeah. Okay. I made sure. Ready? Yeah. Hey, what's up guys? Welcome to the Wrestler's Grind podcast. Official first episode. I'm your co-host, Hunter, and I'm joined today by the owner, founder, CEO of Wrestler's Grind, Adolfo Felix. How we doing today, Adolfo? Doing great. Excited to talk some wrestling. All-Star Classic was phenomenal. We're glad to be here. It's been a long time coming. Ready to bring you guys some news about wrestling, the wrestling community, MMA, all that stuff. But let's dive right in to the All-Star Classic. Yeah. Entertaining night from start to finish. We had four women's matches. The first match we saw a nice headlock. Samara Chavez, sorry if I pronounced that wrong, got a headlock in the beginning and then to end the match she got another headlock. She tried to do one after getting the first one and tried it again and was not successful, but she got it again at the end of the match and closed it and got a pin. That was my favorite one out of all the women's matches. That was at 116, the pin to start us off for the All-Star Classic. I liked the other ones. It was good to see. There was a lot of scoring. We had a tech at 130 with Alexis Janiak versus Sarah Savage. 10-0 tech there. And then we had Hidalgo Wachukwu and she beat Yelly Aycock 11-7. And then we had Marilyn Deed who beat Latifah McBride 8-3. And that kind of sends us It was really cool to see freestyle at this event. All women's college wrestling is freestyle which I think is really cool and good for them on the international scene going from being able to transition from college into the international scene as well. So then we have Matt Ramos versus Anthony Noto. Ramos took a loss early, a couple losses early this season and looked great in this match. Yeah, it was great to see Matt Ramos get back on track taking a loss to Marcus Blaze, brother of Joey Blaze who's the teammate of Matt Ramos and Joey Blaze knocks off Ed Scott from NC State. But yeah, nice to see Matt Ramos back on track. I really wanted to, unlike Anthony Noto too, great wrestler, but Matt Ramos has got a lot of attention on him just because he is the guy that beat Spencer Lee and will always be known for that. I think he's always going to be criticized a little bit harder just because he did what he did. Biggest upset of all time in my opinion. We love Spencer Lee too. Great for him to get back on track there and get the win. Yeah. And then at 133, I'll let you run that. We had Connor McGonigal. He was able to beat, and I'll let you take over on this one. Yeah, he was able to beat Sam Latana. Latana, you know it's funny, before I was saying Latana, now I'm like why am I saying that? I'm saying Joe Montana. McGonigal looked great, man. I hope his nickname is Professor McGonigal, like from Harry Potter. That would be so cool. Okay, I'll let you talk about that match. Yeah, Connor McGonigal having a roster battle with his teammate Ryan Crokamp. Crokamp beat him in a tournament early in the season and then went on and beat Vito. A little roster battle there. This was needed for McGonigal to show the coaches to prove I can compete with anybody. I'm interested in how that will be determined. Who's going to be the starter. I think you beat a guy like Sam Latana. Sam Latana did take a loss at the Southeast Open but it's still... He's a guy who beat Vito last season but last season results don't really matter and have a lot of weight into this season but still, it's valid. It's just nice for him to come out with a win and still be in the conversation for that starting spot. If he would have lost, I think fans would have been like give the spot to Ryan Crokamp. Which is crazy because he beat Vito Crokamp. That was definitely the biggest upset so far. Other than Joey Blaze. Marcus Blaze beating Matt Ramos. That was insane. At 141, I like all wrestlers. You're more of the lighter weight expert here. Lachlan McNeil beat Josh Cotterhant. Cotterhant was a last minute fill-in for South Dakota State. Nice for Cotterhant at the Navy. This season he beat Cole Matthews who last year competed at the All-Star Classic. This past Monday Cole Matthews took another loss to Maryland's 141 pounder Kyle Miller. Josh was a fill-in there. It was nice to see Lachlan McNeil get the win. He represents Canada in the freestyle scene. It was nice to UN North Carolina Rob Cole to get a win there 4-2. Great to see some of the Cary Kovacs guys from the Naval Academy getting out there, getting in the mix. At 49, we had a great match with Shane Van Ness from Penn State and Kyle Parco. Looked pretty close. It was a 5-1 final score, but Shane Van Ness takes a shot. They start moving in a short offense scenario. Van Ness gets over under and then hits a beautiful outside trip. Basically, that was the biggest part of that match. It was a clean outside trip. That was awesome. Van Ness looked great. Great movement. That leads us to a D-2 matchup at 157, which that was cool to see. We were talking about this. David Taylor got excited during that match. It seemed like he was wishing he could coach the guys through some of the positions. They did very well. You showed out for Division II. That's Nolan Hertel and Nick Novak. Nolan Hertel is D-3. Shout out to D-3. He's the D-3 champ. Nick Novak was the D-2 champ. I saw somebody put out there, D-3 greater than D-2. It was good to get some shine on those divisions as well. Great wrestlers everywhere. Speaking of David Taylor, you