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All Greek to Me - Ep2 - Archaic Wrestling
80 Plays1 year ago
Γειά σου! Sasha and Evan talk about some tough guys from back in the day. (Sorry about the audio!)
Music by Josh Kasen
Twitter - @ArchaicWrestle
Email us at archaicwrestling@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Archaic Wrestling Podcast
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello, everyone. I am Evan, and this is the Archaic Wrestling Podcast. We're here to talk a little bit about wrestling history, and I am joined by Sasha. Say hi, Sasha. Hello, everyone.
00:00:30
Speaker
Good to have you with me. Good to have you with me.
Recent Wrestling Events Recap
00:00:35
Speaker
It's been a little while since we've done an episode. But we're excited to get it going. A lot's happened since then. We had the national championships in folk style. We had the US Open passed with a lot of stuff's been going on. And I don't know, what are you looking forward to in wrestling right now, Sasha?
00:00:58
Speaker
I'm just waiting for World Team Trials and Worlds. That's mostly it.
Excitement for Final X Event
00:01:03
Speaker
Yeah, I am excited for Final X. I do get a kick out of that we try to put some production behind it and make it a little bit of a show. Yeah, I think Final X is a really cool concept. I'm really glad that we've kind of transitioned to this sort of model. I think it's better for the athletes and I think it's just better for wrestling as a product in general in the United States.
00:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, anytime you can have something defined, fairly defined start, fairly defined finished. It's such a better product. Yeah, for sure. When you just don't know. I mean, a tournament, we love tournaments, we're not jobs. Love watching quad screening.
00:01:42
Speaker
But it's not going to grow this far. Right, right, exactly. Now we need to be able to kind of hype up an event. And that's a good way.
Challenges in Wrestling Research
00:01:54
Speaker
But in other news, in terms of our podcast here, I might be able to get a little bit of limited access to JSTOR going forward.
00:02:04
Speaker
Okay. Which could be good for being able to find a little bit more sources and things that are not so readily available. So that would be nice. Sometimes there's a lot of broken links when you're looking for stuff.
00:02:19
Speaker
Yes, especially with you know, kind of an obscure topic. And, and we're not going to be traveling around to separate libraries around the country or anything like that. So this could be a decent, a decent resource for us. So yeah, yeah, that would be great. That would I think that would help a lot. If there's one thing I'm learning from this, we're no one has done us any favor.
00:02:48
Speaker
as far as trying to figure out what the hell is going on. There's obviously not a lot of work out there. And what there is, it's just no one's making it as available as they can. I'm still finding conflicting things and we can talk about that in a little bit.
00:03:04
Speaker
But it just kind of is what it is. We'll wade through it. And I'm sure as time goes on, as we do more and more episodes, I think we're going to learn little things where we're like, we never even considered this. I wish I had known about this source or whatnot months ago. So that'll happen. That's fine. I'm excited just to keep
Impact of NIL Deals on Wrestling
00:03:25
Speaker
going with it. I'm enjoying the project so far. It's been cool. Anything else you want to say before we kind of jump into our segment here?
00:03:34
Speaker
Uh, yeah, that and, um, you know, very excited for more actual wrestling. Uh, but new thing this year, uh, the off season is actually kind of exciting now because of it. I don't know. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's kind of, you know, I was part of the camp of just like, eh, you know, whatever, shut up. It'll be fine. Uh, maybe it might be fine. Maybe it's not fine.
00:04:00
Speaker
I will say maybe I will have to admit that we may have jumped the shark a little bit in terms of NIL deals and their implications.
00:04:09
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I mean I I'm I'm staying optimistic about how things will end up with all this just because it is early But it is a very a very good example of an American mindset right where a new thing is going to be allowed and the the instinct is to well just just you know Yeah, just just let whoever do it like there's hardly any regulation around it. I feel like right like I
00:04:36
Speaker
Schools can just set up like NIL foundations essentially where people just donate money to you know, like yeah, they're basically creating super packs for Yeah, just we set this up with like very little regulation and just like, you know
00:04:51
Speaker
lots of freedom was into it right away, as opposed to, well, maybe we should, yeah, we should introduce this and make it, you know, pretty restrictive initially, and then grow it from
Athlete Transfers and Financial Influence
00:05:02
Speaker
there. Right? I feel like that would have been the safer route to go. But I mean, you're right, it is exciting. We're seeing, we're seeing people in the portal constantly.
