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Originally Posted by Palma Wrestler
I'd love to call Bo Jackson the best Running back of all time, but what can I do? You can't ignore other's greater accomplishments because Cael "could have" been better. Dan Gable had as close of a career to Cael's as anyone can possibbly have and he isn't one of the top ten.
It's not fair to wrestlers from other countries that don't have a college program to compare to, besides college is college and the Olympics are something entirely different. DO you have any idea what kind of feat winning the Olympics multiple times is? It's much more impressive then winning NCAA's 4X.
Besides if Cael didn't lose in the finals in the 2003 world meet I would say he would have a more ligitmate spot in USA wrestling History.
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Actually I do have an idea. I wrestled freestyle in many national qualifying events, so I have a pretty good idea. And I didn't say Cael "could have been" i'm saying he's the best based on skill. I'm not basing this soley on accomplishments, i'm basing it on being up close and personal with these guys. My close friend was an alternate for the olympics so I had an opprotunity to interact with many of these guys. Cael IMO is the best technical, and iron willed wrestler in history. Now if the post was" best 10 wrestler of alltime based on accomplishments" I guess Sanderson would be out. And something else i've always felt, it would be hard for me to say a Greco Roman competitor is the best of all time. Many times in these competitions, the Greco wrestlers are guys who didn't make the cut in freestlye, so changes to Greco. Not all mind you, but you'd be surprised how much this happends even on a high level. Freestyle is a complete game, where as Greco is not. Now the agrument can be made that Greco is harder and takes more skill of course. I've watched a ton of tapes of the wrestling greats when I was training seriously, and I watched Cael Sanderson after I was done competing, and let me tell you, he IS ...not "could have been" something special. IMO the BEST. Of course this is all opinion and none of it can be proven either way. lol.
oh and why should American wrestler be penalized because they DO have college wrestling. I so confused by that. Who gives a crap whether other countries do or don't. The Olympics are different, however qualifying for the olympics is very similar. All year including off season tourneys, you're pretty much wrestling the same dudes over and over. The best college wrestler are the ones wrestling in qualifying tournies. Unless things have changed a whole lot since I was competing. Which by the way is very very possible. lol.