6 Months Later.... The good, bad, and the ugly...(Thoughts, analysis, and what the hell happens next)

 I'M BACK! (and this time I don't plan on going anywhere...) Your favorite amateur writer and podcast host with way too many chess references that no one else understands is back. Man time flies faster than we can freakin blink... call me a one-hit-wonder, flash in a pan, or whatever other colloquialisms that suits you, but it's been 6 months since a naive 16-year-old booted up a computer, did some basic research, and caused a huge mess in the wrestling world for about 48 hours. Wrestling media has gone through a massive transformation, largely due to the increase in competition. That doesn't take a genius to figure out. One thing I have promised from day one is no BS, calling the action exactly as I see it. Although many of the long term structural problems with the way the sport is promoted have gone largely unaddressed and unsolved, we are at least seeing a short-term attempt to at least allow the top-level of wrestlers to survive making a living off their craft. We are seeing FloWrestling fight for their lives to keep their once impenetrable iron-grip on the market share of the sport. We saw a ridiculous trial, where a poor district court judge had to sort through mountains of tweets to try to piece together if Willie was some kind of mastermind trying to conquer the entire wrestling world and take Christian Pyles and the rest of the Flo gang as prisoners as he ruthlessly destroyed his competition. The answer thankfully after way too many 8 hour days in zoom court, was a resounding no. Judge Lora Livingston came to the same conclusion that the wrestling community had known all along, Willie Saylor, although far from perfect, is as passionate as anyone else making wrestling content out there and deserves a chance to make a living off his passion. We saw the painful death of another college program and the functional end to significant college wrestling on the West Coast, and despite our best efforts, without any insider information, the chances of either Fresno State or Stanford returning is about as likely as Flowrestling lowering the price on their premium membership. This means that it's theoretically possible, but barring someone getting way too drunk at an Austin bar, it's just impossible. I predicted in my previous articles that we would lose another program before the end of the 2021 season, and apparently, that prediction was not very bold because it happened within a few months. I also predicted a Facebook comment that the Pac-12 will discontinue wrestling in as soon as 5 years, and we certainly are headed in that direction. This is not an arrogant I told-you-so moment, rather a stark warning to just how much work needs to continue to revitalize the dying embers of college wrestling. I was watching Fanco Wrestling the other day(by the way huge shoutout to Josiah and all the other wrestling media podcasts/channels that have truly enriched the community, if you have a podcast, chances are I've watched it at some point.) and a viewer asked a truly troubling question. The question asked if serious talents straight out of high school such as Yianni Diakomihalis or Spencer Lee to forgo the college scene altogether and transition directly to the freestyle circuit. Let me be clear here, for all the problems with college wrestling, and a mass failure across the country, except a few hegemonic ACC and Big Ten schools, to present College Wrestling as a marketable product, it is the closest thing, and quite frankly the only thing that we have to making a dent in the traditional TV markets. When push comes to shove, the NCAA Championships, despite a steady decline in viewers over the past decade, is still by far the most-watched wrestling event and we must be putting forth the best our sport has to offer. Now I have no inside info, that any of the top HS recruits are thinking this way, but similarly with when an AD cancels a program, by the time the public finds out it is far too late to change the ramifications of the decision and the damage is done. If an 18-year old thinks that are other alternatives to college wrestling, and is uninterested in wrestling at a world-class university, what does that say about the product in general, and how the fans are feeling? 6 months later some opinions change, some stayed the same... Now, what has changed? I made the point that we had to come up with creative ideas to promote the sport, and to be honest a UFC-style "card" was not what I had in mind. All indications pointed to the initial Flo card being a one-off, and boy was I wrong. (I'll get to the good news later, I promise there is quite a bit...) The fundamental flaw with the cards is the marketing and advertising of these cards are nowhere near adequate, and honestly, out of all the companies and clubs to put together an event Flo has honestly done the best job with the pre-marketing, which honestly makes sense, they are a media company that knows how to market their product to a specific type of audience. (even though sometimes their IG feed doesn't look like it but that's a discussion for another day) The full slate of matches are only announced a week in advance in some instances, leaving it nearly impossible to do a serious marketing push. I understand that the main goal of these RTC cards is not to sell as many PPV's like Dana White, but rather to keep the senior-level and college wrestlers fresh and prepare for Olympic Trials that are coming up soon, but if the marketing aspect is always put to the backburner, then how the hell are you going to expect anyone to watch? I can already feel the wrestling purists coming at me, "Daniel, you freaking lunatic! You want to turn wrestling into petty trash-talking banter where people throw dolleys at buses and swear on the mic just to get attention?" No. No. and No. I watched the Summit 1 card put together by the PRTC last week from beginning to end.(Yes, You heard right... I bought a Rofkin Membership. Isn't it amazing how many more customers you get if you offer a product at a cheaper price and no long-term commitments? Weird.) I must say that it was a wonderful event, and I thoroughly enjoyed it with one major flaw, without Joey Mckenna's color commentary, I would have fallen asleep for the High School and U23 cards, I knew nobody. I looked all over the PRTC Rokfin page for more details on certain wrestlers. No avail. I fired up Google to see if there was anything, and it turns out that the local press doesn't write many articles on high school wrestlers that are longer than a few sentences. If you put together a card, it is incumbent on you as the organizer to promote each wrestler on the card, and if they're not marketable then why the hell are they on the card in the first place? A couple of minutes worth of interviews with each wrestler pre-event(especially) and post-event is all I ask, and like I said at the beginning the only one that has come close to that is Flo.

