Clint Lamb
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Look, I don’t know a whole lot about wrestling. If we’re talking Stone Cold Steve Austin, Hulk Hogan, Sting or The Rock, I can hang with you a bit more. But when it comes to the actual sport and not the staged stuff, I don’t have a clue.
What I do know, however, is that U.S. wrestling heavyweight Gable Steveson pulled off an incredible gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics on Friday. During the men’s free style 125kg run, Steveson defeated Geno Petriashvili 9-8 after an epic last-second comeback.
Check it out:
WHAT JUST HAPPENED! 🥇@GableSteveson grabs the GOLD as time expires. #TokyoOlympics pic.twitter.com/yqMc3wbXsu
— #TokyoOlympics (@NBCOlympics) August 6, 2021
Looks pretty awesome to me, but I still don’t think I can grasp the difficulty of this achievement. But I’ll leave it to one Twitter user to explain it to me. JP, with the handle @pinempap3, described the gravity of the situation this way:
“I don’t think people realize the improbability of this situation,” he tweeted. “Two takedowns in 13 seconds against the 3 time reigning world champion? Unheard of. And the kid just turned 21 years old. What an absolute monster. That will be replayed for years to come. Congrats Gable!”
I don't think people realize the improbability of this situation. Two takedowns in 13 seconds against the 3 time reigning world champion? Unheard of. And the kid just turned 21 years old. What an absolute monster. That will be replayed for years to come. Congrats Gable!
— JP (@pinempap3) August 6, 2021
Well, I learned something new today. Congratulations, Gable Steveson and Team USA!
Follow Clint Lamb on Twitter @ClintRLamb.
He was clearly destined for this. Gable is the last name of the best wrestler ever, Dan Gable.
I thought Dave Shultz was one of if not the best wrestler ever. Team Fox Catcher or something of that sort. Watched a Netflix special on it and him. The guy was a straight up beast. It’s to bad they had to live on the grounds of that psycho that ended up killing him. But there was no money in wrestling at the time so the enticement of millions of dollars and a new facility was hard to pass up for USA wrestling.
Dan Gable went 94-1-0 over three seasons at Iowa State, winning two national titles.
He then won gold medals at the 1971 Pan-American Games and world championships.
At the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Gable won the gold medal in freestyle wrestling at 68 kg without giving up a single point over six matches.
After his wrestling career was over he went into coaching, eventually taking over as head wrestling coach at Iowa in 1976 and staying until 1997.
Over those 22 seasons, Gable’s teams went 355-21-5 in 381 dual meets and won 15 national championships.
Last year he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Donald Trump. When President Trump noted that he was a little bigger than Gable, he asked if he would have a shot at beating him at wrestling. “You would have no chance,” Gable responded
Thank you very much for the interesting intel, CG.