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Unstoppable (2024) - Ep14 - Archaic Wrestling
24 Plays8 days ago
Sasha and Evan review the lasted wrestling film to hit the big screen!
https://wrestlinganalysis.home.blog/2023/11/28/market-competition-and-why-i-think-streaming-wars-are-bad-for-fans/
Music by Josh Kasen
Twitter: @ArchaicWrestle
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Return
00:00:18
Speaker
Welcome back to Archaic Wrestling, folks. This is Evan, and I am joined, as always, by Sasha. How you doing, Sasha? Good. Hello, everybody. It's been a little while since we did ah a podcast, but we're back. where We don't disappear for too long. We always bring it back.
New Wrestling Season Excitement
00:00:34
Speaker
Here we are.
00:00:35
Speaker
um And before we get going today, you got to go to a duel recently. want to give you a chance to talk about it a little bit. Yeah, you know, at the start of the season, i was I was so excited. I was like, we got this monster recruiting class. We got all these guys. We got all these California guys.
00:00:50
Speaker
i want to go to so i want to go to all these Stanford dual meets. I want to see, you know, go to like three or four. i want to see so many. And then those like Fridays or Sundays would roll around. I'd be like, you know, I may i know i got work tomorrow, Saturday. or you know um I might not go.
00:01:05
Speaker
I might stay home. I might might keep re-watching Mad Men. but So finally made it out.
Virginia Tech vs Stanford Dual Meet
00:01:11
Speaker
to Virginia Tech, ah Virginia Tech versus Stanford.
00:01:16
Speaker
ah circled it, and I was like, all right, I got at least go to this one. Because I'm a big fan of Virginia Tech, too. I like seeing them. ah I've had some pretty fun guys you know on their rosters. I like like seeing their thing.
00:01:30
Speaker
I was a little bummed my boy Hippolito wasn't wrestling. Me, too. I think him think him versus Chalakian would have been pretty fun, too. Would have been cool. ah two floppy guys out there, you know?
00:01:42
Speaker
would have been pretty fun. it was It was difficult to know who was who in that duel. Yes, it really was. not Not just the fact that it was double camo, but like literally the exact same type of camo on both both uniforms.
00:01:57
Speaker
Yeah, the exact same one. The only difference being a red ring on Stanford's leg. ah i was i was checking those out like as they were warming it up, and I was like, oh man, this is...
00:02:08
Speaker
Sobalov Brands is going to have a conniption, man. This is going to give him an aneurysm. He might not recover from this one.
00:02:16
Speaker
Well, we made it. We made it through and with with all the camo. But in some ways, the you know usually you get the team with the camo, you know and it's like, what are they doing? we can you know it's what are What are they accomplishing here? It's nothing.
00:02:29
Speaker
In this way, the camo did kind of serve a camouflage purpose in that they they kind of were... ah indistinguishable. So it kind of, in some ways, it was actually more of a it real... It does, it did what camo is, you know, that's what it's advertised to do, right? It's supposed to confuse you, right?
College vs Freestyle Wrestling Singlets
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, you know what? I'm not as big of a hater on the camo as others. I'm kind of just like, whatever. I don't love it, but it's just it's just camo, whatever. I want to see more of that, though. you know i mean? Like, Edinburgh has, like, their... The plaid.
00:03:00
Speaker
Their plaid, right? Like, more. bringing Bring in some paisley, right? Like, give me some some cool designs going on on the singlets. Well, you know, this is this is one of those things that... ah I don't know if this is a hot take, but ah one of... Something that I don't like about Freestyle...
00:03:16
Speaker
And I don't know if it like how much it affects me, but sometimes I do feel like i'm like, you know, I don't, it kind of makes me want to watch it a little bit less sometimes if, if it's, if I'm on the edge is that, you know, in college wrestling, right? Like you go to Iowa, you got boom, big yellow mat. You know, you go UNI, big purple. Like you get these teams with like iconic singlets. Everyone knows like Iowa iconic singlet or like Cornell has an iconic singlet, you know? And then you got teams like,
00:03:46
Speaker
Virginia Tech is kind of like the Oregon Ducks of college wrestling. They've got, know, I mean, how many different singles do they have at this point? Like 15. and they're just, they're interchanging, you know, they're changing it up all the time. ah They got a lot of color schemes that are fun, you know, like everyone knows Minnesota's got the final singlet.
00:04:02
Speaker
There are all these things I think that like really give like a sense of pride or a sense of like understandability.
Creative Wrestling Mats and Singlets
00:04:08
Speaker
And I think especially like when you're like, when i was a kid, when I was ah in high school watching college wrestling,
00:04:14
Speaker
And then you see like ah a team with a crazy singlet come out like you see you and I come out. and you're like Oh, that's great. That's wild. Like they got the there's a purple guy out there. You know, it just it's kind of your imagination goes. It's interesting.
00:04:26
Speaker
It makes things a little bit more memorable. Yeah. Freestyle in that sense is it's it's, you know, by definition, more limiting when it's like everyone has to bleed blue or red. It's pretty boring. You know, the mat is always the same color.
00:04:40
Speaker
So that gets that gets a little bit much. And then I find so there's something visually that sometimes I get a little bit tired of looking at the same you know the same colors the whole time. Like when you're if you're watching a ah tournament for you know like three, four hours, and it's red, blue, red, blue, all the whole time, it it gets ah it can actually get a little bit visually tiring. So I kind of wish that – and I kind of wish college wrestling would do this too.
00:05:06
Speaker
it would be nice if they went away from a red blue and they went to like maybe like a black white i think it would be nice if like you had one guy has to have or you know one wrestler has to have on 60 white singlet other person has to have 60 you know a color so you just kind of distinguish it by like home home and away or something i think that would be nice like I don't, there's no reason why, and some ah teams do this, and I think they have, like, a like a pretty cool singlet.
00:05:38
Speaker
But, I mean, you know, there's no reason why we shouldn't have some more recognizable singlets in here, you know? Like, the USA singlet just kind of has that, like, kind of just have a picture of a flag, and then it doesn't look like anything else. Like, it's, there should be, like, a recognizable USA singlet.
00:05:56
Speaker
Japan should be like, boom, it's it's that's Japan. Every time you look at them, you should know it's Japan. You should know when you're looking at Russia. And like, they're also, you know, countries that have like incredibly interesting flags or like colors like, I don't know, Azerbaijan should have a have a cooler looking cigarette. You know, they got I like they they got a cool flag.
00:06:18
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It would be nice to see it. Cause we do have like the technology nowadays to do so much with singlets, right? yeah So many cool graphics, you know? Um, and you know, I don't hate every single that I see out of like team USA or like ah other, other countries with their singlets. Like there's just so much opportunity for that creativity.
00:06:36
Speaker
And a lot of times it just comes down to like, let's throw a few chevrons on there, you know, like, and yeah, it's, it's whatever. um But yeah, let's more more of that.
00:06:47
Speaker
That's great. um By the way, you know what's really going to grow wrestling is if you do a celebration where you shoot someone with a gun. ah
00:06:57
Speaker
so So I'm not an anti-celebration person. I'm not even necessarily anti-pretending to shoot someone with a gun thing, but I am anti the idea that it is going to do anything to grow wrestling.
00:07:08
Speaker
And I know this because the wrestling world made a big deal out of – what was um his name? Like Strickenberger? That's Strickenberger. Strickenberger doing the shoot my opponent celebration.
00:07:20
Speaker
Yeah. um And you know click you know who picked it up outside of of wrestling media? Yeah. John Boy Media is the only one who picked it up. John Boy Media is the only one who picked it up.
00:07:32
Speaker
Put the clip up there. And guess what? It doesn't grow wrestling when people look at the clip and go like, wow, they sure are weird in wrestling. And then all the comments are like, why did they do that? no one No one watched that was like, we should be watching wrestling now.
00:07:45
Speaker
Yeah. To be fair, it did start in football. Yeah, exactly. It started in football. It has been funny when, you know, ah people have been talking about it and they're like, oh, it's it's a crazy celebration. It's fun when people do a crazy thing or like this.
00:07:58
Speaker
You know, ah I mean, I don't know. It ah it doesn't... it's It seems a bit unnecessary. i mean, i don't know. But is it hypocritical? What other violent crimes should we be miming? You know, because, like, you know, I get the shooting gun, but there's so many violent crimes that we could be miming on the wrestling knot.
00:08:16
Speaker
like Is it hypocritical to enjoy... The cowboy shooting the gun... celebration versus the standing over the guy just going like but pa papa celebration and not i don't i don't think it's hypocritical i think there's a very clear difference between the two ah just like there'd be a very clear difference between like hey shooting the guns in the air and like yeah you know going up to your opponent and pretending to disembowel him you know i understand that that might be fun for people and you know it's it's cool uh but i just i'm very very uh skeptical like what about more more creativity
00:08:53
Speaker
allow more celebrations make them yeah creative have fun with it allow a headgear spike headgear spiked spike the shit out of the headgear you should be allowed to if you win you can you can do anything you want with the headgear if you lose you know maybe you can't spike it you can still throw it away i think we're getting too crazy with the you can toss it you can throw it all over the place but you can't you can't spike it that should be reserved for the winner gets to spike the headgear yeah just don't hit anybody with it yeah fine What about ah if you, while your opponent, if you pin your opponent while he's sort of like getting up, while you know, getting on his knee, like getting up, what if you went behind him and you mimed, ah you mimed a seppuku, you mimed being his second in the, you mimed seconding him in the.
00:09:41
Speaker
Yeah. What if you mimed like putting a plastic bag over his head? You know, you could do one of those or holding, holding a pillow over his face. You know, there's lots of cool ways you can pretend to kill your opponent. That would be pretty good.
00:09:53
Speaker
I just don't know. It doesn't have to buy the guns. you know like If you're going to say like we need more creative ah celebrations, like we we are not doing that. yeah you know like I'm just not impressed by the creativity at this point.
00:10:06
Speaker
we so We could do better. We can do much better. And it'll entertain only us, i am I'm pretty certain. But yeah, let's, ah we can keep moving on from there.
00:10:18
Speaker
um i Was there anything else that you just want to talk about in terms of wrestling, stuff going on in wrestling apart from our our subject today?
Challenges of Streaming Wrestling Events
00:10:28
Speaker
um Low Rock, Little Rock and Oklahoma State had a pretty, pretty exciting duel recently, which nobody could fucking watch because it's on UFC Fight Pass, which, yeah I mean, I know some, look, I'm a sicko. I pay for all kinds of bullshit. I'm paying for big plus now.
00:10:43
Speaker
You know, I have a i have a job. Part of why I haven't recorded that many of these. You know, I'm paying for a big plus. I'm paying for, you know, I'm getting, you know, DirecTV, Big Ten Network through, you know, through my parents or whatever. You know, I'm i'm paying for flow.
00:11:00
Speaker
I'm paying for all kinds of crap. You know, I got the yeah ESPN Plus. But, like, we were we, you know, when we got the Journeyman Duels, I'm like, all right, I'll pay, I'll do Rockfin. I'll pay $15 to watch this one event on Rockfin.
00:11:13
Speaker
You know, who cares? Whatever. I'll log on there and see all the ah the free-thinking media, then click through whatever that crap is to a very poorly done, you know, wrestling tournament. But, like, I don't know. I draw the line at UFC Fight. I'm like, come on, man. I'm already paying for so much shit.
