For the first two days of the coronavirus quarantine I struggled to form any coherent sense of reality. The very nature of this new normal — working from home or not working at all, canceling plans, avoiding people — is one of disembodiment and abstraction. The sanctions we have collectively enforced on ordinary life, vital as they are, sever connections. 

The food and water stockpiling, the actions taken in these early days of the virus, are driven by abstractions: fear, namely. Also panic, individual and collective. Alarm. Worry. Anxiety. There is an invisible danger swiftly spreading across the globe, and part of the antidote is that we must isolate from each other. It’s exponential disconnection. 

The effect is notably interesting on wrestling, and the wrestling community, because wrestling as a sport is the most physical, the most intimate, the most concrete sport there is. Two people, on a mat, wearing singlets, tangled, handfighting, taking shots, twisting, tilting. 

I’m new to wrestling, but the one person who, for me, embodies this sport, who has captivated me more than anyone else, is Austin DeSanto. 

And you know what? I’m not entirely sure why. 

But as I’ve reflected over the week on this kid from Exeter, PA, holed up in my apartment amid the COVID-19 chaos, I think my fascination with him — and perhaps others will share this sentiment — has something to do with how present DeSanto is, how courageously himself he is. 

I.

When DeSanto beat Spencer Lee for the state title back in March 2017, there are these frames that stick in my head: DeSanto scrambling around the back of Lee as the clock runs out for two points; DeSanto raising his fist in the air as Lee turns back to look at the ref, the chinstrap of his headgear pushed up over his mouth; people in the crowd popping up like meerkats looking for lions, cheering and screaming and pumping their fists; a confusing flurry of coaches and refs and scorers; and finally, DeSanto pointing to someone out in the crowd, walking to the center of the mat, throwing off his ankle bands, gesturing to Lee’s body, fictitiously shaking Lee’s hand as his opponent remains on the ground, then bouncing up and down and throwing fists like Rocky on his run. 

I don’t want to rehash all the things DeSanto has done or has allegedly done. There’s plenty of that on the internet already, a lot of it pretty boring. 

All I want to say is this: DeSanto has a presence like few I’ve seen in sports. 

He’s been that way for a long time, it seems, but when he’s on the mat he is 100 percent there. He is there to such an incredible extent. People have wanted to write certain narratives about DeSanto for a long time. In the end, though, I think what Tom Brands said of DeSanto back on media day of 2018 rings completely true:

“You guys want to put a tag on him,” Brands said. “I'm not putting a tag on him. We love him. My brother wanted to recruit him when he beat Spencer Lee in the state finals. He was already signed, sealed and delivered to Drexel. But there was something there with him that caught his eye even when he was a junior.” 

DeSanto is too complicated for simple conclusions.

II.

I graduated from the Unversity of Iowa in 2012. Having grown up in Dallas, TX, my sports world was, almost exclusively, centered around football. Luckily the Hawkeyes were good to pretty darn good for my four years in Iowa City, but perhaps that success on the gridiron kept me away from Carver-Hawkeye Arena for wrestling duals. I attended one in four years; my exposure to the sport had not been a lot.

There are two very clear memories I have as a child that are wrestling-related. This is strange to me for a couple of reasons, the first being that, generally, I have an awful memory; the second reason those memories seem strange is that they’re really the only wrestling-related memories I have other than the last six months since I joined the FloWrestling team.

The first centered around the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta — coincidentally the year Tom Brands won a gold medal at 62kg. 

We were living in Dallas at the time.

I have two younger brothers, and before and during the Olympics we would pretty frequently stage a sort of brotherly Olympics of our town. We were always China, Russia, and the United States for some reason. My dad would play the music, we’d have an opening ceremony, and then we’d run through some events. For wrestling, which was by far our favorite, my dad would get a comforter from one of our beds, move the coffee table out from the center of the living room, and basically just let us have at each other. 

My dad didn’t know a thing about wrestling; he was a golfer in his day. So there were certainly no single legs, no high crotches, no reversals or escapes, no coherent point system, but the wrestling was fun as hell and one of the only times we were given license to attack each other. Somehow I don’t remember the wrestling every ending in ill will. 

The other wrestling memory I have from my childhood is also, probably not randomly, family-related. My cousin Justin, who grew up down the road in Austin, was an outstanding high school wrestler at Westlake, winning back-to-back titles in the early 2000s. He ended up walking on at Oklahoma State before transferring to Central Oklahoma, but he would come up to the Dallas area quite a bit for tournaments, and we always went to see him. I remember sitting in the bleachers, not knowing what going on with the scoring, but remembering how cool he looked, how dominant he was. 

There’s something about this sport that lodges itself in the brain and doesn’t leave.

III.