00:05:12
Speaker
and athletes flying all over the country right now, right? Like some of these guys are just jumping. And I feel bad often, especially for like, you know, as a California guy, especially for California programs, right? Yeah.
00:05:27
Speaker
It's I mean, that's tales all this time where our guys are at least the wrestlers who wrestle at those colleges often, you know, if they if they're good at all, they're going to end up somewhere else. Yeah. And that's frustrating from that perspective. But, you know, it's cool. It's cool to see a lot of wrestlers have
00:05:47
Speaker
be able to pursue opportunities. I'm happy for them. I think the most recent big name one was Cody Chittum. And I don't think he ever enrolled or fully committed to Iowa, if I understand correctly, before going to Iowa State. Yeah, no, he did not. Yeah, he did not. He was able to find a letter of intent and switch his school immediately, no problem. Yeah, so not not quite exactly the same as the NIL stuff, but at least in terms of what he's looking to get.
00:06:17
Speaker
Yeah, in terms of what he's looking to get. But, you know, he didn't have to go into a portal, right? But yeah. Yeah, it sounds from someone we know, it does sound like money was a fairly big deal to the to his choice of school. Yeah. Yeah, it has to be. And of course, the Ferraris.
00:06:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's, you know, you have one or the other, maybe he sticks around. But, you know, I understand it either way. And when it's both at the same time, then that's a lot easier decision. Yeah. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how Iowa does running into that. Yeah, I don't know.
00:07:10
Speaker
I don't know, we'll see. I mean, I wouldn't be, if I was an Iowa fan, I wouldn't necessarily be going like, oh, this is a good sign. Like, this is definitely a win-win situation, right? It's like, ah, I don't know. Are we being a little too, too, you know, rope and dope and get whoever we can? If it is gonna, you know, hurt something else that's a little bit less tangible about our program, who knows?
00:07:42
Speaker
It's a little bit of a tricky situation to want to go that route, but I mean, they know more about, they know more about than I do, that's for sure. Yeah. So let them do their thing, I guess. We'll see how that goes. Maybe it'll be good. Maybe it'll be really good for them, or maybe it'll just be really fun and exciting for us to talk about later. That's fine too. All right.
Ancient Olympic Games and Wrestling
00:08:10
Speaker
This episode's history segment, we're going to focus a little bit more on early antiquity. And we're specifically going to be talking about that bread and butter of wrestling history and lore. The Greeks and Romans and the ancient Olympic games are going to be the main focus of this particular episode.
00:08:32
Speaker
Ancient games, they began all the way back in 776 BC. And these were the Greek games and they were... Oh, I'm going to have to edit some stuff out because I'm...
00:08:50
Speaker
It's going to be. All right. And they were essentially there to honor Zeus. Like people were competing because they were going to be honoring Zeus. Only free born Greek men could participate. And it was hosted in Ellis, the city of Ellis. These are the first Olympic games. The first Olympic games, exactly. And interestingly enough, there were other games that don't get talked about nearly as much.
00:09:20
Speaker
They're held in different Greek cities and different time periods. Some would be every four years, some would be every two years.
00:09:27
Speaker
the Pythian games, and those would celebrate Apollo. The Nemean games would also celebrate Zeus. And some of these games would celebrate multiple gods as well. The Phsythian games celebrate Poseidon or honor Poseidon. And it is all essentially an offering to the gods at the end of the day, right? It's this test of athletic skill and celebration of humanity, but for the purpose of showing honor to the gods.
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah, and something we saw is that the games were not always just competitions of sports. For example, the Pythian games that celebrated Apollo, those also had contests of like writing and singing and some other cultural contests going on with that.
00:10:17
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. There was parties. It was, you know, it was a good time, right? And some of these other games, they allowed women to compete in some events as well. None of them were combative events, but like a lot of running events and jumping events, things like that, they did allow.
00:10:35
Speaker
So very, very progressive of the Greeks. We can all applaud them. But there was also different divisions. Getting back to the actual Olympics, they had a division for young boys and for men. And most of what we know about the ancient Olympics
00:10:55
Speaker
is based on either physical archaeological evidence, art depictions, and most of the writing that talks about these ancient Olympics are not primary sources. They're stuff that's been written about much later. So you'll see a lot of Greeks later on still writing about the Olympics, talking about the different heroes of the Olympics, the different athletes. And we don't have very much that comes directly from the time.
