Where does Wyatt Hendrickson's title rank among NCAA wrestling upsets? 'One for the ages'
Jenni CarlsonThe Oklahoman
Wyatt Hendrickson shot in on Gable Steveson’s right leg, then grabbed his left leg and dumped him to the mat.
The crowd inside Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center went nuts.
So did Daniel Cormier.
“Oh, my gosh!” he bellowed on the TV broadcast. “Can you believe this?”
The former Oklahoma State wrestling All-American was doing commentary on the TV broadcast for the finals of the NCAA Championships. But in the last seconds of the heavyweight final between Steveson, the Minnesota superstar and Olympic champ, and Hendrickson, the Air Force transfer turned Oklahoma State folk hero, Cormier took over.
And it was genuine and hysterical and glorious.
“Can you believe this?” Cormier exclaimed as the referee signaled a takedown. “Hendrickson with the three! Gable gotta hustle! The Olympic champ is about to lose. It’s 13 seconds!”
He was nearly breathless.
“Oh, my goodness!” Cormier continued. “This could be it — the biggest upset in the history of the NCAA!”
But was it?
That question isn’t meant as a knock on Cormier — no one loves the friendly Louisiana native more than me — but what he said got me thinking. Had we just seen the biggest upset in NCAA wrestling history?
College wrestling, after all, has been around for a long time. It predates the NCAA by a quarter of a century, the first intercollegiate dual having been held in 1903.
That’s a lot of history.
So the biggest upset in NCAA history?
“Probably not,” Ron Good said.
Good, longtime editor of Amateur Wrestling News, is regarded as one of the nation’s top experts on college wrestling. He’s watched and covered the sport for more than four decades, and no one is more passionate about it.
No one is more knowledgeable either.
“I think you still gotta go Larry Owings and Dan Gable, 1970,” Good said of college wrestling’s biggest upset. “Just everything that came up to it, that was a shocker.”
Here’s the setup: Gable entered his last NCAA finals as the heavy favorite at 142 pounds. He’d never lost a match in high school, going 64-0 and winning three state titles, and he’d never lost at Iowa State, going 117-0.
He was expected to win his third national title easily.
Owings, a sophomore from Washington, was just expected to be a footnote in Gable’s march to greatness even though he’d lost only once that season. But Owings, who wrestled at 158 and 150 much of that season, dropped down not one but two weight classes just so he could challenge Gable.
At weigh-ins, an ABC reporter approached Owings.
“Larry, why, particularly with a such a successful sophomore season, would you drop into a weight class that will be impossible to win because of Gable’s presence?” the reporter asked.
Owings glared.
“I’ll beat him,” he replied.
And Owings did, actually beating Gable at his own game. Gable was known to be so fit that he simply wore out most of his opponents, but rather than try to score a win early, Owings went takedown for takedown with Gable.
Gable led 10-9 late in the third and final period when he attempted an armbar, going for a pin. But Owings countered with a leg sweep.
Down went Gable.
Owings scored two for the takedown and two for exposure, and after Gable escaped, Owings led 13-11 with 17 seconds left. Gable needed a takedown, but he was so exhausted that it was Owings who attempted to take Gable down again.
Gable would go on to win an Olympic gold two years later and become a wrestling giant as the coach at Iowa, but in that moment, he was the guy who suffered his only college loss in his last collegiate match to a guy named Larry Owings.
“It was big time,” Good said of the match. “It’ll never be forgotten.”
Neither will Hendrickson’s win over Steveson.
But Good gives Owings over Gable the nod.
“Why do I say this?” Good said. “Steveson was away from wrestling for two years (to try both WWE and the NFL). To me, that matters. … Hendrickson did not take a break. He’s improved all year long. Steveson didn’t wrestle in any tournaments this year at all. He’s only had 14 matches.
“In some ways, it’s not an utter shock.”
Good admits that he wasn’t looking forward to their match.
“Knowing how heavyweight matches usually go,” he said. “Guys are slow, and they dance around.
"But I totally enjoyed the finals. It wasn’t my highlight match — until it was.”
Because Hendrickson and Steveson put on a show. Everyone remembers the final flurry, but the first few minutes of the match were a rush of activity. Both wrestlers attacked and countered, fought and rallied.
Then, of course, came the ending.
“It’s definitely one for the ages,” Lee Roy Smith said.
Smith, the oldest of the legendary Smith brothers and the executive director of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, said the match was elevated by the fact that Steveson is already an Olympic champion.
He won gold in Tokyo.
“I’m not sure we’ve had an Olympic champion wrestle in the NCAA Championship before,” Smith said. “He’s got a big list of credentials that go beyond college sports. He’s just a legitimately great wrestler.”
The other thing that sticks with Smith is the theater of the match between Hendrickson and Steveson.
Hendrickson is the Air Force second lieutenant who plans to make military service his life’s work. He wore the stars and stripes around his shoulders before the match. When he stepped onto the mat, Steveson bowed up; usually, wrestlers only drape the flag on their shoulders after winning Olympic gold.
Add in the President sitting mat-side and the heavyweights being the finale of not only the finals but also the tournament, and the drama was high.
Then the quality and the excitement of the match exceeded every expectation.
“You know, I’ve had people tell me that they were here when the lights broke out,” Smith said referring to Daryl Monasmith’s upset of defending national champion Frank Santana in 1978 at Gallagher-Iba Arena, a win that caused such a roar from the crowd that some of the arena lights were knocked out.
“They said it was just as loud there.”
The Philly crowd did roar when Hendrickson won last weekend, though no one was any louder than Cormier.
“Wyatt just beat Gable Steveson!” he hollered on the broadcast. “That’s crazy! This is the craziest moment in NCAA history!”
Biggest? Best? Craziest?
The superlatives will be debated in the wrestling world for years. But whether Hendrickson over Steveson was the best, the second-best or something else, everyone can agree that it was everything that sport is supposed to be.
Competitive. Dramatic. Exciting.
In a word: Glorious.