When the whistle blew with four seconds left in the December matchup between DeSanto and Seth Gross for a potentially dangerous move, the Hawkeye almost immediately put both hands on his chest to say, “My fault,” and then gestured repeatedly to the crowd and the Iowa coaching staff that he was fine, he was under control, he was not letting things get away from him.

Of course, he finished off that dual 6-2, defeating No. 1-ranked Gross and cementing himself as a legitimate national title threat in a ridiculously loaded weight class. 

You could tell how much he (deservedly) enjoyed the win. DeSanto shook Gross’s hand, then turned around to the crowd a few times acknowledging their energy — Iowa City always brings the energy — before starting the walk back to the locker room, sneaking in a couple of staredowns of the various cameras in the room. 

Not too far away, DeSanto’s teammates were losing it — especially Lee. A couple of years earlier they were part of one of the most historic high school bouts we’ve ever seen, pitted against each other with huge implications on the line, and now they can’t stop cheering for each other.

Part of the mantra for Iowa this year was “team, team, team.” Dual after dual, in an individual sport, the Hawkeyes looked like a team, talked about being a team, and acted like a team, a collection of individuals each with his own particular part to play. 

IV.

I joined the FloWrestling team six months ago, about a week or two before the college season officially started. I’ve been with FloSports for nearly three years now, playing my own various parts as I’ve needed, but throughout that time had never been on what could be called a “team.”

That has certainly changed. 

In this sport of wrestling, all the guys on this team play a role, and many of you, whether or not you’ve met the FloWrestling guys in person, probably feel like you’ve got a personal relationship with them — because you pretty much do.

Because when Mike Mal goes deeply analytical in Behind the Dirt or Who Ya Got, he’s so fully invested into what he’s doing that you can feel the energy, sense it even through a screen. When Bader jumps on a Skype call with Thomas Gilman, you don’t feel like you’re watching some stupid scripted interview where someone in a suit is listing off canned questions for canned answers; you’re watching something alive and organic. When Spey and Nomad get into some ridiculous debate about a seeding or ranking position, when Bray and JD break down a dual over a White Board War, when CP and Bratke talk about the most random things on the planet with Ben Askren on FRL — this is coverage and depth the likes of which you rarely, if ever, find in sports media today, and it’s that way because these guys have the courage to express their passion without framing every single piece of content or opinion in a certain way. They let it fly.

There are a lot of dues I love on Iowa’s wrestling roster. There’s little that compares to Lee’s precision and dominance. I thought Pat Lugo’s trajectory over the year was inspiring, and I was crazy happy when he won the Big Ten crown. Michael Kemerer’s win over Mark Hall to re-tilt the scales back in Iowa’s favor against Penn State was indescribably awesome. 

But at the end of the day, the one guy I absolutely cannot miss is Austin DeSanto. DeSanto lets it fly in every way imaginable. Like my guys on FloWrestling, DeSanto is who he is; his passion for wrestling is so given, so evident.

V.

All ones left on the clock in the first period of DeSanto vs Roman Bravo-Young: 1:11. The score is 5-1 in favor of the Nittany Lion, and the Hawkeye is splayed on the mat, face in anguish, propped up by his elbows, looking to his coaches and telling them he can’t go on. He can’t go on. That’s six points for the visitors. Not really according to plan for Iowa.

I don’t have any new insider information about whatever happened in RBY vs DeSanto, and I’m not going to draw any conclusions about it in terms of wrestling or make any point of comparison regarding their Big Ten rematch. 

All I want to note is that DeSanto’s injury default here, his reaction in this moment, is like everything else he does: it’s written on his face. There is no hedging or trying to appear a certain way, and in that moment the picture was definitely not an impressive one. He’s vulnerable, and he doesn’t waste energy trying not to look vulnerable. 

I love Austin DeSanto because you can’t put Austin DeSanto in a box. I love the kid because he’s shown growth, maturity, and variability through his (very young) life and his wrestling career from Pennsylvania to Drexel to Iowa. He is who he is, and he’s that way all of the way, and I respect the hell out of that. He’s so painfully, awesomely, fully human. I don’t think he cares whether you like him or not, and I don’t really think he cares what’s written about him or not. 

I think the coronavirus, which is the absolute worst, and wrestling, which is the absolute best, are true opposites. One is abstract and intangible, everywhere and nowhere at once; the other is physical and concrete, and it happens on the mat, in a defined set of space between two competitors. 

For me and my nascent relationship with this sport, DeSanto is the archetype — a complicated composite of strength and desire, victory and loss, all of which you see without a veil.

I think we can spend a lot of time thinking about what we didn’t get to see this year in wrestling, about the abstract of saying “what if” in thinking about the canceled NCAAs, but what we already saw was so real and so tangible, I think it deserves remembering in painful, exquisite detail.