00:11:24
Speaker
interesting. So not a big sports writing economy in the antiquity. I mean, hard to say, you know, a lot of it just might have been lost, how much of whatever there might have been. It just gone, right? Got destroyed. Don't know how much of it was, you know, in different parts of like, you know,
00:11:48
Speaker
Library of Alexandria could have had some of it, who knows, right? Yeah, true. But yeah, a lot of it could have just been lost. And you know, oral tradition is a big thing, like it's not to be underestimated, that stuff gets carried off quite a while. Yeah. And and so that's why a lot of what we might hear, like in more specifics about specific athletes, could be more myth than reality, right?
00:12:13
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's one here that I think we're going to get into later. Oh, yeah, there's clearly a lot of myths surrounding him. Yeah, and we just kind of got to take that with a grain of salt, right? It's always going to be that way. And we've said that before, and that's probably going to be something we'll have to say again.
00:12:30
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
Olympic Truce and Cultural Impact
00:12:32
Speaker
Another notable thing about the ancient Olympics is the Olympic truce, right? Where the city states of Greece would agree to putting wars on pause or not fighting during the Olympics because they wanted everyone to be safe, right? They wanted the spectacle for the gods to go on as planned, right? It was bigger than their humanly wars. Yeah.
00:12:59
Speaker
Yeah, and it just makes sense. What I read about that was, I mean, people are, you know, it's not like you're not coming by train, you're not coming by plane back in these days, you have to make what is a fairly arduous trip as an athlete to compete in these games. And there had to be some way to make sure that on their way, those athletes aren't getting, you know, the victims of violence and getting
00:13:26
Speaker
you know, whatever, beat up, robbed, killed, you know, while there are these wars going on. So it seems like a fairly, it seems like it would be pretty hard for, you know, for these athletes to compete if that wasn't the case. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, that makes sense. Well, in the the modern Olympics actually brought the truce back, officially was brought back in 1992.
00:13:50
Speaker
Um, uh, agreeing that, you know, folks would not go to war with other countries if you're going to participate in the Olympics. Um, which, which when I, when I heard that that was really the case, that it was a, it was like, it was something that a country could violate. I was very surprised, um, that it was something that could be violated in the Olympic charter. Um, the, and there's actually been one country that has violated it and it has been violated three times.
00:14:20
Speaker
And that is Russia or the USSR at times, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, to be honest, because I am certain that other countries have been in wars like during the Olympic Games. Like there's no way the United States wasn't involved in like conflicts.
00:14:39
Speaker
Like the Iraq War went on a long time, right? Or the Vietnam War did too. So I'm a little confused as to how it's only Russia that has a violated... Yeah, they brought it back in 1992. I'd say a fair bit of that. If there are any athletes from Iraq or Afghanistan that competed in the games, it seems pretty clear we must have violated them at some point.
00:15:04
Speaker
Well, it just has to be your country that is that is doing stuff, right? It's like it doesn't have to be the athletes. But yeah, it's it's it's wild, wild to me. Oh, no, just in the sense. Yeah, there's there's got to be some silly politics going on to where it's like it's only Russia that's violated it. Right. Which is weird because Russians are all over the IOC. So that's that's weird to me.
00:15:30
Speaker
Well, they seem to be having a lot of problems. Yeah, a lot of problems. And we're going to get into the to the actual events. You know, there are a couple of running events, but, you know, we're going to be focused on on the wrestling. But before we get to that, it's it's good to note that the during the time in which the ancient Olympics were going on, Greece was conquered by Rome.
00:15:55
Speaker
in the second century BC, and they allowed the Olympics to keep going. It was continued to be celebrated, which is a decent tactic.
00:16:10
Speaker
that a lot of imperialist nations will use is, you know, you can't just destroy the populace, you can't totally subject them if it's really going to be able to make it work. Like Alexander the Great is a good example, even though he's not the Roman Empire, but they both, both empires, utilized allowing people to keep their customs and showing respect towards their traditions in order to keep the populace that you just conquered.
00:16:35
Speaker
um sympathetic to you in some way right it was a part of it was an aspect of their propaganda to be um liberal in terms of their uh cultural allowances right um before they fully established strong uh uh subjugation of the populace right yeah if we were ever conquered and they you know did away with you know not just sports but at this point you know they got rid of the bachelor
00:17:03
Speaker
We got concrete. I think I think there's food being upward. It'd be hard to might be one thing. They got rid of some of our favorite TV shows. Maybe America was. Right. I have some problem there. I mean, look, as long as you kept the main things going, we have our fast food, got our TV shows, got our sports. We're good. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly right, docile people.
