The Top Pound-For-Pound Wrestlers At The U.S. Open
The Top Pound-For-Pound Wrestlers At The U.S. Open
Who are the best pound-for-pound wrestlers at the 2019 U.S. Open?
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A plethora of supremely talented freestyle wrestlers are decending on Vegas this weekend to test their mettle in the U.S. Open. But just how tremendous are these wrestlers? We decided to do a pound-for-pound rankings of the freestyle entries to find out.
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The NCAA column contains the wrestlers' finishes at the NCAA Tournament, and the UWW column has the wrestles' finishes at the UWW World Championships or Olympic Games. Keep in mind that a DNP in the UWW category means that the wrestler made a World or Olympic team, which is pretty dang impressive and carries more weight in our rankings than an NCAA championship.
| Rank | Name | School | NCAA | UWW |
| 1 | Thomas Gilman | Iowa | DNC, 4, 3, 2 | Silver, 5th |
| 2 | James Green | Nebraska | 7, 7, 3, 3 | Bronze, DNP, Silver, DNP |
| 3 | Anthony Ramos | Iowa | 12, 3, 2, 1 | DNP, DNP |
| 4 | Frank Molinaro | Penn State | 8, 5, 2, 1 | 5th |
| 5 | Jordan Oliver | Oklahoma State | 4, 1, 2, 1 | |
| 6 | Zain Retherford | Penn State | 5, 1, 1, 1 | DNP |
| 7 | Adam Coon | Michigan | 12, 2, 3, 2 | Silver |
| 8 | Bo Nickal | Penn State | 2, 1, 1, 1 | |
| 9 | Jason Nolf | Penn State | 2, 1, 1, 1 | |
| 10 | Isaiah Martinez | Illinois | 1, 1, 2, 2 | |
| 11 | Alex Dieringer | Oklahoma State | 3, 1, 1, 1 | |
| 12 | Nathan Tomasello | Ohio State | 1, 3, 3, 3 | |
| 13 | Jared Frayer | Oklahoma | DNP, 12, 4, 2 | DNP |
| 14 | Yianni Diakomihalis | Cornell | 1, 1, ?, ? | |
| 15 | Nico Megaludis | Penn State | 2, 2, 3, 1 | |
| 16 | Daton Fix | Oklahoma State | 2, ?, ?, ? | |
| 17 | Cory Clark | Iowa | 5, 2, 2, 1 | |
| 18 | Myles Martin | Ohio State | 1, 5, 2, 3 | |
| 19 | Darian Cruz | Lehigh | 7, 12, 1, 5 | |
| 20 | Kevin Gadson | Iowa State | DNC, 6, 4, 1 |
Gilman vs Green was a tough call for the top spot. Green has two world medals while Gilman has just one, but Gilman had a better performance in Budapest, so we went recency to split the tie.
Of course, your mileage may vary, which is why we do this completely made up and meaningless ranking; to start the debate! So please debate away. Tell us where we messed up.
Should we have included NCAA champs Tony Nelson and/or Michael Macchiavello? Should Zain be ahead of J.O. because Zain made a team and JO hasn't? These are just two out of nigh-infinite possible ways to say these rankings are incorrect. Feel free to use those are come up with creative new ways to savage our U.S. Open P4P top 20.