00:11:33
Speaker
I can't—I'm not fucking subscribing to Midco Sports Plus. What the fuck is Midco Sports Plus? I'm not doing UFC Fight Pass. I'm not like since when was the the big 12? And I know that one was at you know, that's a Pac-12 duel.
00:11:45
Speaker
but But last year, every big 12 duel was on ESPN plus. Now it's all kinds of crap. You know, i'm watching Cal Poly on a, on a fucking Twitter link, you know? I mean, i don't know. I can't take this shit anymore.
00:12:00
Speaker
It is frustrating. Like how wide we have to cast our net to just watch wrestling. Um, And, you know, people make the point of like, hey, it's better than it's ever been and in some ways. And it's like, maybe.
00:12:13
Speaker
um And I don't know. i'm I'm just I pay for some stuff. And otherwise, it's like, I'll just wait for that guy to on YouTube to who will illegally streams it.
00:12:24
Speaker
yeah there's that Yeah. I mean, we are living in the golden age of ah illegal YouTube streams. Yeah. Various like Indian YouTube accounts and stuff like that. It's pretty good. Yeah.
00:12:35
Speaker
yeah It's, it's there. They're doing, they're doing a great service during God's work. For anyone who wants to bitch more about the state of wrestling streaming and why it's not actually good that there's, uh, competitors to like, it's not actually that good have all the various competitors and in no way is not a monopoly. Um, can go ahead and read oldest, greatest article he wrote about this a while ago.
00:13:00
Speaker
Probably you can find it through Twitter somewhere. he might have a link to it on his page. Maybe we can throw it in the chat. We'll find it er in the description. We'll see if we can find that. We'll just ask him. He'll send it to us.
00:13:11
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know why we're making this a scavenger hunt. You're going to have to go find it. All right. Well, we're not doing too much wrestling history today. We are doing another film
The Film 'Unstoppable' and Anthony Robles
00:13:25
Speaker
review.
00:13:26
Speaker
and We have a new wrestling film in the world. We don't get very many of them, but we have a new one that is very much about wrestling and not just including wrestling.
00:13:37
Speaker
And that is the film Unstoppable, ah which tells the true story of Anthony Robles' life and his ascension within the sport of wrestling um and and his career.
00:13:49
Speaker
ah and i And you got to see it in theaters, actually. I watched it just when it came to streaming. um But yeah, how was your theater-going experience with this? Was anyone there?
00:14:00
Speaker
Yeah, there was... there was this i mean, it wasn't full, but yeah, there were some people there. it was ah It was a free screening, and they gave us a free drink and a popcorn, so that was nice. um And there was... yeah we It was funny ah because... So Amazon was came directly to Amazon, right?
00:14:17
Speaker
And they do various...
00:14:22
Speaker
theater, you know, they they'll put some of their streaming things in the theater for like a week and they'll have a little showing in there. ah And a lot of the times, you know, apparently it gets like pretty, pretty hard, right? Because you're showing up, it's, you don't have tickets, you just have to show up and it's like, and if the theater's full, you're turned away.
00:14:40
Speaker
So, you know, my girlfriend's like, it's going to be crazy. It's going nuts. We got to get there early. ah It's going to be, you know, everyone online says they go to see these movies. It's crazy. I'm like, look, I don't think a lot of people in San Francisco are going to be going to the Anthony Robles wrestling movie. But sure. so we showed up like an hour early and there was nobody there. Clearly the first ones.
00:15:01
Speaker
Eventually there was like a very, very small line ah with little tickets handed out. But yeah, there was decent, decent theater experience and decent people in there. Decent amount of people. Nice. Good.
00:15:12
Speaker
All right. um And this is a film that's based off of Anthony's book that he wrote. um And it'll be, i didn't read that book. So I'm a little curious to know how close it'll be to what he said.
00:15:25
Speaker
There are definitely things in the film that didn't so necessarily feel like a wrestler um was the one that had that idea, but that's okay. Yes. Don't expect all that. We'll get to at least one of them. that Yeah. um But I guess, you know, we could start at top the top. The film opens, and um it's Anthony doing push-ups, and he's watching TV, and on TV is Tom Brands.
00:15:51
Speaker
um And I do want to just really quickly... ah hit on that a lot of movies like this, they will, when they have other real people in the film or that, you know, that are covered in the film, like Tom Brands, they'll often like change the name of that coach or, or like, ah you know, have a, have, you know, it wouldn't be Tom Brands as the the coach of Iowa. It would be Jack Johnson or or somebody else. It could be a stand-in for that, especially to avoid any sort of like litigation, right?
00:16:23
Speaker
Um, so that you don't have to worry about that sort of thing. Uh, and you know, they didn't exactly like make Tom brands look like the best guy in the world in in this movie. Like, I don't think they made him look like a horrible person or anything like that.
00:16:36
Speaker
Um, but you know, they, he's, did they're doing the whole, like, if you ain't first, your last kind of thing. yeah And Iowa, we blah, blah, blah, you know? Um, and I, you know, it's very obvious that Anthony really wanted to go to Iowa. They show the scene with him ah having the the, Iowa stuff in his locker.
00:16:55
Speaker
um And yeah, so he's just doing pushups. He's putting in the work. um And after we see this, where it's just kind of demonstrating that Anthony really wants to go to Iowa, that's his main goal.
00:17:09
Speaker
It cuts to his senior nationals finals when Anthony won senior nationals. And that's where college coaches were coming to watch him. um And he wins his match, right?
00:17:21
Speaker
Um, but the, the, it shows him being snubbed by brands essentially, right? Brands yeah were interested in the guy, some other guy that was, uh, I guess he was interested in the guy he beat, um, who, uh, by the way, in reality, the person, what was this? Because, i mean, there's obviously like, you know, we know there's these national tournaments, but, you know, um I was trying to figure out which one it was.
00:17:46
Speaker
Or the tournament? Yeah. It was just senior nationals back in the day. They did senior nationals, nationals just for seniors. I don't know if they still do that or not. I think they do. um But ah yeah, and the guy he wrestled in reality was Justin Paulson.
00:18:01
Speaker
um I don't know if you recognize the singlet, but that's a church boy singlet. he He wrestled at Calvary Chapel, Justin Paulson. Oh, wow. Yeah. And in the real in the real match, he and he Anthony didn't pin him.
00:18:13
Speaker
um yeah he wins nine to one in the real match. And and Justin Paulson, ah he actually wrestled at Stanford. He went on and he lettered four years at Stanford. And he's currently, I think, an assistant coach at Cerritos College.
Analyzing Anthony Robles' Wrestling Style
00:18:26
Speaker
but um So California guy stuck around, stuck around the sport, doing good stuff. um And I remember them kind of making. Oh, so I went back and watched the real match because I was just curious to take a look at it.
00:18:40
Speaker
um and listening to the commentary was interesting. One of the things that that was brought up was like, how do you wrestle a guy like Anthony? Yeah. um And I wanted to get your your thoughts on this too. but But at the time, they were saying like, you just got to work from the front headlock, essentially. That's all you could really do. but um But I mean, you were this weight class, by the way. So be I really want to hear what you think, you know?
00:19:02
Speaker
But yeah, i saw a lot of different ways in which i'm like, oh, yes, that would be really difficult to wrestle Anthony. Yeah, I think i also... You know, because, you know, um for me, right, most of the Anthony Robles matches I've seen, I mean, i've most people, right, maybe, or my age at least, have seen one Anthony Robles match, right?
00:19:24
Speaker
And it's him versus Matt McDonough. Yeah. And you watch that match, and you're just like, how could you possibly beat this guy, right? Because you're watching him, ah come you're watching him complete like a perfect match you're watching him yeah like execute a game plan in a way that like for if he executes at a hundred percent that game plan he is unbeatable right but that's the same of a lot of wrestlers if they execute their game plan perfectly they can't be beaten that's the same for a lot of wrestlers right because
00:19:57
Speaker
At the end of the day the the entire entirety of wrestling is not letting the guy get to the position where they're best. You wrestle in your best positions. You minimize their best positions. So I did go back and I watched a couple of his matches. I watched his quarterfinals match and I watched a semifinal match.
00:20:14
Speaker
And, you know, to be honest, watching those, ah the guy looks incredibly beatable. It's actually pretty surprising watching those. how bad he put it on Matt McDonough.
00:20:25
Speaker
Yeah. Considering how, not like, i don't want say, not pedestrian isn't the right word, but like, he he looks very human, right? He does not look like, oh my God, like the ref is not going to ever call him for stalling for hanging out down there.
00:20:39
Speaker
And his arms are simply too big to ever get by him. It's nothing you can do. No, that they they were very competitive matches with Ben Carr. And then I forget the other one, the the other guy's name, but he was from Oklahoma.
00:20:54
Speaker
Um, but they were extremely competitive matches where, yeah, yeah Anthony, I think at least he probably got, I think he got taken down at least one of them. um if he didn't, it was really close. Right.
00:21:07
Speaker
And it was actually interesting. He didn't really ride that effectively in either of those matches, which I think was probably the most surprising thing for me, you know, cause you watched that match with Matt McDonough, you're like, he must've just been teching everybody all the way through quarters, at least like,
00:21:24
Speaker
you know, getting that ball and chain roll through like, but no, i'll he was, he was scoring takedowns. He was, guys were getting to their feet and he was having to return them, you know, and, and people were just kind of, and, you know, to his credit, I think it's, you watch it. It's a little bit iffy.
00:21:43
Speaker
a lot of the guys were, they were just kind of getting to their feet and trying to run out of bounds and kind of seeing like what they could, what they could get done there. Cause nobody wanted to be under him. So I think what's most impressive about the finals match was how well, ah and maybe this was just a McDonough thing, like a stubborn Iowa style type thing. He didn't want to win that way, but um he didn't just, you know try to get to his feet, run away and, and make it into that kind of match. Like he competed there at that, in that position and he was able to get those turns, but it it was really interesting seeing like, Oh no, they're clearly, he was very beatable, you know, he was seventh in round of 12 and then first.
00:22:21
Speaker
Yeah, we'll talk a little bit later about um ah the perception that people have of like his wrestling. yeah um Because I think there's the commentary about what kind of advantage he has, right?
00:22:33
Speaker
But let's save that till the end, I think. um But yeah, we'll get into that. But yeah, so so Anthony, he wins his high school nationals match. And... and He goes to, there's a big dinner party for everybody.
00:22:49
Speaker
um And it's, it's very fancy dinner party. I was a little surprised by how fancy it was. I'm not used to wrestling, getting, getting that kind of attention. But he goes to a dinner party. i think he had also gone at one point to ah ah like the steps of the ah Philadelphia Museum of Art, where they got the Rocky footprints and he's kind of standing up there and, you know, he kind of,
00:23:10
Speaker
uh, symbolizing his, um, his desire, uh, to be greater and to be a champion. Right. And it's also where he wins his national championship in Philadelphia four years later. So it's kind of something that comes full circle for him.
00:23:25
Speaker
um But then he starts talking to this guy who's who's a server and he's a huge WWE dumbass. yeah He's like, go to WWE and get paid. It's like, yeah, they're going to pay Anthony Robles a whole bunch of money in the WWE.
00:23:40
Speaker
um So that was just very, very silly character. I think that was a good example. of Like, I guess I'm curious, maybe I'm curious how much would come from his book. Like, did he actually talk to this guy? And a guy said that and it's like, because there's plenty of people that we've all experienced that,
00:23:56
Speaker
you know, ah make the connection between wrestling and WWE, obviously. And they're like, Oh, you're going to go do that. It's like, yeah, that's how I'm going to hit it. Right. Um, so maybe competitive sport of, yeah. Yeah.
