Bloody Elbow provides this Factgrinder Guide as a means for you, the reader, to access a single hub that leads to individual Factgrinders, which provide the wrestling accomplishments for the fighters on a particular card.
UFC 179 features four fighters with significant wrestling backgrounds: Chad Mendes, Phil Davis, Darren Elkins and Scott Jorgensen.
Bloody Elbow has already provided excellent Factgrinders for Chad Mendes and Phil Davis which provide all a fan would want to know about the wrestling pedigree of both fighters.
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Meanwhile, Scott Jorgensen faces Wilson Reis at the catchweight of 128 pounds in UFC 179’s prelims. Interestingly, Jorgensen wrestled at 133 pounds throughout his excellent collegiate career, including his final year in college in 2006. This was the same year when Chad Mendes earned his first All American finish, all the way down at 125 pounds. In UFC 179’s main event against Jose Also, Mendes will fight at 145 pounds.
While competing for Boise State, a program which at the time was one of the best in the nation, Jorgensen routinely enjoyed rankings within the nation’s top ten at 133 pounds. Three out of his four years in varsity competition he claimed first place in the Pac-10 conference, and twice he earned a top-ten seed at the NCAA tournament.
The most noteworthy aspect of Jorgensen’s college wrestling career was three straight round-of-twelve finishes at the NCAA tournament from 2004-2006. This means that in each of his three final years of college wrestling, Jorgensen only needed one more win to claim All-American status. We have never come across this happening for any other wrestler in NCAA history (this does not mean it hasn’t), and this means that Jorgensen is arguably the greatest college wrestler ever to never become an All American. This might seem like a dubious distinction, but it places Jorgensen in some very elite company.
As for Darren Elkins, he wrestled for a couple years for NCAA Division II University of Wisconsin-Parkside after winning an Indiana state title in high school. He does not appear to have any major distinctions in collegiate competition.