Popularity of Ancient Wrestling Sports
00:17:31
Speaker
Um, but yeah, so the ancient Olympics, they eventually end around 390 of the common era. Um, and yeah, they, they, uh, they went for a while, a good, strong tradition until it was over. And now, uh, but when it was going on, there were, uh, their wrestling was the most popular sport. Um, there was also pan creation, which can be easily get confused about what was going on. They, they had pan creation.
00:18:01
Speaker
in the ancient Olympics. And that was kind of like wrestling and boxing. It's often considered a precursor to MMA. But there's a lot of what we would call mixed martial arts elements to it. So they could strike. Yeah, they could wrestle. There's a lot of there are a lot of similarities. From what it looked like, from what it looks like from, you know, the source that I was reading, did seem that
00:18:26
Speaker
You know, to a higher extent, the both boxing and pancreasian striking sports, um, involved much more, it was more about like making someone submit like via strikes. Um, and it seems like things like choke holds, you know, submissions in pancreasian, uh, it does seem like they might have been used more in a sense to control someone, uh, and inflict, you know, strikes that would make them submit.
00:18:56
Speaker
It did, so from what I read, it does seem like, I think it does seem like maybe modern MMA, much more of an emphasis on grappling than Pankration did. Yeah, that's my understanding as well.
00:19:08
Speaker
and and I gotta say like trying to look up like the rules and and What these sports actually were like was a little tricky I did find things that contradict themselves here and there but yes what we would more recognize as wrestling was added in 708 in the before the common era and it was known as Pali or Pele I believe it's pronounced Pali and
00:19:36
Speaker
Um, and Sasha, do you want to talk a little bit more about what that would look, what that looked like? Yeah. So this was something that was fairly difficult to find. You know, this, this wasn't something that was like very easy to find sources on. Um, if you, you know, just say, look up ancient Greek wrestling, Palais, go on Google. You're not going to find just a bunch of things popping up, just great.
00:20:02
Speaker
incredible sources that go in depth into all of this. What you have is a Wikipedia page that has a couple of rules on it and really not much else. But if you look into the sources, you can find a fairly interesting source called submission fighting the rules of ancient Greek wrestling that seems to be written, I would guess, by a grad student.
00:20:32
Speaker
And it's actually a pretty interesting document. It goes into a lot of detail. And it includes a lot of interesting primary sources. A lot of it is stuff from poets. There's a lot of stuff that includes epic poems, scenes where someone might be wrestling in this poem and would talk about the rules. So there's some really interesting
00:20:59
Speaker
Things I'll again do later where say, you know, there's a poem where Dionysus wrestles someone According to a rule set so that he can win something and using all of that It's actually we can piece together a fairly decent idea of what it looked like and what the rules were a Lot better certainly than I thought we were gonna get
00:21:23
Speaker
You know, I thought we were going to, it was going to be pretty tough, but this is actually, uh, this is actually really interesting and fairly detailed. So the main rules that we can piece together here are that it was a little bit like, um, a little bit like the ball drop era of freestyle wrestling. So there were three, not three periods, but you needed, it was basically the first to score three times would win. Yeah. Three points. Right.
00:21:51
Speaker
Yeah, and back then they called it, yeah, it was the first to score three falls would win. That's kind of the best thing we have from the translations here. So the first to score three falls would win, and a fall would either be someone's top shoulder blades touching the back of the, I wasn't a mat back then, but touching the surface, or probably dirt.
00:22:18
Speaker
probably dirt, probably some sort of dirt or grass. We're going to edit that one out. Yeah, I think we'll be OK. Yeah, so it was, you know, someone's back touching the surface. That was one way to score a fall. Another way was by sort of like a strangulation in submission.
00:22:46
Speaker
So it seems really clear that strangles and submissions were very much a part of Poly. And then another way to do it, this was very rare, I would imagine, because what we have is an idea of the playing surface. It's fairly big. So one way to score another fall would be to force someone out of the area.
00:23:11
Speaker
Uh, from what we have about the area, it looks like it was about, it was a pretty big, it was maybe like, uh, like the big Bertha. Matt, which maybe we'll get into later episodes, but, um, it was fairly, it was about like a hundred Greek feet. Um, square. Okay. So it would be very, which was similar about pretty similar to a meter. So somewhere around the range of like a football field, maybe smaller and a square.