00:24:10
Speaker
ah yeah So maybe they included that pointless character, um, just for the sake of like, I don't know. ah yeah, it's hard to speaking to that, to that misunderstanding that people often has, have about wrestling.
00:24:20
Speaker
Um, I guess also just speaking to like, cause he's talking about getting paid and I think that's a big theme in this movie too. right like the your your um uh how much money you make like and be in you know what that means uh to your life right so i guess some of that kind of makes sense um but uh while he's at this party um his mom's there his coach is there you know everyone's there to support him um or actually was his mom there for this one or was it just his coach uh no was mom and coach yeah mom and coach yeah um
00:24:52
Speaker
and ah at And at this point, you know, he's he's disappointed because Iowa didn't come talk to him. Cornell didn't come talk to him. um You know, the the schools they was really interested didn't come talk to him.
00:25:04
Speaker
But who does come talk to him? The Drexel coach. um And they they gave him name like like Sherman or something like that. That's not the name of the Drexel coach at the time. So they they fictionalized him.
00:25:15
Speaker
um But yeah, he comes in and he offers him a full ride scholarship. And this is the point in the movie where I began to shout at the screen and continue to shout the screen at different points of the film saying, go take the full ride at Drexel, Anthony. You should have done that.
00:25:34
Speaker
You should. I mean, look, we're not going to if. Yeah, obviously, I mean. and we will get into, like, you know, the character of, you know, the stepdad and everything. Right. There's all this stuff. But like, yeah, given ah the situation the movie portrays.
00:25:52
Speaker
uh it does yeah you it does seem like it would have been the move like a free ride to college you know is is such a big deal yeah you know and i think the big thing is like he doesn't want to leave his mom alone right yeah and that's totally understandable um but he would have been doing that at iowa too like no matter where he went he'd be leaving his his mother behind um but you know there's also the theme in the movie of like you know, people appreciating Anthony or like, you know, seeing him and who he was um and and people not seeing that. Right. People like looking over him.
00:26:29
Speaker
Yeah. The frickin Drexel coach did not do that. Yes. Like he believed in you from the very beginning, Anthony. um So like he's Drexel. He's Drexel. They're bad. Right. good you know Yeah. but Who would want to go to that school?
00:26:43
Speaker
You know what else is is ah you know what else about Drexel? there's you know what no i'm gonna i'm gonna save that i'm gonna save that because it'll be funny later on um but yeah so yeah i'm a little like it's it's it's not it's it's weird right um but that's fine yeah so he doesn't want to go to drexel that's cool sport you know biopic type movies where like and then this happens you know business ones a lot of biopics have the thing where like the guy makes the improbable choice and everyone's like you're crazy you're doing something insane it's like well
00:27:17
Speaker
No, it's actually, it was good they did it because it's, you know, there we we know in hindsight how talented they were slash like lucky in some of these things. um Which is not to say, I do think Anthony's story is incredibly inspiring and i think there's a lot to learn from it.
00:27:33
Speaker
Yes. But i don't think the lesson I would take is that ah given a very good situation that is maybe not perfect, uh but very so much better financially that you shouldn't do it i i definitely would not take the lesson that you know if this was happening to like me or someone i would counsel i'd say go to go to drexel this yeah well and a big theme in the film is choices right they talk about choices a lot right and this is kind of like one of the big choices that anthony makes to just kind of blow off drexel to a certain extent right um and and so we gotta get to he comes home right he comes home to arizona
00:28:12
Speaker
ah He's got four siblings. He's got a stepdad who appears to be a corrections officer. um And his stepdad is ah very insecure about Anthony, right?
00:28:25
Speaker
oh He is insecure about Anthony. puts him down a lot. And a lot of this might be insinuated that it's because Anthony's not his real son, right? As they say in the movie, makes it very clear.
00:28:37
Speaker
um And Anthony kind of represents a an outsider to him. Right. um And he's also, unfortunately, although the stepdad's an asshole, he's correct. Anthony should have gone to Drexel and he tells him this. um And, and he says, the and he says the phrase, ah you got to know your weaknesses, right.
00:28:59
Speaker
Which is an interesting thing to hear coming from this character, the stepdad, right. Because there's a lot of truth to that in wrestling, right. There's a lot of truth to that in life and kind of knowing like where your strengths and weaknesses are and how you can address them.
00:29:12
Speaker
And it's kind of this weird dynamic with this step's dad who is obviously like abusive and manipulative and dishonest, and he's he's very wrong about a lot of things, um you know very toxic in his masculinity at times, right?
00:29:28
Speaker
But he's also just like – he says a lot of platitudes that are not necessarily false, right, that can sound like parenting or can sound like good coaching, like you've got to know your weaknesses, right?
00:29:41
Speaker
But he doesn't do anything to help Anthony know his weaknesses outside of putting him down in some way. Yeah, it's I mean, his character is very, yeah, obviously very insecure ah and and clearly does not want Anthony to succeed at all in any way.
00:29:57
Speaker
And I think there's, you know, whether, you know, he was like that because, okay, Anthony to him is maybe a symbol of like maybe his weakness. Because i don't they don't go into necessarily the timeline of these things, right? They say – obviously they have him tell Anthony, hey, you know you're not my real son.
00:30:15
Speaker
They don't say whether that was something where you know ah he was cheated on and that's – like he views it as a symbol of like, oh, that's when she stepped out on me.
00:30:27
Speaker
They don't say – or whether he came into the picture after Anthony was born. Yeah, we don't necessarily know when he became the father figure to Anthony. Yeah, so it's, you know, that that sort of thing is ah unclear, but I do think there's it's very clear that, you know, he does not want Anthony to succeed. Like, all of Anthony's successes really come at the cost of, you know, his masculinity and his feelings of, like, control over the family and...
00:30:55
Speaker
you know, his feeling that like, he's the man of the house. I mean, he it's very clear, like he never wants Anthony to succeed because that would, any, any of his successes would hurt him. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, we can see that the relationship is pretty strained. Anthony doesn't love that, that he's got to deal with this guy. It seems like, um and he shares a room with one of his siblings and, uh, they show him, you know, working out again.
00:31:19
Speaker
but he also show him, uh, watching TV again. We're seeing more Iowa wrestlers. um and thought was really funny one of the wrestlers on the eye on screen for iowa says like uh you know it feels so good to break a guy and make him make him a different person the rest of his life i thought that was such a funny phrase i'm like oh my god calm calm down it's the exact type of it was a good thing to say because it sounds like a lot of wrestlers sort of things that they would say like just the idea of breaking a guy and and ah you know, breaking, I'm sorry, it's kind of fun to break somebody. When you do break someone a match, it feels really good.
00:31:54
Speaker
You feel, you feel real powerful. Um, but yeah, just this kind of the whole, like, you gotta to be a dick. You gotta be an asshole, uh, to be a good wrestler. Cause it's a fight and you gotta make him regret he ever stepped on the mat with you.
00:32:06
Speaker
um yeah. yeah especially that I just, i think it's funny. That era of Iowa was especially was, you know, even more. Um, so yeah, we get, we're getting this ah family dynamic for Anthony and he has school the next day.
00:32:21
Speaker
um first thing I noticed is this school is very nice facilities. I was very, uh, jealous of the weight room and the wrestling room looked really nice. Um, and yeah, I'm very curious if it was actually filmed at his school, um, or at his past school, but yeah, really nice.
00:32:36
Speaker
And we get his high school coach and his high school coach is trying to get him recruited, right? Not sure who he's talking to on the phone. but he's, you know, he's trying to convince people to give Anthony a chance when he goes.
00:32:49
Speaker
um Anthony comes in the office, um and Anthony is still very ancient interested in Iowa. He asks if coaches heard from Iowa, and coach is like, you know, there's there's other places other than Iowa, um and Anthony is like, oh, but the best people go to Iowa, coach, um which really reminds me of, like,
00:33:10
Speaker
how Penn state right now is where you have a lot of recruits that go there, even though they they like literally never see the mat. Um, because it's like this idea of like, no, I have to be in the place with the best wrestlers to be the best wrestler that I can be. Right.
00:33:23
Speaker
Um, and his coach responds, you know, the school doesn't make the man, right. You're, you can be that man that you want to be without being at Iowa. Right.
00:33:34
Speaker
Um, and I'm very curious how the wrestling community would respond to this kind of thing. Um, because we are so like, no, you just got to go, you got to be where the best guys are. If you're going to find success, success, you know, like if you're not going to be the best, what's the point of even doing it kind of thing. Right.
00:33:51
Speaker
Um, and that's just a narrative in our sport. That's pretty yeah prevalent. Well, I mean, think also these, it was more, more of a thing. I feel like back then too. Um, I mean, obviously, you know, it's parody the depth, you know, the word parody,
00:34:06
Speaker
ah Depending on how you define it. Obviously, there's not parity at the top of this right between you know Penn State and then Okie State and Iowa. But like as we've seen now, i do think... I mean, the Big Ten has taken a step back...
00:34:23
Speaker
um big things like the Big 12, the ACC, so many these other conferences in these other schools are, people are starting to realize like you can, you actually can win anywhere. And I think maybe back then that platitude of you can win anywhere, maybe it was like just that, a platitude.
00:34:43
Speaker
um And I don't know whether it's things like the RTCs or just the distribution of talent, and like maybe better coaches are going to different places or they're getting more support from their at admin than they used to.
00:35:01
Speaker
But it does seem to be the case nowadays that like you actually can, you, you can be, you can go where you need to, you can go anywhere. You can win anywhere. I mean, if anyone is showing that, I mean, they made a little rock like five years ago and they're, they're at the level they're at. I mean, there are so many places now.
00:35:20
Speaker
There are, Like I used to be following wrestling, right? You'd have ah Edinburgh, right? It's a very good example of this. Like you'd have a school like Edinburgh that would be punching way above their weight. They got Tim Flynn. They were, you know, placed third that one year.
00:35:35
Speaker
and you're like, wow, this is incredible. And then Tim Flynn leaves. He goes to West Virginia. And it used to be you would see something like that happen. You would see, okay, the coach at this up and coming program ah has left to go to somewhere else. And you go, oh okay.
00:35:52
Speaker
That's cool, but now that means that the program he left, well, it's going to stay the same because that program he left is going to take a huge step back. The program he goes to is going to take a huge step up, and everything's going to remain the same.
00:36:06
Speaker
We're not going to get like two now we have two good programs that are on the lower end of things, right? But, you know, you see, it's not really like that anymore, right?
00:36:16
Speaker
Rob Cole left Stanford. He went to, you know, and obviously Jason Borelli was doing a great job before, but like Rob Cole left standard. He's at UNC, right? I think UNC is probably going to become a lot better than they've been.
00:36:30
Speaker
And we got Ayers at Stanford and the level is only getting better. ah Dresser left Virginia Tech. Iowa State's level is shooting up and Tony Roby has Virginia Tech also performing great.
00:36:43
Speaker
So I think nowadays, maybe, you know, this would look different nowadays. Who knows? Maybe he would just go to Drexel.
00:36:51
Speaker
I mean, poor Drexel, right? Like, I feel like between him and DeSanto, like you see these like Drexel, like ah pulling in some some or trying to pull in some big names and, you know, just not not allowing to work it out for him.
