For the first time in what seems to be a while the USA Greco Roman Wrestling team has earned a world medal! That being G’Angelo Hancock winning bronze at 97kg. While the two hammers Musa Evloev and Artur Aleksanyan were out this is still a huge achievement for us and definitely shows a promising future for the 24 year old. The USA Greco Roman Wrestling team is looking at a bright future with Hancock and young heavyweight Cohlton Schultz who went 0-1 after dropping his first match to Iakobi Kajaia 5-3 and Kajaia getting upset in the semifinals. Even though Schultz went 0-1 he still made his first world team and took an Olympic Silver Medalist down to the wire.
Where does this hold the future of USA GR Wrestling? I would say not there yet but definitely in a position where we can build to be one of the powerhouses should we put in the time and resources. Adam Coon seems the be a piece where nobody really knows if he can come back and make the team taking out Schultz. Coon was in the NFL for a brief period of time and ended up getting cut from the Titans due to injury. The other missing piece and a guy who we have not seen in a while is Kamal Bey, the 23 year old phenom was on the scene a while back and he was dominant to new levels. He was given a suspension do to maintaining whereabouts and he will be back soon. In his place right now is Jesse Porter at 77kg another very young guy who made the Olympic Team but did not get a chance to compete in Tokyo because he could not qualify the weight class.
If we can put it together in Greco Roman Wrestling team USA could definitely be looking at multiple medalists at worlds next year. Obviously we have to take this one step at a time but that being said you should be very optimstic.