All right to hell with all the depressing crap, on to the good stuff... 

There are 2 main reasons that given all the structural problems that I outline above, I am far more optimistic than I was 6 months ago when I went on the infamous tirade about Stanford Wrestling, both of which are directly tied into what is needed for any free-market society to survive, competition. The rise of Rokfin and other smaller promoters like WUG and Fite TV has forced Flo's hand into actually doing something rather than just showing up every Monday and recording a radio show that no one listens to and buying the rights to college duals and then having the stream crash 75% of the time. Of course, I'm only joking about the radio show, but you would expect more listeners if they are as big as they claim to be. Sitting on your laurels and holding the community hostage is no longer an option, and quite honestly ideas like the RTC Cup were ideas that I think wrestling fans thought were pipe dreams until they happened. The introduction of competition forces innovation, and that frankly will always give this sport a chance, if there are innovators constantly thinking of ways to improve, wrestling had been asleep at the wheel for at least the 4 years that I've been involved as a fan, and it is truly refreshing to see new ideas come to the forefront, now it is incumbent on the governing body to be bold and unequivocal in making changes that push the sport forward. Another positive is the rise of smaller media platforms that innovate themselves out of a pure passion for the sport, especially those that have deep-rooted personal ties with the sport. I will forever be grateful that Dan Ward let an unhinged kid go on his show and spew words for 45 minutes. StaleMates has single-handedly captivated the community with nothing more than ingenuity and charisma, and trust me the more free content that is circulating on those YouTube algorithms, the better it does for the sport. Heck, even Flo got the message and live-streamed on Twitter the first 3 matches of their card on January 9th. (but promote it, because no one knew about it-that's why it had <50 viewers...) I'm also a huge fan of former and current wrestlers becoming color commentators, this is a critical piece to enhancing the overall product that we present, people like Nico Megaludis, Joey McKenna, Deron Winn, and Chael Sonnen bring a lot more to the table than the king of Twitter blocking...(You can figure out the name, I won't say it but take a guess...) 

So where do we go from here? 6 months ago I thought a new governing body was going to have to be formed and boycotts and holdouts would be inevitable if we wanted the sport to have a prosperous future, largely because the people running the show did not seem to care about anything except the bottom line. We are finally beginning to see a mindset shift on that front and quite honestly, I think the pandemic came at the perfect time, it was the kick in the you know what that the community needed to finally begin to innovate. Do I still believe that traditional TV media markets are necessary for the long term survival of the sport, of course, the rise of competitors against Flo still holds the same structural flaw that no one has found a way to grow the base, but rather just used the same base to provide in their eyes a better product. This was certainly apparent in the Willie Trials where Karen slammed the table in that Karen-esque voice of hers and insisted that Rokfin was some kind of criminal enterprise and somehow the Wrestling community belonged to Flo, while that's certainly not true. that certainly proves the obvious point that many of the same people that have Flo memberships also have Rokfin memberships, I am still equally concerned as to whether there are enough paying customers to sustain a profit for these companies at the same time providing the athletes with the financial compensation they need to keep doing their craft for a living. While a coup against USA Wrestling at this point would be extremely counterproductive, urgent work still must be done on the promotion of the sport, and I still hold firm that a serious sports promoter like a Matchroom of sorts needs to get involved to fast track this great sport to the big screens because that's where the general public by and large still are despite the rise in pay-to-watch companies. I'll leave you with the same thing I left you with 6 months ago, "Wrestling’s biggest match is coming up, it’s wrestling against itself for the battle to stay alive. Everyone is invited. Everyone can help prepare. Everyone can contribute. We can win, the only question is will we have the grit and determination to do it." With passionate innovators that truly care about the health of the sport, it may take a while, but we will get there in the end. For those that have spent their whole lives trying to popularize wrestling, and have given up hope that it can become big, I can only tell you this, every single college wrestler's interview I have ever watched, whether they're ranked 1 or 100, they always tell the interviewer with 250% confidence that they will win a national title. You always tell your wrestler to set lofty goals. Know that your work does not go unnoticed. The journey is hard and long, it took over 30 years for darts to get over 20 million dollars in prize fund per year, it took chess 50 years for it to return to it's glorious hayday of the 1970s when chess was at the forefront of the space race between the USSR and the US. More than likely, it will take years and decades for wrestling to grow and prosper, but we will remember those who laid the groundwork in making it all possible, and just like in wrestling, it's all worth it in the end.

As for myself personally, although it doesn't always sound like it, the wrestling community has been one fo the most welcoming communities I've ever been able to come in contact with, especially for someone that watched the sport for the first time with a sideeye wondering what in the hell was actually happening on the TV screen. I will be firing back up my podcast and writing these kinds of articles more regularly, starting with Zach Sherman, who honestly is just a character in so many ways, he's the perfect interview to get me back into the swing of things. He also is one of the first people that I watched on a regular basis his true freshman year, and got me hooked, so I am beyond stoked to get him on. Strangely enough for me because I don;t wrestle and because the majority of my exposure to wrestling is through the college scene these are the guys that I follow and relate to most and to me honest the Jordan Burroughs and David Taylor's of the world have got enough fans anyway. Other than the fact that half of Zach's matches make my heart jump out of my chest, I'd like to think we are on decent terms, so look for that episode to drop late next week. If everyone wrestled his style, I think the sport would be in a better place, al right that's enough compliments for now, as always, thanks so much for all the support as I try to bring back to life my small part in wrestling media.