Wrestling Blogs - Jim Brown

The match-up

The internet has been good for wrestling. The abundance of fan forums, live match streaming, youtube and flowrestling have all served to heighten interest in the sport. The potential match-up between Brent Metcalf and Dustin Schlatter has been one of the hottest college wrestling topics on the ‘net for the past two years.

Both came out of high school with legendary prep careers – and in fact – they wrestled – and split – high school “all-star”matches. Schlatter chose to join his brother CP with J Robinson at the University of Minnesota and then went on to win an NCAA title as a redshirt freshman. Metcalf’s road has been bumpier. He was recruited by Tom Brands to go to Virginia Tech, and during his redshirt year lost only one match (to University of Iowa NCAA finalist, Ty Eustice, on a technical violation). Then, when Brands was hired for the Hawkeye head-coaching job, Metcalf was one of the 5 wrestlers that opted to follow their coach to Iowa City. The Virginia Tech athletic department chose not to release “the five” from their scholarships so they were forced to sit out another year of NCAA competition.

To the delight of all Hawkeye fans, Metcalf hit the mat this year with a vengeance. His only loss is a questionable pin by NC State’s super-athletic Darrion Caldwell. There’s no doubting that Caldwell caught Brent in a beautiful “standing spladle”, but there’s no video that shows that Brent was actually pinned. Since then he has handily beaten two NCAA finalists and a World Junior Freestyle champion.

Schlatter, however, has been battling injuries all season. After winning the Southern Scuffle title in December, he did not wrestle again until a couple of weeks ago. It is the hope of all college wrestling fans that he is fully recovered and ready for the Big Ten championships.

If all goes as projected, “the match-up” will finally happen this weekend at the Big 10 tournament. For those readers that are not wrestling aficionados this match is as highly anticipated as Ali vs. Frazier or Leonard vs. Duran.

To get you ready – here are some videos.



Brent Metcalf vs. World Junior Freestyle Champion Bubba Jenkins



Brent Metcalf vs. 2007 NCAA finalist Ryan Lang



Dustin Schlatter vs. 2005 NCAA champ Zach Esposito (Oklahoma State University)



Dustin Schlatter, 2006 NCAA finals vs. Ty Eustice (University of Iowa)