Nick Gwiazdowski has had a phenomenal career so far making four world teams and winning 2 world bronze medals in his senior level career.
At 29 years old and now being a volunteer assistant coach at Cornell his career will most likely be coming to a close soon. He will be the guy to beat at the world team trials challenge tournament due to him not being able to sit in Final X.
Gwiazdowski has been the guy for the United States since Tervel Dlagnev left the scene in 2016. He did not make the Olympic team in 2021 getting swept in the best of 3 by soon to Olympic Champion Gable Steveson.
The only guy (currently competing) that has beaten Gwiazdowski recently has been Mason Parris and this was in 2020 at the Flowrestling RTC cup where Gwiazdowksi teched Parris 18-8 at the same tournament.
Since then Gwiazdowski made a few changes to his career, and his lifestyle and they became apparent at the world team trials where he dominated Parris 10-3 and 6-0 in a best of 3 sweep. That loss to Steveson definitely gave Gwiazdowksi a wake up call that these younger guys are out there to catch him.
After failing to medal at the world championships in Oslo after pulling Olympic Champion Taha Akgul in the bronze medal match. Gwiazdowski only fell 6-4 in a bout that was extremely competitive, this bout in years prior was a tech and a 5-1 decision for Akgul.
Some of the competitors that he will be seeing are the usual guys such as Dom Bradley, Tony Nelson, and Mason Parris. In addition to this we might see a couple new faces such as Greg Kerkvliet should he be competing, Lucas Davison should he make it through the US Open, and Hayden Zillmer who moved up to 125kg for the 2021 world team trials.
Gwiazdowski has had a great career so far and he said just last year that he has a lot more that he can do and he is not done yet so it will be interesting to see what moves he has made in this past year when he puts his abilities on display.