00:37:03
Speaker
And then we get a scene where he is, i guess he has a part time job cleaning private jets. Yeah. so the So the funny thing about this, like it didn't, you know, you watch it and he's cleaning the airplanes and you're kind of like.
00:37:17
Speaker
I didn't really know what was going on with this, if that was like a part you know, like a commercial airport or like a private, and there's private airports. Right. And then there's, i didn't know if that was just the local airport people are flying in.
00:37:31
Speaker
Funny thing is, yeah. my So my girlfriend went to ASU as we're leaving. She's like, Oh, it's so fun that they put in so much about the plane town and how their whole economy is planes. And I was like, it is know it was funny. She's like telling me this. And I'm like, Oh, is that is that the case? She's like, yeah. Like that town has a private airfield where like rich people ah fly in, they have their jets, they park their jets there.
00:37:57
Speaker
but they Rich people have private jets and they're flying them around. And also I think people fly their own planes there and they park them there. But basically that town, like most of the economy of that town is that airfield.
00:38:11
Speaker
My goodness. So it's it is kind of funny. I just kind of thought it was like, all right, I guess he worked on planes. And it's like, no, he grew up there and there's a very big part of all of their lives in that town.
00:38:24
Speaker
Tempe's got diversify their industry. Yeah. So that was was funny to know to to hear about that. that's like ah That's a big deal to them is that the airfield. Okay. Okay. um So they and then i I guess at this point. So, yeah, he's he's he's got his job. He's got his buddy at his job. He's supportive of him, um who also tells him, hey, how come you're not going to take a free education?
00:38:49
Speaker
And Anthony doesn't really have a good answer. um It's just like got go, Iowa. um But he takes a visit to ASU um and he's actually got a his mom has to, you know, kind of sacrifice a little bit to make sure he can go.
00:39:03
Speaker
um Because she's trying to pick up a shift at Target and someone's got to watch the kids. So she makes it happen for him as ah so many mothers do. um and she sports him And she supports him despite it being you know really tough for her.
00:39:18
Speaker
Um, and, uh, and I thought it was really funny. Cause like when they're, this scene is happening and she's like, I'm going to work. And he's like, I gotta go to ASU. I'm going to talk to the coach. And she's like, oh okay, I'll make this happen. And the guy across the street, was like, yo, uh, and he's like, yo, know Anthony, congratulations. He's like all fired up for him. and mom And his mom's like, don't talk to Anthony across the street.
00:39:38
Speaker
I don't like him. I don't like the type of boy that Manny is. And it seems like Manny's just a supportive guy. He's just like, good job, Anthony. And like, we never see Manny again. Manny's never seen in the movie again. That, that, that scene means nothing.
00:39:52
Speaker
Um, but I, I just weird that she was not happy with, uh, with Manny, the, the guy that's just happy for Anthony across the street. Yeah. This is where some of the, you know, you have some of the, like, we get into the actual filmmaking, you know, the movie, like, uh,
00:40:05
Speaker
the quality of the film i feel like what was intended there was oh you know you could go down a path where choices your your choices you could be you know in crime you could be end up in one of the guys at the correction you could be in the correctional facility you could go to prison right if you don't make the correct choices because you know and obviously like class is a big thing in this right they are they're struggling like you know they need money uh this isn't a story like he's not they're not doing it's not easy for them right i just i never feel like anthony is other than the drexel thing like i never feel like anthony is on the cusp of making a bad choice you know what mean though because that's the thing it's like we we with the theme being about choices and like he's gonna have to you know think about what he does it's always like
00:40:55
Speaker
um it's kind of don't don't hang out with Manny. It's like, okay, well, Anthony or anthony was never going to hang out with Manny. like yeah yeah like Anthony's like doing the right thing 100% of the time, all the time, you know like to to be a good person and to to work hard. like He's always doing these things.
00:41:12
Speaker
So it's like, where does the worry about what choice he's going to make? like He's not going to go down a bad path. like That's not the character that we're watching, right? Yeah, I think you know, when you're making ah ah film, I don't know if we want to get into this at the end or we can start into it now, but like, right. You're making a biopic. You have to have, they can be tough.
00:41:32
Speaker
Right. And I think maybe some of the best ones are things like, you know, people love the social network. Right. Because in some ways, like it plays its plays kind of fast and loose with things and, you know, it's filmed, it's just a regular movie And here's the story that happened, right?
00:41:50
Speaker
yeah Or it's not about, oh, there are these points in this guy's life and we have to hit them because they were important to him, but they're maybe not the best you know to create this movie or to like drive home a thesis or to make an exciting movie.
00:42:09
Speaker
And it's there are times in this where it feels like, I think anytime you come into ah biopic, you're kind of wondering, all right, are we going to, this going to kind of transcend?
00:42:20
Speaker
Okay, we have to tell you what is happening in this guy's life, and here is is a story about the things that did happen, and ultimately it ended up being fairly interesting. or is it is it goingnna Or is it going to transcend that and be, ah you know, like a really watchable movie in its own right that could have just been a story that was, you know, written fictionally, right? Yeah.
00:42:41
Speaker
And it never really transcends it. It's sort of like, okay, we should kind of say that, hey, Anthony could have, things could have gone worse, right? He's in a, from an economically depressed area.
00:42:52
Speaker
It could have been worse, but you know, we know Anthony at this point, like we see him and and his character ah and not to say that like, but he's very clearly throughout this.
00:43:05
Speaker
ah He's just clearly way too focused to for that ever to be a worry, right? Because he's an incredible person. The dude is locked in. He's locked in.
Robles' College Decision Dilemma
00:43:15
Speaker
he is genuinely, like, an incredible person, which is why they made the movie, but which is why I think maybe the theme about that, uh, it just didn't even really need to be in there at all. I think there was probably, there's a, I think the best scene in the movie is a speech that he gives, and I think it is, like, kind of far and away the best part of the movie.
00:43:37
Speaker
Uh, And he he gives a speech later. And I do think, you know, the thesis of that speech gets mostly communicated, but it does kind of take some turns and there are just some like, all right, we got to do this thing. We got to do this thing.
00:43:52
Speaker
ah It doesn't, it's not completely locked in that. you know, that idea, which i yeah we can get, we can get to it later when it comes up. Well, speaking of, we got to do this thing. We got to talk about his, uh, meet meeting Sean Charles, coach Sean Charles. He goes to on his ASU visit, uh, barely a visit. Cause he's just, you know, he lives down the street.
00:44:12
Speaker
Um, meet coach Charles, coach Charles tells him a little parable about the warrior monks. You gotta have a little parable. He got, he he had, he had a couple of parables. Yeah. Um, be curious if that was type of guy that Sean was.
00:44:26
Speaker
uh, act like i say he was like, he's gone, but yeah maybe he is, you know? Well, no, you're saying like, he might've used to have been a parables guy. Now he's like, Oh, I find these trite. I don't, I'm not into parables anymore.
00:44:38
Speaker
Um, uh, there's a, and, and the Cheadle portrays him as like very direct, right? He says, I never lied to my wrestlers. Um, and one thing I'll say that was very interesting is we got two different coaches in Anthony's life in this, you know, we got Sean Charles, um, and then we got his high school coach.
00:44:56
Speaker
And I like that both of them are very different types of coaches. True. Like Sean Charles, very much a college coach, right? Like there's no bullshit. It's a business. You are an employee. Totally. but Yeah, it's business. I work not hard for you. You work hard for me. We make stuff happen, you know?
00:45:10
Speaker
um And his coach is like, I don't know. It's just very interesting where Sean Charles was like, they're very different mentors, I would say. yeah Right. um they're And they're just they're both good. Like it was both good mentorship, but they were just coming from different places where like his high school coach was like trying to get Anthony to like reason through stuff, you know, and like talk about like what is motivating you. Right.
00:45:33
Speaker
And his coach, it's much more just like. you got to rise to it or not, you know, maybe you do, maybe you don't. Um, yeah, I thought that was interesting that we just kind of got to see two different styles of coaching. Um, and, uh, uh, oh, and then I also think it's funny. He like says, you know, Hey, you can walk on and try to make the team.
00:45:51
Speaker
Um, and he tells Charles, Oh, I've got this full ride to Drexel. And Charles like, um, do that. You should do that. You should do the full ride scholarship to Drexel.
00:46:04
Speaker
But yeah, so, uh, ah He meets Sean Charles, and I guess this is where... i guess I really also wanted something where I wanted to hear Anthony talk about Sean Charles specifically, or talk about either of his coaches.
00:46:17
Speaker
um Like, maybe in the next scene, because he comes back home they're having dinner, it would have been cool to get someone's like, oh, what it was it like to go talk to him? And, like, I wanted to hear, like, his perception of Coach Charles, right? I feel like one thing that we don't get in this movie that much is, I actually don't feel like I get to know Anthony's perspective on things that much. Yeah. like ah like it's very limited in what his perspective is right. In certain, in terms of a lot of things, right. We understand how he feels about his family.
00:46:43
Speaker
We understand how he feels about wrestling. um But like, We don't really get to see him be friends with people. Like he's friends with the guy he works with and he kind of has like, hey, what's up to like a guy on his team that never gets named, you know?
00:46:57
Speaker
So like we don't see these relationships developed for Anthony very much. Like what draws him to the team? What makes him feel a part of the team? We don't actually get that much of it. There's a lot of things that's just showing like Like he's, he wants to be part of the team and he works to be part of the team and they accept him as part of the team, but there's just not a lot of tension there yeah in terms of what his place on the team is. Right. Everyone just kind of accepts him right away. Like there is nobody like being a dick to him about it. Right.
00:47:23
Speaker
Um, other than like, you know, we'll have the scenes of like some girls in the stands going like, why does he only have one leg? You know? Um, Yeah, which was like, I feel like, I don't know, that that felt like a little bit of a silly scene, but but whatever.
00:47:37
Speaker
um But yeah, I like that we saw the two different coaches. And yeah, Sean Charles says, hey, you need to go there. But as we all know, ah he ends up walking on at ASU.
00:47:49
Speaker
um And then we have the scene where he's home. And this is actually where we get the push of the theme around choices, right? His stepdad's talking about choices a lot. Um, and I, and there's also a point where the, where his kit, one of the kids goes, so no one's in prison by mistake.
00:48:07
Speaker
He's like, Nope, everyone's right where they're supposed to be. They made bad choices and they're in prison now. Um, and, uh, you know, this also, it also shows his dad like writing Anthony again, like trying to act like he's not doing enough because he didn't babysit the kids because he didn't like make dinner because he was at ASU. Right.
00:48:27
Speaker
Um, And Anthony like mentions like, oh yeah, well, mom was up at 2 cooking dinner. Like why, you know, like what you expect that to be happening? Like, like why is that happening to begin with?
00:48:39
Speaker
You know, dad, right? oh And he just rides him and he talks a lot about, oh, he, yeah he makes the, he so talks about like rules are there to protect us and I keep people safe. Like that's what I do. I keep people safe and like I put down the rules, right?
00:48:55
Speaker
So more of just like how he's got, to have the machismo going on in this family. Yeah. Yeah. yeah He's constantly asserting dominance, right? He's always asserting dominance to hide his insecurities.
00:49:08
Speaker
Um, and I think they just kind of like hit that multiple times. Um, and in the, in the movie, I wonder if it was like overkill, how many times that they're just showing him, like he's, he's gotta show Anthony that he's inferior to him, I guess.
