THE ILLINI WRESTLING BLOG AND FORUM

  WHO :  ZANE RICHARDS WHAT :  Pan Am Olympic Games Qualifier WHERE :  Acapulco, Mexico WHEN :  Friday, March 1 @ 2:00 pm (Central) WHY :  Select Wrestlers for Paris Olympics TV/STREAMING :  FloWrestling (subscription service) UPDATE Well, much of what is written below has been f-d up by the draw and by UWW rules and seeding decisions.  Zane Richards will have Costa Rica or Guatemala in his first match. Second match will probably be either Darian Cruz or Ecuador. Win those two, and he's qualified the weight. Darian Cruz is the toughest match, but Zane has already handled him multiple times. MONEYBALL!   In this post, we dive into the characteristics of Zane Richards' major challengers at the Pan Am Games Olympic Qualifier. This is our  Moneyball  look at his opponents. What stances and ties do they favor? What kind of shots do they take? What kind of shots do they convert?  While watching the matches of potential opponents, we stop the video and note which ties are being used,

Coach Mike Poeta of the University of ILLINOIS Wrestling team discusses the past week, which included duals against Purdue and Northwestern, tells us about "The Feud," and talks about what manner of preparations they will employ to get ready for the post-season. This is the very short trailer: And here is the complete video:

  Celebrating the ILLINI recruits at the IHSA state tournament and looking forward to Ryan Bennett in Ohio's big dance. Featured are Marko Ivanisevic, Anthony "Joey" Ruzic, Jayden Colon and Wyatt Medlin. The latter isn't officially a recruit, I guess, but just get outta my face with that!  Ruzic and Colon completed a high school career that included three state championship brackets. GO ILLINI!!! Audio credit to Queens of the Stone Age for their smash hit, with 81 million views on YouTube alone, Go with the Flow ; video credit AND BLAME to Trackwrestling/FloWrestling for the 360 pixel mess that is what you get when you use the same camera as Charlie Chaplin, but I guess I should be grateful, so thanks, I guess.

On Friday, February 16, 2024, the ILLINI wrestled against Purdue in West Lafayette. The team won. In this video you'll find a short clip from each of the ILLINOIS wins. On Sunday, February 18, 2024, the ILLINI wrestled Northwestern in Evanston. Again, the team won. There's a short clip of all the winners here along with the team's celebration of their victory. Credit: The Climax Blues Band and their chunky hit, Couldn't Get It Right , BTN+, and the Coaches and wrestlers from ILLINOIS, Purdue and Northwestern. These were both exciting duals that came down to the heavyweight matches. Every point counted. That includes all the points taken and all the points not given. Double winners included Danny Pucino with two pins, Edmond Ruth with two majors and Tony Madrigal with a major and a decision. Other winners included Dylan Connell, Peter Marinopolous, Justin Cardani and Chris Moore.  Against the Boilermakers, the ILLINI were down 16-18 with only the heavyweight match

I could talk to Mike Poeta, Bryan Medlin, Steve Marianetti, Jesse Delgado, Zane Richards and the Brawlnagel Twins for a month straight, not just because they're great wrestlers and coaches, but mainly because they're interesting people with important stories to tell. The problem with that, though, is that after a day or so, their families would miss them and start asking questions, and then the police would get involved, and after the FBI tracked us down, well, there's not much of a future in that, is there?  So, instead, we have podcasts.  Today's Threeee Is the New Twoooo podcast features the brains of the ILLINOIS Regional Training Center, Coach Bryan Medlin. We have some surprises for him, and he surprised us with some things as well. His analogy involving Mathematics and equations is straight-up brilliant. The video starts off with a breakdown of the ILLINI versus Purdue dual on Friday, then we jump into the interview with Coach.  Here is a link to the donations pa

ILLINI Wrestling Coach Mike Poeta shared information about the past weekend, the upcoming weekend, training for the post season, and he talked about "The Feud." Check out this short trailer, which goes into the "The Feud": The complete video is here. Enjoy: COMING SOON:

The Best 57kg Room in the World! WHAT :  ILLINI versus Purdue dual WHEN :  Friday, February 16, at 6:00 pm (Central) WHERE :  West Lafayette, Indiana TV/STREAMING :  BTN+ ( subscription service ) LAST 10 :  ILLINI 9, Purdue 1 WHY WE HATE PURDUE In the past, we made fun of Purdue because the manufacture of boilers was the height of engineering in the 1860s. In fact, the school's mascot makes what are, in effect, large tea kettles. And that mascot? It's the most nightmare-inducing creature a child could ever encounter. Whoever created it was sick in the head.  A DAY IN HISTORY January 6, 2012 is a Friday, and it is a particularly awful day for the world, as eighty-nine people have just become casualties of a suicide bomber in a police station in Damascus, Syria. The Ramnit computer worm is busy stealing 45,000 Facebook logins and passwords. On this same day, the makers of Norton antivirus software admit that hackers have stolen "a segment of its source code." Hmmm. I wo