The 2007 World Team Trials final wrestle off between Daniel Cormier and Muhammed Lawal at 96 kg makes a serious case for the number-one entry in this ranking. The yet-to-be mentioned final installment of this series features an NCAA finals match, and wrestle offs for the World Team possess substantially more gravity than mere collegiate competition. In the end, however, I wanted bigger MMA names for my top match, and I recognize the reality that readers of a karate magazine an MMA blog have little interest in the United States Wrestling World Team Trials.
Even in the hypothetical situation where I was writing this for a more wrestling-oriented audience, I would probably do the same. Even in wrestling circles, interest in college wrestling dwarfs that of the Senior-level Olympic styles. College wrestling’s biggest domestic event, the NCAA Division I Championships, packs a giant arena for three days straight, while the biggest domestic Olympic-style event, the World Team Trials, yields only modest attendance. Also, with the step up from college to the Senior circuit, athlete participation dwindles along with the number of fans in the stands.
[ In support of what I say above, I offer the only photos I can find of Cormier and Lawal’s WTT wrestle off. I found the photos on tech-fall.com]
This makes sense. Only the most accomplished college wrestlers earn the club patronage and coaching positions needed to support themselves while pursuing their world-level aspirations. Thus the guys you see competing year after year in obscure freestyle or Greco tournaments, representing clubs like the TMWC or the NYAC, are exceptional, fanatical and weird. They are the wrestling equivalent of the undergraduate scholar who gets full funding to do doctoral work on the use of the word qua in medieval philosophy, while the vast majority of college students, wrestlers or not, turn their gaze on futures of practicality and pecuniary opportunity. Simply put, most college graduates don’t, can’t and won’t spend the better part of the next decade immersed in an obscure discipline, whether academic or athletic.
And yes, among sports the USA, whether I like it or not, Olympic-style wrestling is fairly obscure. Proof of this rests in the fact that in 2007 Daniel Cormier and Mohammed Lawal, two very well-known names in the semi-popular sport of mixed martial arts, faced off in a best-of-three series for what essentially amounted to a national championship in freestyle wrestling, and MMA fans do not seem to care.
Seven years later, these same MMA fans would probably pay decent money to watch Cormier and Lawal fight. Such a match up would represent the perfect pairing of face and heel; Cormier seems to have won the affections of the fight faithful with his impressive skill-set and relatable personality, while Lawal has accomplished the exact opposite. Sadly, due to different promotions and a longstanding friendship, this fight will likely never happen, but if it did, I would hope that it would produce more offense then the two matches they wrestled in their 2007 World Team Trials wrestle off.
That Cormier and Lawal wrestled in such a high profile event is vastly more interesting than what took place in the matches themselves. Cormier won the wrestle off in two straight matches, and four straight periods, the last three of which ended 1-0 against Lawal. The paucity of points likely arose from the freestyle wrestling ruleset of the day, and from the familiarity between the two athletes.
Cormier and Lawal were (and I believe still are) buddies, practice partners and products of Oklahoma State’s (OSU) legendary wrestling program. They had more in common than that: both won national championships for smaller colleges before transferring to OSU, and both came to the top tier of wrestling from the unlikely states of Texas and Louisiana. In light of their friendship, facing one another in such a high-stakes environment must have been difficult, but, in wrestling, even the closest teammates and comrades understand what they must do when they stand in each other’s way for a World Team berth.
Ultimately, Cormier proved too much for Lawal. The current UFC light heavyweight contender was too good and too big for the brash wrestler from Texas. Cormier would continue on to a bronze medal at the World Championships later that year, his penultimate season as a full-time wrestler. The mat careers of both men ended the next year; Lawal’s after losing to Andy Hrovat in the 84 kg final wrestle off of the Olympic Team Trials, and Cormier’s after dropping out of competition at the Beijing Olympics.
Now we face the possibility, albeit unlikely, of a future where both fighters simultaneously occupy the light heavyweight championships of the world’s two biggest MMA promotions. This wouldn’t be the first time the two were belt holders in a professional combat sports promotion at the same time, each won the title of Real Pro Wrestling champion in 2007.
Fun Bonus Fact: The 2007 USA World Team Trials featured other current names in MMA: Henry Cejudo-first place at 55 kg, Shawn Bunch-third place at 60 kg, Steve Mocco-second place at 120 kg and Pat Cummins- third place at 120 kg.