00:49:24
Speaker
Um, but it's like, I kind of understood the character of quickly. And we have like one too many scenes where it's like, oh, he's just kind of around and he sucks. And it's like, damn, this guy. Yeah. Like, I agree. This guy really sucks. Like, yeah, yeah, i agree. He sucks. Right. Sure. Yeah.
00:49:39
Speaker
Um, and yeah, yeah, he's, you know, he's later on, he goes to work with his buddy, the plane. He tells him me to go to Drexel. Right. Um, Uh, and he's like, Oh gee, I wonder what you should do. You should stay here and walk onto a team that doesn't want you, or you can attend a school. oh oh no. Yeah. He says, ah you're going to stay here and walk on a team that doesn't want you on a school that you can't afford.
00:50:02
Speaker
um and he's like, well, yeah, I'm going to need more hours then. Right. Um, and yeah, I'd be very curious to hear from Anthony or read the book maybe, um, to know just how many hours he was putting in, um, cleaning these things. Cause again, I worked part time while I was wrestling too, but um It'd be hard to get more hours than I was and still try to be a successful wrestler. Like that takes a lot of time. and Yeah, it's a lot. Like how this was working for him. Yeah.
00:50:27
Speaker
yeah sweet to Yeah. Yeah.
Balancing Life and Wrestling
00:50:29
Speaker
Weight between, you know, between like your weight room workouts, between practice and, you know, you expect you have to imagine Anthony's doing, you know, more than just coming in two hours and doing his time. You have to expect he's probably doing more.
00:50:43
Speaker
ah You know, the school part is it's probably not that hard at that point. So yeah we don't have to forget about that. But like you do have to wonder how much. Yeah.
00:50:54
Speaker
How much work he realistically could have been doing. Yeah, because I feel like, you know, the man has a disability and there's actually very little of the film that focuses on accessibility.
00:51:07
Speaker
Right. And a big part of that is like Anthony rises above the challenges of his disability. Right. But like I want to see like, you know, what are the like we understand like why it's it you know, it creates problems when it comes to wrestling or like, you know, working out and like joining the team for like runs and things like that. Right.
00:51:25
Speaker
But when it comes to like, hey, just trying to like get around school. or or driving, like just there's all these different things that like, I really wanted to see more of like, what are the challenges, the unique challenges that Anthony faces, right, to really fully flesh out like the sort of triumph that he is going through, right?
00:51:44
Speaker
And if they're not doing that, and they really want the message to be like, no, treat Anthony the same. um Anthony shouldn't be um ah kind of like lionize that much right we want Anthony like a big another big thing was like no treat me the same right like yeah he is ah working out with guys right um so yeah i think a lot of that stuff kind of conflicts where it's like you're you you want to have your cake and eat it too in terms of like how I should feel about a triumphant disability story where you're not necessarily showing me what he's triumphing over outside of like
00:52:21
Speaker
You know, the wrestling mat and and personal issues. And these are issues that literally anyone could have had, like like the fact that he is missing a leg doesn't say much about how he handles the the the home life stuff. Right.
00:52:40
Speaker
I just wanted to see a little bit more where it was focused around like what it is that, that makes this more difficult for Anthony. Like, why is it inspiring other than just the things you assume about him because of his missing leg?
00:52:53
Speaker
Yeah. I think the, the parts that, they are done fairly well in terms like they do go into I think a lot of like why it's so difficult to wrestle with one leg yeah like genuinely like why is it so hard to do that and they go into it a lot right I mean obviously things like I mean it's and these are some of my favorite parts because they're also some of the like most uh wrestling specific parts too right but yeah it is incredibly badass watching him
00:53:24
Speaker
ah do a sprint workout on crutches with one leg running the same speed as his teammates. Yeah. And then putting a 45 pound, figuring out a way to put like hoist a 45 pound weight on himself while using both his hands to do the crutches. Right.
00:53:41
Speaker
It's pretty baller watching him, you know, ah get up this mountain, like actually doing this like mountain workout, falling all the time, probably. I mean, one thing I've always wondered is I mean like, you know, like I have bad knees, right?
00:53:58
Speaker
And I have, I have two legs. They're distributed where they got to be. i have two of them and my knees suck. And if I, if I ever get a limp in like one of my feet, you know, and I overcorrect the other one that starts to get a horrible, my knees start hurting so bad. I'm like,
00:54:16
Speaker
How much, like, what was he doing to keep that thing healthy? He's got to have... had That one leg must have been ah incredibly strong, just in terms of like things like hips and stabilizer muscles, because, yeah, doing a sprint workout like that is put your and running up a mountain like that, you must be putting so much...
00:54:42
Speaker
weight on that single joint i mean just things like some of those things where they have them they come in he's there like an hour early before sunrise and he's starting to do this workout up this mountain you know and he's he's making it there with the team he's following all the time and it's you know some of those things are like those ones are uh those are pretty effective scenes where they like they show the struggle and they show that like ah Yeah, probably any normal human being is not accomplishing this.
00:55:13
Speaker
Yeah, you bring up his leg and it's like, yeah, I'm very curious to know how he kept it healthy. Right. And a big part of it probably is like he he only had one leg since forever. Right. So a lot of the development of that leg was probably, um you know.
00:55:27
Speaker
already happening long before he ever started wrestling you see how flexible his knee is too and his hip flexibility like he like it was both flexibility and strength with him right yeah um so it is curious it's like yeah i want to know a little bit more about like you know what'd you do when you tweak that knee like you know how would you deal that deal with that do you had different strategies i would i would have been very curious for that i know that wouldn't have fit into this movie, you know, that's more like, certainly. Yeah. This is, yeah it of yeah but it's something I've like, I have just always wondered this because i mean, I under, like, I understand he's got humongous arms.
00:56:05
Speaker
He's got incredible grip strength. I get that. I understand how a person does that, but it is genuinely, incredibly impressive and like a new thing, ae to me. I'm like, wow. Like that's the, I think the part that is,
00:56:21
Speaker
one of the most impressive and one of the most interesting things to me, you know, like besides just wrestling style. Yeah. Just keeping that knee healthy, putting so much weight on it. And like, it must've been a tall task. And i mean, in who knows, maybe like he, maybe it really hurt. Maybe went, maybe it, yeah. Maybe it hurts him every day. Yeah.
00:56:43
Speaker
you know And you like, and you wouldn't know, right. Because of, uh the kind of guy he is but yeah that's that's one that i've always been interesting so i do i think those scenes in particular are like very effective yeah those are very effective scenes they are and and because it is so like centered around the wrestling part right um or and you go into uh you know because he's he has he's a walk-on right and They show him struggling a lot, especially where he's he's getting you double unders. They're picking him up and it's like you're done. Yeah.
00:57:15
Speaker
At that point, you're done. Yeah. yeah He just foot sweeps him. Right. Just foot sweeps all the time. And he's talking. He's talking to his coach. Right. Who's I forget that character actor's name, but obviously he's one of our favorites. He's great casting. You see him and you're like, obviously, of course, like it's got to be him. But um oh, Don Cheadle.
00:57:31
Speaker
No, his high school coach. Oh, ah yes, that was. Why can't I think of his name? i will tell you his name. Why? Not not Laura.
00:57:41
Speaker
What is his last name? Yes, that's right. It's it's something like that. But um yeah, and he's just like, look, it's this is called Michael Pena. Michael Pena. Yes. Yeah. Michael Pena is probably i don't know maybe my favorite performance of this movie.
00:57:54
Speaker
Yeah, he's good. He's always my favorite performance of a lot of movies that he's in. He's he's great. But, uh, well, i telling him, vote you can't like What are you going to expect them to do? Like not kick out your leg. Like it's wrestling. Like it's not about they're trying to win. It's your job to keep the match where you need it to be.
00:58:13
Speaker
well, and before this freshman season even starts, there's like the point where he comes home and there's a hole in the wall. um because his stepdad ah apparently got angry, um and has left. And it was, it felt very sudden.
00:58:27
Speaker
Like, like, it he It was like, oh, yeah, this guy is kind of a dick to his to his stepkid. But then he can't comes home and he's just gone. It's like, oh, OK, that was very sudden. I didn't see that coming.
00:58:38
Speaker
I don't have a ton of explanation outside of like, i I guess, because he's just a dick and that's that's all there is to it. um But yeah, so stepdad is a seemingly out of the picture at that point when he starts wrestling, at least according to this timeline. Right.
00:58:54
Speaker
um But he starts, he's 125 pounder. um There's a bunch of 125 pounders, right? He's in a he's in ah a battle. um By the way, when they point out like, oh, and there's the other guys in your weight class. And he looks over, there's like four of them.
00:59:07
Speaker
They all look like they weigh 160. Yeah, they look humongous. They look huge. um did You guys huge. Did your team in college, did you have enough people on your team to have to do cuts?
00:59:21
Speaker
Um, we, you know, when I started, right, like I, I had, I was part of like the largest recruiting class, um, that I think that they had had, you know, it's funny, of the recruiting class. I went there. Right. But, um, you know, I, I, I remember, I think the cuts were, it was, I forget the, the team size or something like 30 or 35. Right. And, and we had like 10 more than that. We had a lot more than that when we started that season,
00:59:48
Speaker
And, you know, people would ask, like, oh, hey, like, what's going on with that? And the coach would always just, like, just don't even worry about it. He would just always say, don't worry about it, right? Oh, they mean oh they were just there, but not, like, on the roster.
01:00:00
Speaker
No, no, He was like, when we get to the point in the the season where there have to be cuts, there can only be 35 humans. Okay, okay. That's what I thought, yeah. And, we you know, we had, like, 40-something people, and people are asking, like, you know, freshmen especially, right They're like, so what's going on with that? And he's just it.
01:00:17
Speaker
every he would just say, don't worry about it. And you know me, I'm, I'm a walk on. I'm like, yeah, of course I'm worried. What do you mean? Don't worry about it. I'm worrying about it. But, um, and this is just something with that recruiting class of kids probably. And I, you know, that, uh, Stevens now is a pretty, uh, pretty good team. I think they're getting recruiting classes or, uh, kind a different makeup now, right? They're probably getting smaller recruiting classes with the kids that they want. But, uh,
01:00:43
Speaker
At that point, there was like 15 guys. By the time there was cuts, there was like four of us. but Like 11 kids had either been kicked off the team for reasons outside of wrestling or had just quit.
01:00:56
Speaker
So we ended up very easily making under the roster limit. Yeah, similar for us. Like we probably had about 10 too many guys ah in the room before the roster cuts were coming around.
01:01:09
Speaker
um But yeah, by the time they actually had to make the cuts... they only had to cut like three or four people yeah took care of itself yeah yeah it took care of itself um but yeah i was just curious because like when he said like oh there's like 50 people in this room i was like oh lucky that's a lot of guys to just walk on but all right lot of dudes uh but i think the next theme is obviously so as we get in um right his stepdad uh loses his job right things get even start to just continue to get worse and worse like he's gone like he you know he comes back at some point he doesn't have a job mom mom gets a big old tattoo big old tattoo speaking of choices and he's you know we learn that he's not actually working at his job he's not making the mortgage payments and then sort of the next big conflict the movie gets it into is ah paying the mortgage and like the housing crisis yes that's kind of the next thing and that's where we kind of get into like
01:02:09
Speaker
uh well and even before they find that out the like he has this whole wrestle off right yeah like he has this whole wrestle off the family goes to watch like the like his dad his stepdad like wants him to feel like shit at the wrestle off right and he does so he goes to yeah um and and he's like and the dad's doing the whole shit like oh we we're all big old happy family you know because he comes back um he finds out the dad got fired because he answers the phone they say uh he needs to come get his shit he's fired you know Um, but afterwards, yeah, like he, uh, like what's he say to Anthony? He's like, oh yeah, you got flexed on like a, like a woman on the bottom.
