THE ILLINI WRESTLING BLOG AND FORUM

TONY MADRIGAL Please give an ILLINI welcome to Anthony "Tony" Madrigal! The OPRF product has transferred from an Oklahoma squad in turmoil to join the University of ILLINOIS Wrestling team. I'm sure most folks here are very aware of his high school pedigree that included two state finals, Fargo and Ironman awards.  Did you also know he beat Real Woods twice in high school and wrestled Spencer Lee to a 5-0 loss at Ironman before Lee was injured? Here he is beating high school teammate JRent in a Fargo semifinal: This looks to shore up the ILLINI lightweights even further. I said that last season the team had more depth than at any time since the Golden Age, and this year will be even better.  And so, here's a Guardians of the Galaxy welcome to Tony: ZANE RICHARDS Over to themat.com, they have put up what they call a "preview" of the Richards-Gilman Final X match. There's not much detail, very little meat on that bone, but here it is : "57 kg – Thoma

ILLINI CAMPS If you are looking for instruction from the best of the best, the ILLINI and IRTC coaching staff can give you that. As you can see from the graphic below, the Team Camp has space limitations, so sign up now!  FINAL X Run to the storm shelter, hide the kids, and get ready for Final X on June 10. Zane Richards will be wrestling Freestyle, while Zac Braunagel, Kamal Bey and Joe Rau will be in the Greco lineup. These are best two of three matches. TheMat.com has previews for Greco up here : 77 kg – Kamal Bey (Colorado Springs, Colo./Army WCAP) vs. Aliaksandr Kikiniou (Poway, Calif.) This Final X series has one of the better story lines among Greco-Roman battles. Kamal Bey, who has been competing at a high level in Greco-Roman since high school, is now a veteran star who is still seeking his first Senior World or Olympic medal. Aliaksandr Kikiniou won a World medal and made two Olympic Teams for Belarus before emigrating the United States. Since being here, Kikiniou has entered

ZAC BRAUNAGEL   At the World Team Trials yesterday, the Brawlnagel captured the title and earned a spot on the Senior United States Greco National Team. He also won a spot in Final X against Alan Vera.  The ILLINI wrestler and Belleville native represented the ILLINI RTC in the tournament. In the semifinals, Braunagel beat Timothy Young of Army WCAP by tech fall. In the finals, he faced Richard Carlson of Minnesota Storm. That's the match featured in this video: SPOILER ALERT: Zac won the championship final 6-0. His big move was a underhook lateral drop that looked like a combination of Judo and Magic. There's a slow motion version in the video above. Here's a screen capture from the match: In his semifinal match against Army wrestler Timothy Young, Zac used short drags, a go-behind off a Russian tie, and a gut wrench to secure the tech. In the finals, he hit that voodoo lateral drop and a push-out, showing a diversified offense. It also showed how tough the State of ILLINO

LOGAN SWAW The ILLINI recruit represented Izzy Style in last night's giant dual with Ben Askren's AWA. It was Swaw and Tristan Steldt in the Co-Main Event, and the match was all Swaw. A lot of skill and gutsy determination was on display, which you can see here on Rokfin .  The match starts at about 1:39:59, and it is a subscription service. However, this dual did not require a premium payment, so you can watch it for "free" as long as you have a general subscription to Rokfin.  The ability to implement the technical skills that he's been taught shone through during the match. The half-nelson to set up a high gut was just one example. My favorite moment, though, was a second-period gutsy double leg with Swaw on both knees facing a front headlock and a sprawl and still finishing.  Steldt is a Fargo and Wisconsin State Champion. You can bet that Askren is building him up as the next AWA superstar. That will have to wait for now. Here's a storyboard to follow alo

