Kyle Dake and Alex Dieringer will wrestle this weekend in a best-of-three series in Austin, Texas, for the right to represent the USA at the 2019 UWW World Championships in Nur Sultan, Kazakhstan. Before we actually get to the action on the mat, there are a couple of situations and positions that I would like you to pay close attention to before the first whistle blows on Saturday. 

Watch Dake vs Dieringer Wrestle-Off Live On Flo

Saturday, August 17 | 1:00 PM Central

Ringer Is Good Where He's Good.... AND....

The book on Alex Dieringer isn't very thick. He's got a nasty lefty high crotch. His near arm far leg dump (also lefty) can send even the best in the world over for four. Check out a Behind the Dirt that we did from the Yarygin on Ringer's dump here. 

While I'll concede that Ringer doesn't have as impressive an offensive repertoire as some, one thing is hard to deny and that is that he has added to his freestyle savvy. Case in point is the first match this year against Zahid Valencia at the World Team Trials. In the first scoring action, Zahid started to go behind and Ringer hit a beautiful action to slip out and go behind himself and then transition seamlessly into a  trap-arm-gut. I've seen that go-behind sequence before on many folkstylers, and they often either stand up and get stepped out or basically allow the other guy to go behind them. 

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The Magic Number Is 4 

So much has been made about American wrestlers like Jordan Burroughs and just how good he is when he is trailing that sometimes we forget that we have guys on the squad (like Kyle Dake) who have been lights out when they are leading. Suffice to say that most people perform better when they have a few points as a cushion on the scoreboard, but we can be a bit more direct than that. 

If you'd like to have any chance of beating Kyle Dake, you're probably going to need a four-point lead. Not two or three. Four. Granted, the sample size of Dake losses is pretty small, but when you consider his wrestling style it makes sense. 

Kyle Dake has some of the best defense in the world. It makes sense that if Dake has a lead and his opponent is forced to come to him, the pace of and flow of the match would swing in his favor. That's not to take anything away from Dake’s offense, but even the big throws that he has a tendency of scoring four on come off of his opponent’s initiation. 

I Don’t Know What To Do With My Hands…..

I'm sure that I'm not the only one to pick up on this, but Kyle Dake is great at pulling his elbows back and making initial contact with his head in order to get you to reach.

The first time Dieringer wrestled Dake in Spain, he fell right into Dake’s trap. Off the whistle Dake pulled his elbows back, Ringer extended himself trying to grab onto Dake’s arms, and Dake shot in on an easy righty Hi-C.

This tactic has been known to bite Dake in his hind parts in the past though. Check out this match from the 2018 Ivan Yarygin where Kyle wrestled Akhmed Gadzhimagomedov. In the beginning of the match Dake pulls his elbows back and instead of reaching for the arms, Gadzhi goes right for the legs of Dake and knee pounds himself into perfect position when Dake reacts to the leg attack.

No matter the outcome on Saturday, one thing remains true: whoever our rep is in Kazakstan is going to be an absolute nightmare for the rest of the world.