01:02:46
Speaker
Right. Uh, afterwards. Yeah. Like gross. Right. Yeah. Um, tells him he's got to go get a job cause he lost his rest off. Um, but Charles keeps him anyway and bumps the guy up to one 33, um, comes home mo tell his mom she's got bruises on him. Right.
01:03:03
Speaker
Um, and the sophomore year starts, right. And that's when they find out the wrestling program is cut. Right. And the timeline on this is a little bit wrong. um He never missed a season. OK, I was I was wondering this. um Yeah. think oh Yeah. they They do cut the program, but it's basically in the offseason and then it comes back before.
01:03:26
Speaker
Before the season. OK, yeah, because the way they depict it is that everybody at ASU just did not wrestle for one entire season. Right. Which to me, I was like, did I was like, wow, did that happen? Like, i feel like all of those most pretty much everybody would have transferred at that point if yeah if there wasn't going to be a season. It's different when it's.
01:03:46
Speaker
The program is cut, right? Stanford situation. You have one more year. Guys wrestle out that year all the time. But like it was very strange to have like they stayed. That's and that's crazy to me.
01:03:57
Speaker
But OK, so that did not happen. then So, yeah, then junior year comes around. Wrestling program is going to come back, I guess. um But we don't have that yet. We do get to like what you're saying, like they find out the the mortgage is six months behind. Right.
01:04:10
Speaker
Guy comes to the door. He's got he's got their their mortgage in his hand. um to show them and the notice as well. And his mother immediately rips up these documents, which she needs. She needs those documents. She should not have ripped up those documents.
01:04:23
Speaker
She needed those. um And she's like, I'm going to call the police. And I'm like, do not call the police in this situation. They will come for you instead. Yeah. they you're They're not on a...
01:04:35
Speaker
They're not usually on the side of the person being evicted, actually. Yeah. Yeah. their whole job but yeah and ah And like he he like and he tells his mom, like, you have to find a way out of this. He says that to her.
01:04:46
Speaker
And it's kind of not clear if he's talking about, like, just the relationship um or the relationship and the mortgage. I think it's it's definitely it definitely means both. I think he means more so the relationship. Yeah. Yeah.
01:04:58
Speaker
He's like, you can you can't depend on this guy anymore. Like, you need to figure out a way to live your life, have the house. be financially stable without him all at all yeah yeah well and the way she responds to that she starts selling her blood um all over the place um which unfortunately to admit i actually did that when i was wrestling um i would sell i would sell my plasma because i was a walk-on with no money you're selling to brian johnson You know what? He might have all my plasma. Some young wrestler. Man's got my plasma.
01:05:29
Speaker
um But yeah, i did that. You know, they pay you like 500 bucks every month for it. So it worked out. um But yeah, so they do that. And so she is like, OK, I got to I've got I've got to fix this. Right. I've got to ah start.
01:05:44
Speaker
taking care of this mortgage thing and she just starts making very the way they edit this with like a montage it's like she's going through this arduous process but she's just kind of making phone calls and she's like asking like oh can i get a copy of my mortgage like lady you ripped that up you ripped that up when he handed it to you And it's kind of like – I don't own a house, but like when she's on the phone like, hello, can I get a copy of my mortgage? They do edit these things as if she is kind of making these like savvy moves to sort of like, oh, she's going to get back at them and like she's kind of finding out information that's like not necessarily supposed to be known like –
01:06:23
Speaker
she's She's doing a deep dive into this stuff. And yeah, and and then she gets on the phone. She's like, hello, can you give me a copy of my mortgage? It's like, I would have um I assume if you have a mortgage, it can't be that hard to get a copy of it.
01:06:35
Speaker
That seems like something you would, you would be able to achieve. Yes, they they they dramatize that a little bit too much when it's like the process you're portraying is like a two-hour process on a Saturday afternoon kind of thing, you know.
01:06:48
Speaker
But that's okay. um But he goes to school and, hey, the program magically back. The alumni pledged funding. um Things just kind of work out. ah You know, they didn't show, like, Anthony, like, helping with fundraising or do or, like, anything really happening other than just, like, alumni got together and got money. It's fixed.
01:07:07
Speaker
Yeah. And very suddenly – um But it means there's going to be less money, so there's go be less wrestlers. And we find out that the team is not going to come back unless they bring Anthony back and they make sure that he has a full ride scholarship.
01:07:20
Speaker
And they should, since he's an All-American. um uh and and oh and they say every scholarship athlete voted and he has the two cups right yeah and he goes to dump out how much to dump out to show that all of them voted for him to stay and the chinkling of the ah the the uh the coins falling out of that it's like are there a thousand scholar athletes at the school because they dumped out a ton of a ton of a lot more than 9.9 yeah yeah and and proud And if they had less money, they probably had like, what, less than five full rides, i would guess. Yeah, it'd be like five coins.
01:07:58
Speaker
Yeah, it made no sense. No one's got that many full rides. do wonder. That's one that like, you know, we'd kind of would like to read the book and figure out what the hell is going on there. Because um from what I mean, obviously, he took a red shirt year, right?
01:08:12
Speaker
Yeah. ah But he he was successful. His freshman year as a wrestler, he was pretty successful right i know he placed he placed um he was seventh he was round of 12 and then he was first right um i forget his first year his first year was like 25 and 11 or something like that um so he was never a bad wrestler he always had it was like he went 25 and 11 then 28 and and and then and then Yeah.
01:08:43
Speaker
So he always had good years, you know, he's never a bad wrestler. You know, there is maybe yeah after his red shirt year or something, this, this story did actually happen because yeah, I could imagine you after the red shirt, he he hadn't proved himself, but it is kind of funny in hindsight. Cause it wasn't that he was a, you know, boom, everything, put it together, never placed.
01:09:02
Speaker
Boom. Now he's a number one. Like, no, he was, he was pretty successful for a fairly, fairly long time. Yeah.
Predatory Lending and Community Impact
01:09:10
Speaker
And then while this is going on, Um, mom learns, learns how to read her mail and, uh, learns about predatory lending.
01:09:17
Speaker
um and she's learning about this actually a little, a couple of years too early, in terms of the timeline of when, of when, uh, the government started like doing a better job of cracking down on predatory lending.
01:09:29
Speaker
Um, so the stuff that happens in the film, I'm guessing probably happened afterwards. yeah Um, just the timing is a little bit weird. Um, but for anybody that doesn't freaking know, cause we're going to talk about predatory lending here for just a second.
01:09:42
Speaker
um So if you don't know, there are any young people listening, you need to know about predatory lending. um they were and And the movie just kind of skims over it when it could have been really important context because predatory lending is often ah targeted at minority communities, at women, anybody that has been historically not able to get loans very well.
01:10:08
Speaker
um So you have organizations like ACORN or you know ACLU or the and i or you know like ah you know United for Fair Economy, whoever they're called, or HUD, right? yeah And so now they're saying predatory lendings are disproportionately made like to poor minority communities.
01:10:24
Speaker
And they they're preyed upon. These neighborhoods get preyed upon by banks, essentially, right? um And so, you know, hey, that that that was like this whole other thing in the story that just like It's kind of thrown in there, I feel like. We don't really, like, talk about predatory lending.
01:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, there's kind of this, like, yeah, this little montage of, you know, because there's, they kind of cut it together. Like, Anthony's working out, and then she is making phone calls about the predatory lending, right?
01:10:51
Speaker
And they're they're kind of, like, cut together at the same time. And then... Yeah, she goes to, you know, she hangs out with the, she sees the mortgage guy that's trying to evict them, and she's like, well, actually, boom, I got your ass. you're You've been predatory lending, and, you know, you're you're going to face the consequences unless you let me keep my house and not pay the mortgage.
01:11:12
Speaker
Or, you know, whatever the the situation was. Yes, I wish it worked out. that way for so many other people the way this movie portrays it but uh but hey he's he's uh he's gonna be an all-american this year right um first of all they finally get him an arm bike uh because it was it was painful watching him run up a mountain you know where they didn't have a bunch of mountains they make you run up drexel very flat area drexel very flat area that anthony could have avoided dumb ass mountains um that would have been good
01:11:44
Speaker
ah But we also get introduced to Matt McDonough played by Johnny DeJulius.
Setting Goals and Facing Defeats
01:11:48
Speaker
um and And there's like a full circle again where Anthony has a picture of Johnny DeJulius or Matt McDonough in his locker room rather than having Iowa stuff in there. It's literally Matt McDonough in there is like his goal to beat him.
01:12:00
Speaker
Um, and he, uh, he loses to Matt the first time. I think they portrayed it in the movie as though it was in the finals. Yes, they do. They portrayed as if he makes the finals. That's what I thought. Cause it, yeah.
01:12:11
Speaker
Cause which is not the case in real life. It was like in a, uh, was it in the quarters that he lost to McDonough or something like that, that year? i can't remember. what Or the semis. It certainly, it would have had to be the quarters because he got seventh, right? So he couldn't have been semis. Yeah. Yeah.
01:12:27
Speaker
um but yeah so uh he loses to matt um and honestly i don't know i mean some they do these things for their reasons and yeah i don't want to speculate too much like as a uh psycho who is way more into this stuff than most people right even most people who wrestled obviously as a spectator you know you can't expect everything to be like this like maybe this did work better for other people but you know to me i kind of feel like if they show him getting like destroyed by Matt McDonough in the first round of the tournament, I almost feel like that would have shown he has this mountain to climb even more because it would have been, it's, they they kind of show it like, oh, these guys are equals and like, boom, they're right there. They're on each other. And then Matt McDonough sticks them and you know, it is what it is.
01:13:13
Speaker
I think there maybe would have been thematically better to show him losing in the quarters or yeah wherever they want it to be. Like you just say like, This is not this is early in the tournament. They could have maybe shown it edited is as oh, this is his first match.
01:13:27
Speaker
And Matt McDonough isn't even like thinking about him. It's just some guy. Right. He's not even he's just like, yeah, he doesn't even consider Anthony on his level. That might have worked better from that perspective, you know.
01:13:41
Speaker
Well, especially since, like, the lowest moment we've gotten of Anthony so far is just when he lost the wrestle-off. Yeah. That's, like, where we've seen Anthony at his lowest at this point. Yeah, and see the finals enormous. It's an enormous accomplishment. If that had been true, would have been like, god damn, dude, that's incredible already. Like, you would already, if getting to the finals...
01:14:03
Speaker
he would have been a national story already. So, well, and, and that's a critique I have. The movie is like, things just kind of work out in the movie.
Importance of Sports Movies
01:14:11
Speaker
Like mom gets it figured out.
01:14:13
Speaker
The, the, the school, they come back and they let the wrestling team happen. Uh, he gets a scholarship. I mean, that, that's not one that just kind of works out. He works hard for that. Um, But ah he – well, here's here's what I'm here's i'm saying. Like i remember he's talking to his coach afterwards after he loses Matt McDonough. The coach is just trying to cheer him up and you know why you do this, right?
01:14:35
Speaker
And he's talking with him about what it means to win the championship, specifically to win. Yes, this is I think the best scene in the And he says like for the rest of my life, everyone will feel sorry for me.