said that he was commentating. It was nice. It was good stuff. I love when these wrestlers are commentating. Him, Kyle Dake, Jordan Burrows. Great stuff for the sport. We talked about it too. It's really cool seeing them. They're at the top of the food chain in wrestling. They're also great orators. They're really good at breaking stuff down. Their energy and passion for wrestling is just great to see. Then at 165, Isaac Olenek versus Dean Hamidi. That was a surprise there. Dean Hamidi has got three wins over Isaac in the past. Isaac was at NIU. Isaac got a sweet little single, which he said in his post-match. He had been working a lot with Coleman Scott, who used to be the head coach at North Carolina and now is an assistant coach over there at Oklahoma. His alma mater. Really cool stuff there. Isaac got an 82 win. Isaac is busting. He's busting in that match. How much do you really look into this? Hamidi wrestled Carr on Sunday. Not taking anything from Isaac, but Hamidi wrestled on Sunday and goes two days later. Wrestles Isaac and two tough opponents in a short amount of time. That's the type of stuff that you need to do to prepare yourself. Big 12 is a great conference and a lot of tough competitors. Great to get some tough competition earlier in the season. A lot of people were talking about Wisconsin and Chris Bono. What's going on there? They wrestled Iowa State on Sunday. Took a 42-0 loss to them. People were just all over the internet talking about what's going on. Iowa State's just a really tough team. I'll maybe dive into it later on someday. I need to see a little bit more to have that opinion, and I get it where people are coming from with that, but for me personally, I just need to see a little bit more to have that opinion. Yeah, and it's crazy too, especially with both of those schools having to go through what they're going through with the gambling investigation. It's just odd that they're the only two that are being investigated. We've seen Iowa and Iowa State just with the gambling scenario. I just think, like we were talking about it and so do the Brands brothers, that it's just kind of odd that those are the only two schools that are getting investigated for the gambling at the moment. We'll probably talk about that another time. Just wanted to shed some light on that for a minute. 174, we had Carter Starocci versus Makai Lewis battle of the NCAA champs. And David Taylor was talking about this a little bit. So it was 11-0, and the match was really close at first. I don't know if Makai Lewis had a little injury or not taking anything away from Starocci, but his knee was taped up. It was taped up, and David Taylor was talking about this. Some of these scores, we can't base the scores on how the scoring system used to be. Now it's a three-point takedown. Now you can also have the potential to get four points on top if you get back points. So it was 11-0, and I actually saw the score first, and I went back and watched the match, and I was like, okay, it was 11-0, and Starocci did dominate it, but that score now versus 10 years ago means something completely different. You know, you can say that about some... It's relevant, right? Because we just got this new rule, the three-point takedown, and people are going to continue to talk about it and continue to talk about how it's bad. I'm like, it's going to go on all season, and we can talk about it all season, but it is what it is. That's how the match is going to be scored, and if we want to go back to the old scoring, then that's going to be something that's going to be changed in the offseason, so we're stuck with these rules. I like it personally. It makes it more spectator-friendly. I just feel like it's always going to be brought up, though. I feel like it's always going to be brought up, and it's always going to be part of... People are going to complain about it. There's going to be instances, and there's going to be other times where people are like, oh, that's so cool that the match ended, a first-period tack, because of all the takedowns and the near fall, and some people are going to see the positive side of it, but see, now it's weird, because you could have a score of 8-2, which normally means that was a pretty dominant match. Now it can be 8-2, and the guy took you down twice, maybe you took him down once, whatever, and he escaped from you, and you took him down and reversed him, and then you got another escape, and now it's 8-2. So now, the difference between two takedowns, that can mean a lot more. And especially with the new, well, it's not new now, but for the past couple years, with the new stalling, especially on the edge with the wrestling, it's like stalling points can come quicker as well. So, it just kind of adds up, but I think it makes college wrestling more interesting. Yeah, what do you think about Sirachi? Oh, yeah, in the second period, yeah, he got the back points, he kind of hit the helicopter on top, and it looked like he picked up the leg, he was trying to bring the Makai Luz's head to his leg, you know, how you do with the helicopter, and he just kind of stood up and bent that knee back. Yeah, there's a lot of talk about that position, and I think it's just he the moment, you know, kind of hitting that bow and arrow. How often do you see people do it like that? And I've seen it many times like that. So, and I get it, you gotta be, you know, it's a rough position, but