Trevor Brandvold remembers the nerves he felt that day in Wisconsin when he toed the line for a training camp simulation match against the 15-year-old phenom.  

Brandvold was a couple years out of college at the time and serving as a coach for the USA Wrestling Cadet World Team when he prepared to battle Gable Steveson. 

“That was the most nervous I had been to wrestle a match since the NCAA semifinals a couple years before that,” Brandvold said. “I’m like, ‘How do I wrestle a 15-year-old?’ I don’t understand how to do this because if I go easy, he’s going to pick me up and slam me on my head because he’s mean and he’s tough and he knows how to fight. And if I go too hard, I’m this loser who’s beating up on a 15-year-old. It was this huge dilemma.”

Brandvold learned something that day — wrestling Gable Steveson is an entirely different experience. 

“I realized Gable is the safest person to wrestle with because he’s so smooth and he understands technique better than anybody and he understands both right and left attacks,” he said. “I wrestled with Hayden Zillmer, who made a World Team, I wrestled with Connor Medbery, I wrestled with Kyle Snyder, I trained with a lot of the best heavyweights and big guys in the country, and there’s always a chance they could hurt you because they can pick you up really high and drop you on your head. With Gable, I’ve never felt that because he understands movement and body and it’s almost like a dance when you’re drilling or even wrestling live with him.”

Steveson — selected as the first-team heavyweight on the Flowrestling All-Quarter Century Team presented by Defense Soap — was a wrestling prodigy every step of the way. 

He reached the Minnesota state high school finals as a 13-year-old eighth grader at 195 pounds and won state titles each of the next four years. 

He won his first Cadet World title in 2015 and won another the following year. In 2017, he petitioned his way into the Junior World Championships — the Russians fought to keep him out of the tournament, arguing he was too young — and Steveson ran through the heavyweight bracket, outscoring his five opponents by a combined 61-11 count. 

As an 18-year-old in a weight class that hasn't had a freshman national champion since 1947, Steveson stepped onto the college circuit and won his first 30 matches. He suffered his first loss when he gave up a takedown in the closing seconds and dropped a 4-3 decision against Penn State senior Anthony Cassar in the Big Ten finals. 

They met again two weeks later in the NCAA semifinals and Cassar won 4-3 again by virtue of a 1:01 riding time advantage. Steveson ultimately wrestled back to take third, becoming the highest-placing true freshman heavyweight at the NCAA Championships since Steve Mocco’s runner-up finish in 2002. 

“His growth from his true freshman year to where he is now is incredible just because of the adjustments he’s made, adjustments off the mat — taking weight training, sleep, nutrition and really diving into those things,” Minnesota coach Brandon Eggum said. 

“He was the best wrestler (as a true freshman), but he did not maximize his potential in all the other areas, and after that we were able to talk and I think he really realized that there are a lot of other areas, it’s not just about being the best wrestler. To be the best, you’ve got to be the best in all these different situations. One of them was getting stronger and one of them was his diet and what he was eating and what he was putting in his body. It was quick and you could see the transformation. That comes from maturity and his body being young, but if he didn’t have that work ethic that he put into off-the-mat training as well, he wouldn’t have progressed into that beast that he became.”

This is the beast Steveson became: For the next three seasons, he went 49-0 with 40 bonus-point victories. He won the Hodge Trophy in 2021 when he went 17-0 with an 88.2-percent bonus rate. He followed that up by mowing through the Olympic Trials, where he won his four matches by a combined 42-4 margin. Then he won Olympic gold in Tokyo, where he took out four-time World and Olympic champs Taha Akgul and Geno Petriashvili along the way. 

“His ability to manipulate what you want to do, I think, is unmatched,” Brandvold said. “I’ve wrestled with Tony Nelson a ton, Hayden Zillmer, I’ve wrestled with Wyatt Hendrickson, and with all these guys, it’s a wrestling match. I’m going to do what I want to do, you’re going to do what you want to do and we’re going to figure out who does that better. With Gable, it’s more of a chess match where he’s going to force you to do what he wants you to do.” 

Steveson returned to college wrestling for the 2022 season and became the first heavyweight to win the Hodge twice. His 17-0 junior season included nine wins over age-group World medalists, and his closest bout came in the NCAA finals, where he notched a 6-2 win against Cohlton Schultz. He left his shoes on the mat that night in Detroit, signifying his retirement from college wrestling. 

But he came back for an encore this past year after dabbling with the WWE and an NFL training camp stint with the Buffalo Bills. 

Steveson rejoined the Gophers in November to utilize his final season of college eligibility. 

He scored bonus points in 17 of his first 18 matches. The lone exception was a 10-3 win against returning national champ Greg Kerkvliet in the Big Ten finals. 

In his final college bout, he got knocked off by Hendrickson, who scored a takedown in the final minute and held Steveson down the rest of the way to win a 5-4 decision in the 2025 NCAA finals. 

“He wasn’t locked in, it was kind of a backup plan to come back and wrestle and he still took second in the country,” Brandvold said. “When he’s focused, when he’s locked in, when he wants to wrestle, he’s no doubt the best heavyweight of all-time.” 

Steveson finished his career with a 103-3 record during a time when the college heavyweight brackets were loaded with age-group World champions. All three of his defeats came in matches he led in the third period. 

Moreover, he became one of the sport’s top entertainers with his showmanship and high-scoring style. 

“Gable was so fun to watch out there,” Eggum said. “He loved every aspect of the battle, but the crowd and the fans, he was a true entertainer. He loved talking with the crowd and meeting new fans and taking pictures even seconds before he went out there. Every match and every dual it was always like that — and not in a way that it ever seemed to bother him. He truly enjoyed meeting wrestling fans and not just Gable Steveson fans.” 

The Results Are In 

The Flowrestling team started with every NCAA champion from the last 25 years and pared the list down to four at every weight after tabulating the results of a staff vote. We let wrestling fans weigh in with a social media vote. Here are the final results: 

1. Minnesota’s Gable Steveson

2. Ohio State’s Kyle Snyder

3. Iowa/Oklahoma State’s Steve Mocco 

4. Binghamton/NC State’s Nick Gwiazdowski 

The First-Teamers

125 — Iowa’s Spencer Lee

133 — Ohio State’s Logan Stieber

141 — Cornell’s Yianni Diakomihalis 

149 — Penn State’s Zain Retherford 

157 — Penn State’s Jason Nolf 

165 — Cornell’s Kyle Dake

174 — Penn State’s Carter Starocci 

184 — Penn State’s Ed Ruth 

197 — Iowa State’s Cael Sanderson 

285 — Minnesota’s Gable Steveson

Facts, Figures And Those Who Missed The Final Cut At 285

— The last quarter century has produced 16 different NCAA champions at 285 pounds, which matches 141 for the fewest in a weight class.  

— There were seven multi-time champs at the weight during that 25-year stretch.

— Earlier this week we looked back on the incredible run of heavyweights since 2001. 

— Tommy Rowlands, Steve Mocco, Cole Konrad, Tony Nelson, Nick Gwiazdowski, Kyle Snyder and Gable Steveson.  

— Mocco (2005), Steveson (2021 and 2022), Mason Parris (2023) and Wyatt Hendrickson (2025) won Hodge Trophies at heavyweight during the past quarter century. 

— A dozen different schools won a heavyweight title during the past 25 years, led by Minnesota’s six. Ohio State was second with five. North Carolina State, Oklahoma State and Penn State each had two. 

— Juniors and seniors accounted for 18 heavyweight titles since 2001. Sophomores won the other six. There hasn’t been a freshman heavyweight NCAA champ since Dick Hutton in 1947.