2018 Senior Freestyle World Team Trials Challenge

61kg World Team Trials Preview: Matchups Matter

Previewing 61kg at the 2018 World Team Trials challenge tournament in Rochester, Minnesota on May 19th and May 20th.

May 2, 2018 by Wrestling Nomad

61kg World Team Trials Preview: Matchups Matter

The 2018 World Team Trials challenge tournament will get underway less than three weeks from now in Rochester, MN. All that's left is to determine who will be wrestling in Final X.

Logan Stieber was the 2017 world team rep at 61kg, but he is now up at 65kg. Kendric Maple, who was last year's Open champ and Stieber's opponent in the WTT finals, did not qualify this year, leaving only Brandon Wright from the 2017 national team.

Joe Colon came into the U.S. Open as the top seed, leaving as the champ and earning the bye to Final X at Lehigh on June 23. He scored 54 points in five matches this past weekend in Las Vegas, beating the guys who finished second, third, and fifth. Let's see who he might be wrestling for a world team spot.

In Final X: Joe Colon

WTT Qualifiers

Weight	Name	RTC	Club	Qualifier
61kg	Seth Gross	Jackrabbit WC	Sunkist Kids	NCAA Champ
61kg	Jon Morrison	Cliff Keen WC	NYAC	Bill Farrell Champ
61kg	Nahshon Garrett		Sunkist Kids	US Open Runner-up
61kg	Nico Megaludis	Nittany Lion WC		US Open 3rd place
61kg	Tyler Graff	Southeast RTC	Titan Mercury	US Open 4th place
61kg	Brandon Wright	Indiana WC	Titan Mercury	US Open 5th place
61kg	Darrius Little	Lehigh Valley WC	NYAC	US Open 7th place

Commentary: The 61kg bracket at the U.S. Open was as entertaining as advertised, with Nahshon Garrett’s final two matches featuring a combined 64 points. Garrett is a guy who many in the wrestling community have been waiting to break through and make the national team since he entered the senior level.

The 2016 NCAA champ should walk into Rochester as the top seed after making the Open finals. His re-attack series is excellent, but he still gives up a ton of points in spite of that. However, if the Cornell grad shows the kind of leg defense he did against Tyler Graff in the quarterfinals when Graff couldn’t touch his legs, Garrett can not only win the Trials but also the world team spot.

Nico Megaludis had a weird couple of matches to start his tournament, then blew through the backside. He was on his back in a 12-9 barn burner with Cory Clark, who ultimately did not qualify, and then did not give up a takedown in a 5-2 loss to Joe Colon. Megaludis will be the two seed in Minnesota and will likely have to do something he’s never done: beat Garrett.

Megaludis won 125 the same year Garrett won 133, at the 2016 NCAA tournament at Madison Square Garden. The two met a month later at the Olympic trials, with Garrett winning 5-4. Before that though, Garrett went 3-0 against Nico in the 2013-14 season, including a 6-4 semifinal win at the national tournament.

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Graff was one match away from making the national team at 57kg last year in Lincoln, NE, and was the 61kg non-Olympic weight trials runner-up in November 2016. Now training with the Southeast RTC at Virginia Tech, Graff blew out Alan Waters and Cody Brewer, won a close one over Brandon Wright, and then got blown out by Megaludis in the third-place match.

Wright is indicative of how close this weight is for the U.S. He took a last-second 6-6 criteria win over Colon in last year’s Open semis, then lost to him in a tight 7-5 one in this year’s Open semis. Wright beat Seth Gross 13-11 in the first round of last year’s Trials and then lost 7-5 to the aforementioned Graff. Wright should once again beat Gross in the quarters and then lose to Garrett in the semis.

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After watching the Gross/Garrett match in Vegas, there are two takeaways. One is that Garrett should have blown him out. The other is that he had to dig deep to beat Gross and may not be able to do that a second time around. I kind of feel the latter will prove true but also that Gross will have difficulty beating Wright in order to get to Garrett.

Jon Morrison beat Graff when they wrestled in March at the Bill Farrell, a match in which Morrison scored on a late head pinch and then Graff had Morrison in a quad pod as time expired. Gross avenged a Farrell loss to Morrison at Open, and it seems Graff will do the same. However, it's hard to envision Megaludis not beating Graff again in the semis when Nico just teched Tyler 10-0 in dominant fashion at the Open.

If this bracket were laid out differently, Megaludis would probably be my pick. He's not straining from a hard cut, he's excellent at getting to legs, and he's still extremely difficult to score on due to his flexibility. However, the history and the styles say that Garrett is better than Megaludis, so that's the pick to face Colon in Final X in what will be a rematch of the Open finals.