I don't, I've seen that position done before, and I've not seen today. I guess too, especially if it's on the edge, right, and you're like, man, y'all are going out of bounds anyways, but he the moment, Sirachi obviously just wants to dominate, got the dog in him, and, you know, I see what you're saying. It did seem a little unnecessary, but I'm sure Carter Sirachi would disagree. I think he'd be like, man, I was just he the moment, wanted to dominate, so. He'd probably say something along the lines, you don't want that to happen, don't get there. Yeah, and then so, moving on, we had the, I just want to say this real quick. It was really cool how at this All-Star Classic, everyone was repping their school singlets, because in the past, like, for instance, David Taylor, Kyle Bates, I finally did that. Yeah, I know. I don't know, but I remember back then, that's just my – what I was saying, they used to wear singlets for the event. Now they get to rep their school, and it's cool to see all these schools… wearing their singlets. It'd be cool if one of these schools just made a custom singlet for it. That's – excuse me. Yeah, that's what we were both saying. If there was an alternate colorway for a school, that'd be really cool to see. If one of these schools would make their own singlet for the All-Star Classic, that'd be pretty sweet. Penn State wearing, like, white and gold or something cool. Something. You know, it'd be interesting. Well, then we had Parker Kikeisen and Bernie Truax, and that was really entertaining, man. Bernie looked really good. He came out in his patented kind of, like, low-sweep single, got the three, almost said two, got the three on Parker Kikeisen, and then from there, after Bernie got tired or if he just wanted to, you know, kind of hold on to his lead, but a couple escapes from Parker Kikeisen, a couple of stallings, going out of bounds, and then he kind of just hits a last-second takedown on the edge. Parker comes out. It was nice. It was cool to see Parker's tenacity in not giving up in that match, and also after, you know, he kind of talked about how his style is a mix of American wrestling and Russian wrestling, which I think is pretty evident in his style, but you know, just kind of a cool take to hear from Parker Kikeisen. Yeah, for sure. I thought that was that takedown on the end. I was pumped. That was exciting. That was cool. Absolutely. Then we had Aaron Brooks versus Tanner Sloan. Seen Aaron Brooks at 197 pounds. He's really, you know, he's got that frame. He's big. He's strong. He's fast, and he was hitting his, again, patented outside single. Finishing it well. You know, kind of just dominated that match, and put on a show for his home crowd. Yeah, loving it, too. And then, this is kind of where the conversation about the new scoring comes in, is we had Greg Daniel, how do we say his last name? Kirk Vallee. Not the right way. I think we both say it wrong. And Wyatt Hendrickson from Air Force. Wyatt Hendrickson comes out. 15 seconds in the match, he's on his back. Down 7-0. Kind of shoots in a little bit. Just gets put to his back. Obviously, there's, with the new scoring system, maybe he could have taken down Daniel, Greg to his back, and come back, but getting a guy like that on his back, man, it's gonna be a deep hole to climb out of, and from there, it was just, the Nittany Lion just had it after that. So, he ends up getting pecked. Interesting, like, I think if they wrestled again, it would be probably a little closer if Wyatt doesn't go to his back, but again, cool to see that match-up early in the season. No answers for him, but cool to see that match-up, and again, I think it's just so cool that Air Force has an All-American in Wyatt Hendrickson, and then we got to see Navy out there some. Yeah, so Navy, and got to see our boy, Scotty Boykin, out there cornering Wyatt Hendrickson. Yeah. Tennessee native. Overall, really great event. It was very entertaining. The crowd energy, you almost would have thought it was a Penn State duel, but they had, the fans from all over the place, just great to see that at State College, they just really love the sport of wrestling and just support it through and through. Yep, and that's where the Olympic trials will be, so excited. Got to get up there for that. Yeah, for sure. David Taylor was great. Again, I think we've already said that, but his commentating was just awesome. I think it really brought some energy to the broadcast. And super excited for the Iowa State Iowa duel coming up. We got boots on the ground there for that. Hoping to bring you guys some awesome content. 100%. That's going to be there, taking some good content, and it's going to be a big duel, so we'll talk about it. We'll talk about it. We've had some good matches so far this season. We had the Clearing Open, Southeast Open, then we had Wyoming and Campbell, and then Rutgers-Virginia Tech. We kind of had to catch up to this point because we just got the podcast studio ready for last night for the All-Star Classic, but it's going to be a great season. 100%. Thank you guys for tuning in. We still have this part. Oh, no, no. Check me. This is what I was going to say. We'll cut it there, and then we'll go into where I was like, all right, we got the No Limits shoes, and then we can just add the rest of that conversation. You know what I mean? You'll just have to cut the first time we were talking about the All-Star Classic.