00:23:41
Speaker
So a pretty big area, not something that's going to happen a lot. Not a there's not a whole lot of technique in here about forcing someone out. So for the most part, we're talking taking someone down, getting their back on the dirt or a strangulation is what seems like to be most of the ways that someone would win. So like no, I can get no biting, no genital grabbing, no striking. But apparently you can bend fingers.
00:24:11
Speaker
Yeah, that was actually something that I found fairly interesting. So there are basically, there are about two, there are like two conflicting sources here, right? There is a legend and not necessarily a legend, but a, uh, kind of a retelling like of a legendary wrestler, um, Leon Tiscos of Messines.
00:24:33
Speaker
who's known as like the finger breaker. So there's an account where someone says he was legendary. He won all these matches by forcing people into submission by bending their fingers back. And then we also see, and I think this was about a sixth century CE or AD. So a fair amount of time after, I think our first, the first source I see in here is about fifth century BC or sixth century BC.
00:25:02
Speaker
And this source that pertains to the finger bending comes from 6th century CE. And basically this source talks about prohibiting finger bending as a way of submission.
00:25:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, like you're allowed to kind of do it. But you can't like do it as a submission, which is kind of weird. Like I saw something about like the refs would like like whip you if you were doing it. Yes.
00:25:34
Speaker
Which reminded me of like, when, when there's locking hands and freestyle and the ref would come up and smash that totally reminded me of that. It's like, it's like, Hey, Hey, don't bend their fingers too much. Hang on. That's too much. Yeah. A guy, a guy in a baggy suit locks up and just come on, start slapping your hands. Just smack in your hand. So I think what, I think what's really interesting about that is that is,
00:26:00
Speaker
Kind of like a really old document of basically a rules discussion. You know, very, it does seem like at some point finger bending was allowed and it wasn't a problem. It seems like it was not even, it's very possible that it was not even really frowned upon. It was just one way you could win. And at some point they might've decided, you know, for obvious reasons against that for the health of the competitors and disallowed it.
00:26:29
Speaker
Do you think they're really interesting? Do you think there were dudes that were were really complaining about that? Like, well, I can't even hit the quarterback anymore. Telling me I guess fingers. There's got to be dudes that were like that. I really do. I do think that in a lot of this discussion and we can there's actually another rule discussion that will come up later where Plato was proposing his ideal rule set. Hold on. It does seem like there is
00:26:58
Speaker
does seem like there was a fair amount, we can only assume, of yeah, people were either invested in the old rules, wanted new rules, complained about them, or complained about stuff that was allowed currently.
00:27:12
Speaker
That makes perfect sense. That makes perfect sense. Yeah. Those old wrestlers, well, you know that, what is it? There's like that, there's like a famous quote from, I think it was like a Greek philosopher. It was like, the kids these days are so stupid and they're so lazy and they'll never be, they'll never mount up to anything. And he's just like in antiquity complaining about the kids these days.
00:27:33
Speaker
Oh, God. Yeah, there's there's so you can find so many old writings just complaining about the kids these days and how they don't work hard anymore. It's just a tradition every every every like 20 years. Someone's got to write those articles and complain about the kids these days. Yeah. So but I mean, they were a lot about not kids back then. Hold on. Did you want did you want to say something else about that? No, it was just, you know, I think we can we can safely presume there was probably some in person
00:28:03
Speaker
uh way that they basically they probably had like a mat.com forum in person i'm sure some of these old some of these old competitors came in and just like oh this guy sucks i hate i hate this guy's style what's he doing it's horrible
00:28:18
Speaker
Yeah, it would be very curious to see what spectation was like back then. Because you can see, you can look up, I forget the name of the city where the Olympic. Oh, Ellis, thank you. You didn't say that. I thought that. Ellis, it would be cool to go back there and see the grounds. I'd be very curious to know how they spectated. Is it just people standing like,
00:28:43
Speaker
Like you you see those like high school tournaments, right? Where they're not super well staffed and they just let the all the kids get like really close to the map for the finals, right? It's like, is that how it was with them, too? It's like, everyone, you got it back up. Give some space, you know, I'd be very curious how how into it they got that way or if that would be like undignified and they had to like watch from afar. I don't know.
