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If I were to sum up the last week of senior level wrestling in one word it would be "depth." In the wake of an impressive performance at the World Cup we have to ask ourselves what this mean moving forward for USA Wrestling.

So David Taylor is pretty good, huh? He went through three Olympic medals en route to his 4-0 performance in Kermanshah, Iran, one win more dominant than the next. He won 8-3 against 2012 bronze medalist Marsagishvili of Georgia in the opening round. Taylor teched two-time Olympic medalist (gold in London and bronze in Rio) Sharif Sharifov 12-2. And then it happened. Against the returning Olympic gold medalist, on his opponent's home turf, and with thousands of people screaming at him, Taylor went out and packed Hassan Yazdanicharati.

The wins aside, what impressed me most about DT's performance was his growth. Nomad and I were talking around the office, and we said that if he was going to beat guys like Sharifov that he was going to have to finish quickly off of his pick/double. He did. Something that he struggled to do at his first few goes at 86kg. Nomad and I also said that we weren't sure that Taylor would be able to scramble in a freestyle setting with guys like Sharifov and Marsagishvili. Boy, were we wrong. Taylor got into positions that are normally dominated by the Euros, and he found a way to score from just about all of them. 



In coaching, you have to remind yourself that you're only as good as your next win. So that means that if Taylor goes back to Happy Valley and rests on his performance at this last event, then it will have all been for nothing. Assuming J'den Cox is willing to wrestle after this NCAA season, DT will have an Olympic medalist at his weight for possibly the U.S. Open but, more than likely, the World Team Trials. 

The 86kg weight class alone is worth the price of admission. Now throw in what looks like an inevitable collision course between Kyle Dake and Jordan Burroughs, and the U.S. Open and the World Team Trials just got really interesting. Burroughs also went undefeated this past weekend in Iran but wasn't as dominant as we've seen him. His performance has stoked the flames of doubters that say that Dake is the heir apparent to the 74kg throne. 

Whoever comes out on top of those two weights will be a threat to medal in France in August. But what's most exciting about the whole situation is that the United States is finally showing signs of having true depth -- a trait that we have been missing for a long time. If you look at the most successful teams and countries in the past the one thing that they have exhibited is that their number twos and threes were as much of a threat as their number ones (in fact, sometimes more of threat considering that they had more to prove).

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