Voice of ILLINI Wrestling, formerly with ESPN radio, sports nut, Husband, and Wrestling dad.
Lockport, IL
Joined March 2012
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Brian Swaw retweeted
Opening STATEMENT.
45 is our most points scored in a dual meet since Nov. 24, 2012 (46-0 over Princeton).
Flair Friday is back!!!!!!
I can’t remember an early-season match in recent history carrying this much hype: Stanich vs. Bassett. This one has all the ingredients. Nike, are you listening? BO KNOWS WRESTLING.
Cue Ric Flair: If you want to be the man, you have to beat the man!!!!!!
A few other matches worth grabbing the popcorn for:
Novak (WY) vs. McDaniel (NEB) — another exciting matchup, and I’m fired up to see Vincent Robinson make the Cornhuskers debut and get after Vino.
In that same dual, the battle of the big men — Carroll vs. first-year starter Ziola — should be a fun one. Heavyweights doing unlike heavyweight things.
Great to see Ryan Crookham in a recent Iowa video. Honestly, I almost forgot he was there! Here’s hoping for a healthy 26/27 campaign. A healthy Crookham turns the 133-lb class into an absolute meat grinder at the top.
And one more thing: it’s great to hear these college opens are now reaching full capacity with the new 5-for-5 rule rather than the five-match limit for redshirts. More mat time, more development, and ultimately a stronger sport. Everybody wins.
WOOOOOOOO
College takeaways — but first, a tip of the headgear to @JustinJBasch and @MatScouts1 for being our one-stop shop for World results. WOOOO! The wrestling community thanks you.
Okie State has the best kind of problem: too much talent. DT and brother-in-law Jimmy Kennedy are building Penn State 2.0 at warp speed. Now the million-dollar question: can they keep all that talent in-house the way Cael and company have for years? Either way, what they've done in just two years is wild — and great for the sport.
Congrats to Coach Metcalf on win No. 1 as Iowa State's head coach. Iowa State vs. Iowa in just 20 days? Go ahead and circle that one in permanent marker. And No Brake Drake looked pretty darn good in enemy colors. @CycloneWR
Ohio State showed out at the Clarion Open... with one giant 141-pound question mark. Not sure how that shakes out for the Buckeyes as the season rolls on, but you have to feel for Bouzakis—always an entertaining guy to watch.
Va-Tech is cooking. I think they're still a year away from being a true top-five team, and I'd favor Ohio State, Stanford, and maybe a couple others today. But with Robie adding James Green to staff, plus Bo's presence and influence? Nike, the ball is in your court: bring back “Bo Knows” — wrestling edition. After becoming a world champ, Bo's impact only gets bigger. Va-Tech has top-three potential for years to come, and an ACC team that finishes top 5–10 every year is fantastic for the sport.
Michigan locking up Bormet through 2031 is a huge win for the Wolverines. It's a young squad, but Bormet will have plenty of them hunting for AA honors this year. Hide the podium spots. @umichwrestling
WOOOOOO — WRESTLING IS BACK! 🤼
Finn Cole spent the summer in Champaign training and learning how to wrestle. The cast and crew spent a several week moving between many sites on campus and at the Danville arena, filming two of Gable 72 Olympic matches.
Austin O’Connor was Finn Cole's stunt double
Wyatt Medlin plays a young Dan Gable
Logan Swaw plays Yugoslavian wrestler Sefer Salievski, who Gable beats in the semifinals in 72 Olympics
Several ILLINI wrestlers will appear as extras in the movie as well.
Hodge Trophy winner. Two-time NCAA champ. And now... actor? 🎬
Mitchell Mesenbrink will play Ben Peterson, Dan Gable's Iowa State teammate, in the upcoming Gable biopic starring Finn Cole as Gable.
Mesenbrink had to memorize lines and audition against full-time actors to land the role. He spent a little over a week on set in Champaign, Illinois this summer. He said nerves have never been an issue in hundreds of matches, but they finally hit when the camera was on him alone with about 100 people watching in silence.
The film is in post-production with no release date yet.
Word on the street is that Major Mikey Caliendo is headed to another Big 10 training center in the Midwest to join some of his old high school workout buddies.
Hail, Hail!!!!
Brian Swaw retweeted
Top 10 accounts to get info from in College Wrestling
#1 @baschamania
#2 @MatScouts1
#3 @WrestlingSNL
#4 @TheCollegeWrR
#5 @MrPatMineo
#6 @Seth_Duckworth
#7 @FloWrestling
#8 @TheLowSingle
#9 @BrianSwaw
#10 @bigredtds
HM: @BuckeyeTakedown
HM: @TheBarnSession
Brian Swaw retweeted
September 11th, 2001. Everybody old enough remembers exactly where they were that morning.
25 years later, I still think about the nearly 3,000 people who went to work or got on a plane and never came home. The firefighters and cops who went up the stairs anyway. The families who have lived with it every single day since.
And I think about the weeks after. For a minute there, we weren't red or blue. We were just Americans. Churches were packed. CCW had standing room only. People gave blood, hung flags, held doors, and looked out for each other without being asked.
That's still who we are.
It's just harder to hear over the noise.
Put the phone down. Get out of the comment section. Go have a real conversation with someone who sees things differently than you do. You'll find out you agree on way more than the internet wants you to believe.
God bless the ones we lost, and God bless America. 🇺🇸
