In the first few weeks of college wrestling being back we have seen a couple National Champions go down and many other All Americans go down as well. When we look at people who have had impressive seasons so far the one that comes out on top for most people is Nebraska’s Peyton Robb.
Peyton Robb has been very impressive this season. He was up at 165 pounds last season where he finished in the round of 16 at NCAAs as the 14 seed which was pretty much expected. NCAAs last season was rough for Nebraska as a whole, things looked to be going good with Taylor Venz, Ridge Lovett, and Erich Schultz having good showing at the Big Ten tournament but just falling apart time came Nationals. This season they seem to look back on track and with Peyton Robb down at 157 that could cause some problems.
Peyton Robb since his time down at 157 pounds has amassed a 5-1 record. He had an easy win over D2 Nebraska-Kearney, one against North Dakota State, and 2 more against Northern Iowa. These are all matches that he was expected to win either way. As we know Nebraska dedicated the dual meet vs North Carolina to late teammate Christian Miller who sadly passed away. Last year the dual meet was filled with crazy matches and came down to Christian Lance taking out multiple time All American Trent Hillger in overtime to win the dual.
This dual meet lived up to the hype as well and was filled with upsets. We started off with Kizhan Clarke taking out Chad Red in overtime, then immediately after Ridge Lovett took out Zach Sherman 4-3, and another one right after with Peyton Robb and Austin O’ Connor who was the National Champion last season a weight down at 149 pounds where he defeated Ohio State’s Sammy Sasso.
Robb was able to thoroughly dominate the match with two takedowns to O’ Connor’s zero takedowns and really did not let him get close to finishing a takedown. This is by far the biggest win of Peyton Robb’s career so far. Now things started to get interesting when we saw another big potential matchup at the Daktronics Open.
In the finals of the Daktronics Open Peyton Robb ended up wrestling defending NCAA Champion of Iowa State David Carr. He looked like he was going to dominate the match after the first two periods to be honest where he put up two takedowns and held Carr to pretty much no offense. Obviously David Carr is not a National Champion for no reason, he held his poise and was able to score a takedown with about 5 seconds left to send the match into overtime where he was able to secure a takedown pretty quick into sudden victory.
Now it is only November and as we keep that in mind many questions arise. Did Robb just peak last week and have a couple very good matches or is he going to be a legit threat at 157 pounds to win the thing. Right now we have Peyton Robb ranked at #3 behind only David Carr, and Ryan Deakin who is the Big Ten Champion at the weight. This season will be very fun to watch with Peyton Robb as well as a very dominant Husker team and who knows what may happen.