ZANE RICHARDS I watched  Searching for Bobby Fischer yesterday. It's a pretty remarkable film with a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Near the end of the movie, the seven-year-old prodigy plays in the championship game. After calculating the winning sequence of moves, he said to his opponent over the chess board: "You've lost. You just don't know it." Then, the child chess prodigy played the thirteen (I counted them) moves that led to a forced resignation from his opponent.  Is that where we are with the Gilman versus Richards matchup in Final X? As you know, Zane Richards beat Nick Suriano at the US Open to advance to Final X. He has improved by leaps and bounds by training in Russia and Azerbaijan with the ILLINOIS RTC. There is also a resident athlete at the IRTC named Erdenebat Belhbayar, who is a two-time World Medalist and Olympian for Mongolia.  He was in Zane's corner for the US Open final.  It goes without saying that Bryan Medlin, the head coach of th

JAYDEN COLON Late last night the big news came in: Jayden Colon is an ILLINI! The two-time State Champion (going for number three) in the Class of 2024 has made his choice.  A stalwart on the ILLINOIS Freestyle and Greco Nationals scene, he has earned Fargo AA honors and been a representative for the United States, as well as a Pan Am Champion.  The St. Charles East and Izzy Style wrestler will make his wrestling home in Champaign.  Congratulations to all of the coaches and parents and family and friends and practice partners involved in helping Jayden make his dreams come true! Also, great job to the ILLINI staff! This is big time. Here's a short video to celebrate this union: ACADEMIC ALL BIG TEN I recall a post about this previously, but I don't think that we had all the names. Now, we do. To be nominated for Academic All Big Ten, a student-athlete must be in his or her second year of university, and have a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or better. Interestingly, the

  OPTION II Every D1 wrestler will be listed on a Wrestler Stock Exchange and given a three- or four-letter abbreviation. For example, Lucas Byrd might be LBY, Patrick McKee could be PMCK, while Carter Starocci would be DIC. A wrestler's stock price would be performance-based because capitalists, like you, would purchase shares in those stocks.  Would you buy an under-performing stock?  The University of Iowa and other institutions could also purchase shares in these stocks. In that way, a person, institution or an amalgamation of interests from say, Gardner-Webb, could purchase a controlling interest in DIC and he would then become a Bulldog and have to move to Boiling Springs, North Carolina. This framework would be exciting for fans who could make a killing by short-selling a stock or holding a stock like Nagao (GCHO), which goes through the roof. Of course, there could be a rug pull like at the NCAA tournament with SPL. Buyer beware.  This would be more transparent than the cur

THE STANWESTERN WOLVERCATS Needless to say, anything that makes Northwestern wrestling fans cry is a big plus for me, but the creation of the Stanwestern Wolvercats maybe goes too far. You've probably heard by now that Michigan has taken three wrestlers from Evanston's Big Ten Team and added them to their new Wolvercats lineup.  Additionally, the Wolvercats added a wrestler from Stanford, which is basically a West coast version of Northwestern, but for hippies. What Shane Griffith has done is a Joe Montana, going from sunny California to a dank Midwestern city that is home to the most overrated football coaches in history (Schembechler and that current fellow).  To lure Griffith from the land of long hair and LSD parties, the Wolvercats may have paid more for him than San Francisco originally paid for Joe Montana: " Joe Montana signed a 3 year, $255,000 contract with the San Francisco 49ers, including a $50,000 signing bonus, and an average annual salary of $85,000."

US OPEN SCOREBOARD In case you missed it, the ILLINI and the IRTC had a magnificent US Open. There were also IRTC-adjacent wrestlers making their mark. Here is our version of a scoreboard: A couple of extraneous thoughts from the US Open that didn't get mentioned during our coverage. First of all, I believe that Kannon Webster is now tall enough to walk onto a horse. Also, Jordan Blanton shared a post on Instagram that showed Nick Suriano grabbing Zane Richards singlet A SECOND TIME!  We had pointed out in our Story Board in a previous post how Suriano grabbed Zane's singlet in a futile attempt to keep him from scoring the winning takedown. The singlet grab above looks much worse, as if Nicky Pushups is trying to choke Zane with his own singlet!  PAN AMS Fresh off their National Championships, Joe Rau and Kamal Bey are entered in the Pan Am Championships. Rau has already won! He went from a national champion to a two-continent champion . He won a total of four bouts, although h