Minnesota heavyweight Gable Steveson’s career recently came to an end at the NCAA Championships this year when he defeated Arizona State’s Cohlton Schultz 6-2 winning his 2nd National Title. He then proceeded to leave his shoes on the mat signifying his retirement from the sport of wrestling as he foregoes his final year of eligibility to transition to the WWE.
It had come out a while back that Steveson had possibly signed the biggest NIL deal in all of college sports with the WWE which is not too unreasonable for the Olympic Champion. The last thing to take care of in his wrestling career was winning a second Hodge trophy and he did so by a decent margin.
Steveson was perfect on the year as expected giving up only one takedown the entire season which came to Northwestern’s Lucas Davison in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Tournament. Steveson still dominated the rest of the bout powering to a 10-5 victory.
The Hodge race was not really close as Steveson claimed almost 9,000 out of around 26,000 votes cast. Cornell’s Yianni Diakomihalis came in 2nd place with Nick Lee of Penn State coming in 3rd.
Steveson joins the likes of Kerry McCoy, Stephen Neal, and Steve Mocco as heavyweights to win the Hodge trophy and with this one he puts himself in a league of his own as the only ever to win it twice.
The big question will always be what if Gable stayed in the sport, but for now that’s a wrap with an 85-2 career record for the Gophers and ends it off on a 52 match win streak.
