Iowa's Tony Ramos And Brent Metcalf and Iowa State's Jake Varner Earn World Championship Berths

ADISON, Wis.– Tony Ramos saw too many American lightweights coming home from the World Championships without a prize. Jake Varner watched the U.S. freestyle team claim just one medal last year as he contemplated shelving his wrestling shoes next to his Olympic gold medal. One opted to start his pursuit of international glory a year earlier than planned, and the other decided to take another shot at gold. They both wound up in the same place Saturday night at the World Team Trials. The college stars from Iowa and Iowa State both landed spots on the U.S. freestyle team after sweeping their best-of-three championship series inside the Alliant Energy Center.

Yeah, wrestling!  Disclaimer up top, I’m not a big wrestling fan.  That might not seem all that weird until you realize wrestling is like religion around here.  One of the most famous athletes to come outta this state is Dan Gable.  To put it into a little bit of perspective, not being a wrestling fan in Iowa would be like not being a soccer fan in Europe.  It’s inexplicable and people look at you weird when you say you’re from here and don’t like wrestling.  I have nothing against the sport.  I grew up around it and lots of people in my family wrestled.  Just not my thing.  I spent my high school days playing football, watching basketball, smoking weed, getting drunk, not getting laid and not wrestling.  One of the big deal breakers for me and wrestling was the whole cutting weight thing.  The thought of putting on 10 pairs of sweat pants and 15 sweatshirts and then riding a bike in an non-air conditioned room didn’t seem like fun to me.  Especially when getting high and playing video games was really fun. Then I saw wrestlers starving themselves during Thanksgiving.  At that point, I was out.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t dominate because we do.  And if we’re dominating at something I’m gonna shine light on it because, after all, Iowa is the best state.  We always have badass mother fuckers coming outta here in wrestling and right now is no different.  The guys right now?  Tony Ramos, Brent Metcalf (both from U of I) and Jake Varner (ISU) and they all just earned bid to the World Championships.  Between the three of them they have 5 NCAA Titles and 9 finals appearances.  Making the Worlds teams is lot like making the Olympic team and the Worlds are held in non-Olympic years.

My favorite of the three that has nothing to do with their wrestling skills because I wouldn’t know good wrestling if it kicked my in the face?  Ramos (who won an NCAA title in March).  Dude is a fucking pit bull.  His quotes alone make me like him.  Things like, “I’m done seeing these old guys wrestle- they’d have their chances.”  Doesn’t matter what somebody is talking about whether it be wrestling, playing football, being in the mafia or delivering packages for UPS, I love when guys talk shit about the older generation and tell them their time is up.

Boom, wrestling.

PS- If parts of this blog are wildly inaccurate or just flat wrong, whoops.  I’m sure I’ll hear about it from my fellows Iowans in my e-mail inbox and on the tweets.  If you can write better about wrestling in this state, show me.