00:29:13
Speaker
Yeah, I just got curious about how similar they probably would have acted to the way people act now. Yeah, it could very well be, you know, maybe different venues had different, I'm sure they did, you know, different seating, different norms that came with it. Just like our, you know, just like the ones we have today, Iron Man versus Super 32 versus NCAA is all very different. Yeah. Yeah. They're like, Oh, no, the wrestling, the wrestling from over here is much better.
00:29:43
Speaker
Yeah. But so we talked a little bit about the finger breaker.
Legend of Milo of Croton
00:29:50
Speaker
And there's actually quite a few.
00:29:54
Speaker
athletes from the ancient Greek games that get referenced here and there. You can go and read some details about them. I pulled out Milo of Croton, who was from the late sixth century BCE. And he appears to be pretty legendary. He's the one that if you're going to think about who was the quintessential ancient Greek wrestler, it's going to be Milo.
00:30:22
Speaker
He was the Dan Gable or the Kale Sanderson of... Right, right. Exactly. ...of the Greek society. And, you know, apparently he was like several championships, like in the boys division, and then he moves up into the men's division. No, he had one championship in the boys division, and then he had five championships in the men's division. And he seems to be a real guy. He doesn't seem to be made up. He's, you know, a lot of people have written about him. Aristotle wrote about him.
00:30:52
Speaker
Cicero stood, Herodotus. Yeah, he's mentioned quite a bit. And he apparently competed until he was like 40 years old.
00:31:01
Speaker
So he kept it going a while. But some stuff, you can decide for yourself whether or not this sounds like it's true. But he was known for a lot of things, including his feats of strength, the way in which he prepared for the games or would show off how strong he was. And the big thing that he was known for is he would train with a newborn calf.
00:31:26
Speaker
And he would carry it over his back the length of the stadium every day for four years leading up to the Olympics. He'd have that calf on his back.
00:31:37
Speaker
And he would grow every day, he'd feed and grow a little bit bigger. And he would get stronger and stronger until after four years, he's carrying around basically a full grown cow. And he would run up to the length of the stadium and right up to the whatever, the Olympic altar or whatever it was. And he would slaughter the cow and then he would eat it later on. And that gave him strength, right?
00:32:02
Speaker
Um, so that's kind of like the big one he's known for. Um, but he's, which, which sounds like any, any, uh, dudes are like, Oh, I practiced wrestling on a bear. I carried a full grown cow. You know, we can really.
00:32:17
Speaker
I'm sure there must have been a point where someone, you know, saw him walking up the steps of the stadium, carrying this full-grown cow on his shoulders, and he comes in, he's like, hey, loud and sweet, and he's up there going like, hey, shoot. Yeah. And he's like, and he's like, uh, oh, curry cow. Neil is just looking at him, he's going to make the wait. All right. All right. I don't care about the wait, I'm just going to eat this cow.
00:32:48
Speaker
Yeah, we can only assume a much visibly much smaller wrestler came up to Milo as he was doing his legendary feats of strength. And the kind of vision much. Yeah. Milo, that's not all Milo did, like he did all kinds of stuff. He apparently had this challenge where he would hold a pomegranate in his hand and challenge people to take it away from him.
00:33:17
Speaker
and after and no one could do it obviously no one could take it away from him and He was so skilled that after he you know would fight someone off to take away the pomegranate from him The pomegranate was never damaged. It was never It was never bruised and he could just eat it and it was a good old. He didn't crush it or anything and
00:33:37
Speaker
you know so so athletic and i just have this image of like you know it's like it sounds like a parlor trick like he's just a big huge strong dude he just like holds it up in the air and people are like jumping up trying to get it from him is like nope nope.
00:33:53
Speaker
So he does that. He he apparently did one where he was like extend his arm and stick his little pinky out or his little finger and challenge people to try to bend his finger. And I guess no one could do that either. I don't I don't know how he was doing that one. There ever was. Yeah, right. And this last one, this last one really cracks me up. He would apparently stand on a greased up iron disk.
00:34:21
Speaker
So just a big disc all greased up, and he would challenge people to try to push him off. And he would just, you know, no one could push him off the greased up iron disc. He would push them off first. So, yeah, sounds like just a big strong dude. Not sure how I would handle trying to wrestle someone who's just big and strong like that, but... Yeah.
