Yianni Diakomihalis came out the gate firing as a true freshman and won the 141-pound national title with just one loss on his record. 

It was announced after he made his way to the top of the podium in Cleveland that he had accomplished the ultimate with a torn ACL. The injury forced him to miss the entire freestyle season over the summer after getting it surgically repaired and he most recently made his return to competition last weekend at the Mat Town open where he torched the field in true National Champ fashion. 

With his first competition after coming back from the injury, I talked to the returning champ about how he felt getting back on the mat, when can we expect to see him wrestle again, the contenders in his weight class and so much more. 

Holmes: How did it feel being back on the mat?

Yianni D: It was good. I didn’t wrestle as well as I would have liked to, but it gave me a lot of stuff to work on and it is definitely a good starting point for me. Good too see where I’m at right now.

Holmes: Did you feel anxious at all when you first went out there?

Yianni D: I was definitely excited to be out there and it was something kind of like ‘it’s finally here, I’m finally wrestling.’ I didn’t have jitters but there was some anticipation to finally get back out there. But I’m glad I got it out of me and got those first couple matches in and I have stuff to go back and work on now so I think it was really important that I went and wrestled there before I start competing at a really high level event.

Yianni’s Mat-Town Open results:

Round 1: fall, Marlon Argneta (UA - Bloom), 3:12

Quarters: fall, CJ Manley (UA - LHU), 2:37

Semis: tech fall, Mason Lindenmuth (PSU), 17-1, 5:37.

Won by med. fft in the finals.

Holmes: This year you have to miss Cliff Keen Las Vegas...how do you feel about you schedule and do you like being able to ease back into things?

Yianni D: In a perfect world I would have wrestled at Binghamton Open and the dual meets and Vegas. But I can’t really control that. If my doctor doesn’t want me to compete [at these places] yet then I trust him 100%. 

He knows more about this stuff than I do. But it all has its pros and cons and it makes the season a little shorter for me and my first semester is going to be a little easier as far as not competing as much. But it’s got its tradeoffs and in the end I can’t control those things, so I can’t let it bother me too much. I can just keep working on what I’m working on and building towards the next event.

Watch Yianni battle Bryce Meredith in the CKLV semis:

Holmes: What’s it like training with Kyle Dake and Jordan Oliver and how has that helped you with getting over the injury and getting prepared for this season?

Yianni D: It’s funny that you ask that because I just wrestled Kyle yesterday and I told him to beat me as bad as you possibly can. It was pretty bad.

It’s good having them because Jordan’s a guy who I compete with. When we get in there and wrestling live it’s tight. I take him down, he takes me down and we’re getting after each other. That’s a good guy to challenge myself against. There will be days where I say to myself ‘try and win the match.’ or ‘don’t let him score on you.’ or ‘don’t let him take you down on this go.’ 

And then you’ve got Kyle and no matter how hard I try, he will beat me. But it’s good though because I’ll never be the alpha dog in the room, I’ll never be the best guy. Like yesterday, I grabbed Kyle and we were doing 5 minute goes. And the first 5 minute go I just wrestled with him. I’m going live and he’s going maybe 70 or 80%. Then the next go I told him ‘beat me into a pulp,’ and he did and it was good because it exposes where I’m weak and it exposes where he’s just able to run me over.

Having guys in the room like that who can score on me and guys who I have a hard time scoring on, are great because it shows me where I’m flawed and what I need to improve on. And I think that super important for me.

Holmes: You have never wrestled Joey McKenna. How do you feel about that matchup?

Yianni D: I remember going into Nationals last year we had talked about the Heil match and we had talked about wrestling Joey because I had wrestled everybody else. I had wrestled Meredith and Eierman and the guys I had in the early rounds, but I hadn’t wrestled McKenna and I hadn’t wrestled Heil, so those were ones that I had worked on in March.

The other thing too is the way Joey wrestles different. He’s a lefty and so is my coach Mike Grey so I was prepared for that. But as much as you can plan for guys, I try my best to stay on the offense. But if I’m going to game plan for someone I make sure I know where I’m going when he takes a shot and then ‘here’s how we’re going to score. You’re going here.’ But regardless who it is, it could be Joey McKenna, could be Eierman, could be Jordan, a guy I’m in the room with, it could be anyway. I just try and address how they’re going to try to score on me. 

But I just try to stay as offensive as possible and keep developing my skills. In the end, my goal is not to beat Joey McKenna, it’s to accomplish certain accomplishments.

Holmes: What do you think of the new crop of guys that are no in the weight class like Kaid Brock or Mitch Mckee?

Yianni D: Every time I wrestle I expect the guy to give me their best effort and regardless of what I’ve achieved, everyone is going to try as hard as they can to beat me. And I don’t want to sound like ‘that guy,’ but I’ll wrestle whoever. If you want to come up from 33 or come down from 49, I’ll wrestle whoever they put in front of me. If I get to the national tournament and have to wrestle the top 5 guys in that order, then that’s how it works. I try my best not to shy away from competition. I really like wrestling. It’s why enjoy wrestling high level guys. The more wrestling I get to do against high level guys, the better. 

Coming up from 33, those guys Mckee and Brock, I don’t really think much of it. If you’re going to wrestle me, then let’s wrestle. I’m not opposed to it.

Holmes: Since you had to take so much time away from the mat, what did you do to stay sharp and prepare?

Yianni D: I did a lot of film study when I was hurt. It was all I could do. Obviously, you’re not going to maintain everything being out for 7+ months, but I think that the mental reps made a huge difference. I do think I’ve expanded my offense since being away. I took that time where maybe I can only drill, so I’ll play with things and try to get a feel for different positions. I tried my best to make due with what I had. I was limited for a large part of the summer because of the injury so if I could only drill then let’s play with an underhook, let’s play with an overhook, let’s play with a wrist tie or a Russian. But just playing with stuff and figuring out what works for me. Throughout the summer I was just messing with things and figuring out what attacks could be beneficial to my arsenal.

Holmes: What international guys where you watch at Worlds or watching film of that you really took note of technically?

Yianni D: I watch a lot of Russians. But the one thing I tried to adjust is something like, if I wanted to work on my swim high crotch then I’m going to watch the guy with the best one in the world. I watched a lot of Bekbulatov because I thought he was going to be the Russian rep, but then when I found out it was Chakaev I watched him and I actually picked up a lot of his underhook stuff and added that to mine. I watched Otoguro. He’s got a good snap, run the corner, reattack motion and it’s something similar to how I do my reattack, so I looked at he does it and figured out how I could improve that for myself. 

When I started to get back into things my single leg didn’t feel right so I watched a guy like Haji Aliev and how he takes a single leg to see what he’s doing that keeps him in better position or gets him to the leg or helps him finish and try and adopt that. Or with underhooks I watch Chakaev or Sadulaev and try to add that to my wrestling. 

The biggest thing that I’m getting at with all this is that I’m a really big copycat. Everything I do, I’ve learned from someone or stolen from someone or had it hit on me and tried playing with it and adapted it to myself. But I think everyone is, in their own way, a little bit of a copycat. I just try my best to watch the guys who are the most successful and replicate what they do and adapt it to how my body type and wrestling style works. 

Holmes: When will we see you wrestling again?

Yianni D: I will be wrestling at Northern Iowa for the dual and at every event after that.