01:14:48
Speaker
If i win – But if I win the national championship, my leg won't be the only thing people notice about me. You know, ahll ill i'll be defined and about I'll be defined more than that, right? Yeah, and and he specifically says, if i if I get anything but first, I will be, like, a guy with one leg who did really well, right?
01:15:08
Speaker
I'll be like, oh, wow, like that's that's great that you did that. You know, you were the guy with one leg who got second. Now, that's so impressive. Like, we're so proud of you, right? And and and then he says...
01:15:19
Speaker
if I am a champion, they're going to remember me as I'll be remembered as a champion. Yeah. I won't be the guy with one leg. I will be the NCAA champion. And I think it's, I mean, it's a, I think it's a great scene. I think it's the best scene in the movie. Right.
01:15:33
Speaker
And, and this is another rare thing where like sports movies can be sort of defined by a lot of things and they can be defined by like cheesy bad speeches. They can be defined by like moments that they show in the sports that are really great or,
01:15:48
Speaker
think can be defined by a lot of things, but like one thing that, you know, people will remember a good sports movie, right, is a, usually it'll be like a speech about what sports is and what sports mean, right? Because sports are this thing where you do not know what, you don't know what they mean. People don't know what they mean. They exist.
01:16:08
Speaker
They're incredibly important. And... they kind of are a thing that everyone kind of has to decide for themselves what they mean. When you make a movie about like a war, yeah there are speeches, but nobody has to make a speech about the, why it is important for like the guy in the movie to save his friend's life in the war movie. They don't have to have a speech about like, why is it important ah when there's like a medical drama to save somebody? They don't need this. Right. Because we all understand these things are important when there's like a spy movie, when there's whatever it is. Right.
01:16:42
Speaker
You don't need this or, but you know, a drama. We understand. We love people. These are relationships that are important. Sports movies kind of win or die by how they can explain why sports are important and what what they actually even are.
01:16:59
Speaker
Well, and the the most successful ones, they don't really explain it. They try to, but they get across the point that you can't really explain it. It's, it's emotion, right? Yeah. Like, uh, like what we did, like vision quest, right? Of course. It's not the six minutes. It's what happens in the six minutes. Right.
01:17:14
Speaker
And you, you can understand that you go like, it is more than sports. Sports are more than, you know, a guy like a Reddit guy going like, Oh, fricking sports ball. Like, Oh, you're paid to throw a ball. It's important to throw a ball around. Apparently. okay Like,
01:17:29
Speaker
I think anyone with any fucking humanity can look at a sport, right, that they've done or watch people, what it means to these people. It's like it's very obvious when you watch how these things affect people's lives and how, especially in wrestling, you see it on their face. You see, like, how hard they want it. It's a good sport to communicate, to use to communicate why sports are important.
01:17:52
Speaker
And it's they're important because they're important to people. Right. And they mean things to people. And I think the speech like ah explains that really well. Right. Yeah. I think that's why like this is probably the most effective part of the movie.
01:18:05
Speaker
And I don't know if like the rest of the movie really is always communicating that thesis or is really like locked in on. I think there's like.
01:18:17
Speaker
There's chaff in this movie. There's things that could be cut. There's things that are just different montages. There's things that are like, oh, yeah, that is what happened in his life. And we're telling the story.
01:18:28
Speaker
ah It's not all in service of communicating like this speech. And I think if it was, I think that would have made it like a really effective movie.
Inspiration from Anthony Robles
01:18:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think it just kind of it never really decided what its real theme was. Or if it did, i didn't feel super communicated with it.
01:18:46
Speaker
But speaking of montages, this is followed by a very generic workout montage. He's using the credit card to pull his sweat off, doing the weight cutting thing. um And I'm glad they got him the arm bite because like imagine trying to cut weight.
01:18:58
Speaker
with one leg just running leg like they are good luck right um and then the stepdad comes back and i was like oh my god i'm so tired of this we don't need this guy anymore yes um stepdad comes back my yeah all the yeah all the siblings are outside he confronts him dad gets arrested you know but yes he just like drops his uh drops his crutches and it's like okay it's it's on right yeah okay finally um
01:19:23
Speaker
I've heard a question before that wrestlers get asked, like, when was the first time you could beat up your dad?
01:19:31
Speaker
And I don't hear that question with other sports very often, but this reminded me of that question. um And ah so his high school coach also comes by later on and drops off all these letters that kids wrote for him, and it's very touching. And yeah that I think that one is ah is a pretty good question.
01:19:49
Speaker
That's also another part that I think works really well in the movie. And I think it does communicate things about like the disability really well. and And like yeah what these things mean to people, right? It's like, it's important because those kids that are writing these letters are like, you know, some of them are like, oh, you make me feel like I could do anything.
01:20:10
Speaker
Right. I think it does. That one also very like communicates why, why is it important that Anthony Robles did this? Yeah. It also contradicts what Anthony says in his speech, though, where he talks about, like, people will only, you know, think of me as a guy with a missing leg or, like you know, but if I'm a champion, people think a champion. It's like, no, like, look at all these kids that are going to view you the same way regardless, you know, like, you are an inspiration to them, yeah right?
01:20:37
Speaker
um But so... We're in senior year at this point. They're they they finish their regular season getting ready to go to NCAAs. Charles is giving them a motivational speech in the locker room.
01:20:48
Speaker
There's a part where he points to one of Anthony's teammates who we haven't met yet. And he says, Corey, learn to read a clock this year. and I was like, what? like Why would you have an inside joke in the movie? Yeah. Like, no one knows what this means. Who's Corey?
01:21:03
Speaker
Why is he dumb? but like We don't know any of this. Like, cut that shit out. But whatever. um And to Anthony, he says, you know, I failed to realize who you were, but I see you now.
01:21:14
Speaker
And Anthony's very touched by that. And I can't help but remember that there was someone who saw who Anthony was much longer ago. And that was the Drexel guy. It's like, why? You didn't have to do this. You could have been somewhere where they were like.
01:21:28
Speaker
we see who you are now, Anthony. Um, but whatever. Okay. Um, mom reads all those letters and tells him like, as, as a mom, you make choices and I chose you.
01:21:41
Speaker
So it's another, they're bringing the choice motif back, but I don't feel like the choice motif is next necessarily like, a through line like it's not making sense like these are all different yeah types of choices wasn't nothing about the choices i don't feel like the movie was about making choices like i don't think it was about that i think it was like almost in no way was it about that maybe for like her and her story right yeah it does function as this kind of weird biopic or like It's mostly about Anthony, but it's a lot about his mom, which I don't think is is not is not wrong at all, right? Their relationship is extremely important, but we see it and in things like that. And then i feel like more of the movie is about
01:22:22
Speaker
um what kind of mentality it takes to achieve with, like, certain disadvantages. I think more of the theme of the movie that is communicated is like,
01:22:35
Speaker
when you have a disadvantage, right? For him, it's a disability, but obviously like it could be a disadvantage for a lot of people in a lot of ways. ah I feel like more of that was communicated about it was like belief, like that is, it is important to have a very stubborn belief in yourself um in order to get past these things. and like people will put you down based off of like maybe things you can't control.
01:23:01
Speaker
And it is important, like, it is incumbent on you to believe in yourself beyond those things. I feel like more so the movie communicates an idea that is, like, something like that and also kind of communicates...
01:23:13
Speaker
I don't know just like how special of a dude Anthony was. Yeah, i mean, that that is the main point. The main point of the of the story is Anthony's special. Yeah, like it's yeah it's, there's not, like a lot of biopics have a conflict where like, oh, this person is extremely flawed.
01:23:29
Speaker
If it's a musician, it's like, this dude was doing drugs all the time, or he was like kind of a piece of shit, or a womanizer. If it's whatever, Anthony's thing is just like, ah, dude, he does not have any flaws. He is just that dude.
01:23:41
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. He was just that dude. He was always that dude.
Portrayal of Robles' Mentality
01:23:44
Speaker
Mentally, he is stronger than like anybody else. He got it done and he was like, it's, I think it's a fine story to communicate for sure. Yeah, exactly. Like, would have loved it. That's all I got him. It's like, that guy is exceptional.
01:23:56
Speaker
Yeah, they they they wanted to do this thing where it's like, that's how I said earlier, where it's like, they want to have their cake and eat it too, where it's like, Anthony is not special. uh anthony's not inspirational because he did everything with one leg like that's not the inspirational part the inspirational part is who he was regardless yeah yeah exactly exactly he did like we see it he did right like up the mountain doing the like that's it's and it was incredible yeah you could have done this exact same movie and like with someone that was just entirely able-bodied and you could have the same sort of oh hello sweet girl
01:24:30
Speaker
We have a sweet girl coming over here. Sweet kitty cat. But that's that's the thing. it's like It almost contradicts itself. And it's like Anthony does not want to be given special treatment because he doesn't want to be treated that way. He wants to be treated the same way. That's why he gets there early to run up the hill. That's why he still grabs the weight when they're running. right That's why he still does the stadiums. right He doesn't take ways out. He's always doing that.
01:24:55
Speaker
But at the same time, he is looking to be seen as special um in a different way, right? And people still view him as special. So I don't know. It's it's it's it's all over the place. And yeah, i mean, he is. Like, any NCAA champion is an extremely special person. yeah Like, it's we all know this. Any of those people, like, are incredible. Yeah.
01:25:15
Speaker
Yeah. i think we should quickly go yeah over the NCAA finals. Let's get them there. Yeah. So senior year NCAA championships, we got Shane Sparks in the movie. um He works his way through the tournament and, you know, his coach gives him one last pep talk. He goes out there, runs the match, wrestles a good match, beats McDonough, goes undefeated that year. Yeah. And then the movie ends with like his old high school wrestling ah room and showing like a little girl coming to join the team right and now it's all of a sudden the now it's all of a sudden doing the like the everybody can wrestle thing yeah which is fine but it was like we weren't really talking about that during the movie um but that's okay um i guess all i would have to talk about now before we give our ratings
01:26:00
Speaker
um is just Anthony as a wrestler. I wanted to talk about, like, I noticed what his weapons are. His, like, all-in-chain is Charella series. His wrist control, he's got super strong grip from constantly gripping his crutches, right?
01:26:13
Speaker
Hits those drags. His sit-through Riranian is, like, really impressive, especially with one leg. He's able to slide into it really well. He's very smart in how he uses his body, right? Like, he understands, like, he he took his his, essentially, what's perceived as a limitation and turn it into a strength in a way that was really impressive.
01:26:33
Speaker
um Something we didn't mention time during the movie where we basically don't see Jerome's face. um It's actually Anthony playing himself. He's a stunt double. And it's very so funny because you see his back is huge.
01:26:47
Speaker
I mean, jell Jerome is – his performance is fine. We'll talk about it in the thing. He just does not look – Like, I mean, Christian Bale gets jacked for his roles, right? Yeah. there are There are plenty of actors who get, like, kind of jacked.
01:27:03
Speaker
Yeah. Jerome is kind of, like, not even... You wouldn't even really describe him as, like, jacked. He was in shape, but he was not... he He was not... He didn't have a freaking turtle shell on his back like Anthony. Yeah. Like, it's... He does... he His arms are... Look nothing like Anthony's. Yeah.
01:27:21
Speaker
Yeah. Um... But, you know, he's and I guess I'm going to just we kind of touched on it. Does he have an unfair advantage? I think I mean, so you watch the McDonough and like again, this is the other thing, right?
01:27:34
Speaker
I think lots of people, probably tons of wrestlers included who were like, oh, he had an unfair advantage, probably because this also goes back to like ah how were people watching wrestling back then?
01:27:46
Speaker
Yeah. they were probably, most lot of people probably have only, most of the people who've seen Anthony wrestle probably only saw him wrestle that one match, right? I'll bet tons of people who did not wrestle only watched his finals match.
01:28:00
Speaker
Tons of people who did wrestle probably only watched that finals match. And even if you look stuff up, you can find the quarters, you can find the semis, and you can find, like, one very random freestyle match and, like, some other thing.
01:28:13
Speaker
And, like, that's it. Like, there's, like, five matches of him of him on, you know, on the internet. Maybe we can get Clip to start posting them. in You know, when this drops, we can get Clip to start so start clipping if he if he has any, right? But...
01:28:29
Speaker
ah there's not that many, right? So you mostly see this finals match. um And I think if you watch his quarters and you watch his semis, what you'll see is that the dude who was walking a tightrope, it is not at all that he had I don't really think he had an unfair advantage because if, you when you watch his wrestling, um, you see like his only path to scoring a takedown is to, uh, get two hands on one wrist, control that wrist, work up and, ah arm drag. Right.
01:29:05
Speaker
Yeah. Usually a short drag. He had, he had like two ways to score from neutral and it was a short drag And, ah yeah, like the Iranian, like the waterfall position.
01:29:15
Speaker
And that was it. And if that's all you have, like, it's so hard to do. And you can see his match versus Ben Carr, his match versus the Oklahoma guy, he he gets to it, like, one time. And it is so hard.
01:29:28
Speaker
It's so difficult when that's the only thing you can do to do a short drag. It's hard to get – it's hard to – like, an arm drag is kind of a low percentage movement in general. When you're doing it from all sorts of different ways. Like it's, it's kind of hard to get that. Arm drags are, arm drags are difficult against wrestlers because they're smart and they know what's going on. I can do arm drags to all kinds of people, but wrestlers, it makes it hard. Right.
01:29:51
Speaker
So he had that and. What you watch is ah in the movie, they have so much of him like doing the ah wrist fighting where he's like grabbing wrists, grabbing wrists, pulling him off. As a wrestler watching that, I remember i was kind of just like, what's going on? Why is there like so much stuff about the wrist?
01:30:06
Speaker
Actually, going back and watching the matches, I was like, he was all over him. It was all over. It was just you had he had to control the wrist. He had to get a drag. That was it. That was the only option he had. And a lot of what you see is that what he had to do is he had to get a takedown or get a turn, right? But guys would not go on bottom. They would not choose bottom. yeah So he had a very narrow path. Johnny Julius, top.
01:30:29
Speaker
I'll take top. Top. ah top Yeah, very narrow ah path to victory, and he walked that tightrope very successfully because he was, you can see, like, he was just extremely focused, and he would usually, like, and but in all of these matches, he would get a lead in the first or second period, and he would, i mean, like, yeah, he would kind of stall out the third period, but, like, what he would do is he would kind of get backed up, out of bounds, you know, might get a stall call, like,
01:31:00
Speaker
And then he would spend a lot of time like finding an opening to get to a leg and just hang out there yeah and kind of whittle away the clock. And when you're wrestling like that, I mean, ah yeah that's a tightrope, dude. Like Carter Strachey doesn't have to go do that. That guy can score. park Parker Kekweisen can go score like 20 different takedowns if he wants to.
01:31:21
Speaker
he He's not that limited, man. So I think if really watch like the lead up. This is why I say, like, when people say he's an unfair advantage, I say, no, he has advantages.
01:31:32
Speaker
because There are ways in which he has an advantage, but there are ways in which he is disadvantaged at the same time. Right? Like, trying to complete a takedown on Anthony, that looked really ridiculously hard to do. It's hard. Right? When you don't have another leg to grab to, like, show that you have secured a takedown. Like, there's fewer ways to show that you have a takedown against Anthony.
01:31:50
Speaker
Right? Yeah. So, but at the same, but like everything you just said in terms of like how he is so limited in his offense, not through it like you know, not even necessarily because of, you know, missing the leg, but just like because of the position he has to be put in.
01:32:04
Speaker
And you talk about walking a tightrope. Anytime you're like wrestling someone better than you, you have to create game plans where you are having to have to wrestle a perfect match to make it happen.
Unique Challenges in Robles' Wrestling
01:32:15
Speaker
And when you're putting Anthony in that position, essentially every single match, because his options are so limited, that's like a different type of wrestling happening on the mat for everybody involved, right?
01:32:26
Speaker
It's just such unique experience to have to wrestle that way or have to wrestle someone in that sense that his his participation in our sport is just kind of fascinating.
01:32:38
Speaker
Yeah, and you watch that match. The thing that that match that's interesting is just that like things went wrong. just kind of went perfectly for him. Right. He, his other, like, I don't think he turned his quarter or semi opponent at all. yeah Like he did not get a turn.
01:32:54
Speaker
Uh, right. Like he was able to like get to his drag perfectly. And i think, It seems like from his game plan, I think he went out there and he was like, I'm going to spend as much energy as I need to to get the turns in this first period.
01:33:13
Speaker
And I think after I think that his his game plan was like, you've got to get on top. You need to put everything into getting. And I think he was trying for them harder than he was trying to get a turn against like Ben Carr. I don't think he tried to get the turn that hard against the semifinal opponent as hard as he was going for it against McDonough.
01:33:31
Speaker
And I think he put everything into it because he was just like, this is how I have to win. And it's funny. I remember Shane Sparks was like, why did he choose top in the second? It's like because he expended all of his grip strength in the first period to go up because he knew he's got to go up.
01:33:47
Speaker
And then after that, he's like, I have to wrestle a really smart match where I don't give up takedowns or i slow everything down with my hand fighting i get to a leg and i just hold on to it for dear life and whittle away 15 seconds whenever i can and he did it like he very successfully like got to his turns turned matt mcdonough i think the craziest thing for me was seeing that he did not like actually get that many turns the rest of the tournament it was pretty crazy like how dominant he was in that match um it was really impressive
01:34:22
Speaker
Good job, Anthony. um Well, let's let's get to the rating system real quick. We have the WAP rating system. It stands for Writing, Acting, Production, and Portrayal of Wrestling. And right away, for me, probably the weakest aspect of the movie was the writing, in my opinion.
01:34:41
Speaker
um we We gave our complaints. But at the end of the day, you know it's a solid sports movie. It doesn't do anything that interesting with what they're doing in terms of sports movies.
01:34:52
Speaker
Um, but you know, it's Anthony's story. They got to stick to it. Um, and overall, I'm not saying it was bad to a degree, but it was just, it was very serviceable.
01:35:04
Speaker
So I would give the writing overall, uh, two and a half out of five. Yeah, I think I'm, I'm, I'm kind of right there with you. It's like, I, like, I, like I said already, you know, it's, it's kind of hard to figure out where we're going, why we're going there. why are we showing Why, you know, why are some of the things that we're showing like going to be so important? You know, it could, it could have been um trimmed up a little bit. Yeah.
01:35:29
Speaker
Little, little tighter, a little bit more cohesive. um Yeah. It needed one more look at from a, from a script doctor. i think it would have been good. um How about acting? How'd you feel about the acting?
01:35:42
Speaker
Acting was, was good. I think I'll probably put a lump into the acting. Also um, uh, uh, Sort of like the portrayal, like not as acting, but as like how close did it get to the people?
01:35:55
Speaker
I think Gerald Jerome was like good, but not great. I give him like a three out of five. You know, he's all right. But um the portrayal of trump Tom Brands I found was kind of funny because, you know, they get this guy who's trying to look insane, trying to look like a crazy guy, trying to be like, all right, it's this is Tom Brands.
01:36:13
Speaker
But he does he pales in comparison to the real Brands. the real brands just choose scenery. He's just like, you know, he's got that voice and he's just kind of like, he's so fun to watch when he's talking about stuff.
01:36:27
Speaker
He's, he's, his eyes are darting around. Like he's like, he's got the big eyes and yeah it's not just that he's a jerk off. It's not that he's Tom brands is an interesting, just because he's a hard ass.
01:36:40
Speaker
He's interesting because he's also just like, what's going on with this guy? What is he looking at? And I don't think he gets close. So, you know, the acting, you know, it's it's serviceable, you know, we give it a three out of five, two out of fives.
01:36:53
Speaker
Yeah, I gave it a 3.5. It was nice to see a wrestling movie that had Just across the board, decent performances, right? Yeah. ah No one blew me away, but no one was like, get this person out here. Every single actor yeah did a good job, in my opinion.
01:37:08
Speaker
um i wouldn't say there was any bad performances. No bad performances. DeJulius was pretty decent, too. Say that again? DeJulius was pretty good. Yeah, DeJulius did a great job. um I like that they gave him some lines.
01:37:20
Speaker
Yeah. um I think he was overacting a little bit right before he delivered those lines where he was – like they were interviewing him. He was like –
01:37:29
Speaker
Like he was out of breath after a match kind of thing. um He was having to push that a little bit. um But I thought he did well. um Overall production. um I mean, I think they just filmed on site for a lot of stuff. ah I really liked all the singlets that when they were accurate. The maps were accurate. looked like the NCAA championships. Logos were accurate. Yeah.
01:37:50
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there wasn't a whole lot that needed to go into the production, but everything just felt very real. I felt like I was actually at a wrestling practice. Yes, and I think we also have to give them props for ah the portrayal of wrestling is very good.
Accuracy in Wrestling Techniques
01:38:05
Speaker
Yes, this is as best as I've seen it. Yeah, because yeah it his the way that he scores in this ah movie is always, like, they're showing the ball and chain all the time. Like it's a lot of ball and chain in this movie.
01:38:18
Speaker
they They're always showing the ball and chain. So I think we got to get proper terminology for stuff, right? They, they had the right scores, score clocks and things, right? Like they did everything right when it came to portrayal.
01:38:30
Speaker
um They did a really good job of like, of not just like calling out words and like saying like, Oh, take down and things like that. They did a good job of like visually illustrating, like the, they would like show closeups of the hands moving and what they're gripping and and why they are doing it. Right.
01:38:47
Speaker
They like the tilts looked real. Like every, like I was very happy with that. Like, I think the only way you'd make it look more real is if just like you had actual wrestlers wrestling. Um, ah but,
01:38:59
Speaker
for the most part, like, I mean, that's what they did with Julius, you know, um it was, it was strong, very strong. I gave production a four and a half and I gave portrayal of wrestling a four and a half. Yeah.
01:39:09
Speaker
Yeah. Both of those were like, i mean, the production, like I said, production wasn't like difficult. Like I, they, they weren't challenged necessarily in a, in a very broad sense.
01:39:21
Speaker
um But they did it well. It was, it was, I'm very curious what the, what the budget on this was actually. I wonder if I could figure it out. Yeah.
01:39:32
Speaker
But whatever. Yeah, I think it's ah overall. Yeah, it's good. It's it's worth a watch, right? If you're hanging out, you got some time to kill. Go ahead and give it a shot.
01:39:43
Speaker
Yes, sir. Well, I think that's about it. I think we have a a large football game to attend, probably. I assume that you will. ah I'm not watching that. I hate the fucking Eagles, man. Yeah.