00:34:46
Speaker
Yeah, apparently he was just a force of nature that no one had ever seen before since, I guess. But yeah, he seems like a badass. And I don't know if his death is a badass death or an embarrassing death. But the way in which he died, he apparently was trying to pull apart a stump that was still in the ground, and he's trying to pull it apart with his bare hands.
00:35:12
Speaker
And he slipped and the stump came back together and trapped one of his hands in the stump, so he couldn't get it out. And he was like, hey, he was alone. From what I understand, he was alone, so no one could come help him.
00:35:32
Speaker
And yeah, he just sat there and I guess he got eaten by wolves. Like they just came and ate him because he's stuck in a log. And it's like, get eaten by wolves. Badass death. Get fingers stuck in a log after being the strongest man ever.
00:35:52
Speaker
I mean, look, if James Franco could thaw off his own arm, I don't see why this badass guy couldn't, you know, I don't know. He should have chewed his own arm off, yeah. He couldn't, though. His arm's too strong. It's impossible. It was, like, iron. He couldn't do it. They tried to teeth harder. So, yeah, there's other, there's other, there's other ancient wrestlers that they can, that they'll find, that you can find online.
00:36:21
Speaker
None of them were quite as interesting as Milo or Leon, who just breaks your fingers. Did you see the story about a match up together? That would have been good, because then he could have tried to bend his pinky. Yes, that would have been perfect. You'll never know. Oh, man. The unbreakable pinky versus the best pinky breaker there ever was.
00:36:43
Speaker
Yeah, who would who would win a Corellian or Milo? We're starting our fantasy wrestling blog. Have you seen did you see when you were researching this, did you see the story about him getting heckled by the crowd? Who? Milo? Milo.
00:37:05
Speaker
Oh, I don't I don't think so. Tell us. This is an extremely funny story. There's a story that he was at, you know, one some competition, something or other. And either I couldn't quite tell from the story whether he had just been won three matches really easily, or if he was just so good, no one decided to challenge him because they didn't think they could beat him. But basically, the story is, as he was going up to get his prize for being the winner of the division,
00:37:33
Speaker
um he like stumbled onto his knee he like tripped basically and then the story is that the crowd was just heckling him like oh you shouldn't give it to him you're a loser you tripped and then he he retorted like that was only one fall you need three falls to be defeated uh he beat them with facts and logic i don't know whether that's one where i'm like you know i could i could see it being real people are
00:38:02
Speaker
People have always been haters, ridiculous haters. Yeah. But on the other end, it's important to have haters or else you'll have too inflated sense of ego, I'm sure. Yeah. Well, yeah, so that's kind of a little bit of a
00:38:21
Speaker
an overview of some of what you'd see in ancient wrestling, in ancient Greek wrestling. But I did pull a couple written sources out, and these are actually some that are our actual primary sources.
Historical Evidence of Ancient Wrestling
00:38:38
Speaker
I have this first one and it is, oh god, am I gonna be able to pronounce it? It's gonna be tricky. Oxyrhynchus papyrus. The Oxyrhynchus? No. Yeah, Oxyrhynchus papyrus. I think I'm saying it correctly. I'm not sure. That looks about right. That looks about right to me.
00:38:57
Speaker
But it's from about 200 common era. It is known as the oldest Western martial arts treatise. And if you're not familiar, martial arts treatises are, they're essentially manuals on here's how you how do you do these different techniques, right? They have for sword fighting them for all kinds of things throughout history. But this is the oldest one in the Western world.
00:39:22
Speaker
And there is a translation of it. So I will and I'm sorry, I have to I have to mention that these were neither of these were actually at the Olympics, from what I understand, but they were at other competitions that were taking place around the same time. These two examples that I have, but this first one was actually was discovered in Egypt and it was discovered by an Oxford grad student in the late 1800s.
00:39:49
Speaker
And so they translated this papyrus, this Greek papyrus, and it says, stand to the side of your opponent and with your right arm, take a headlock and fight it out. And then another segment of it says, you underhook with your right arm, you wrap your arm around his where he has taken the underhook and attack the side with your left foot. You push away with your left hand
00:40:17
Speaker
You force the hold and fight it out. And fight it out, I think that sounds like they're saying wrestle from here, right? It's like you've gained this position, now wrestle from here. But yeah, kind of tricky to interpret what they're saying. That first one, stand to the side of your opponent with your right arm, take a headlock.
00:40:36
Speaker
and fight it out. So I don't know that sounds almost like. If you're off to the side and you're trying to headlock someone without being like in front of them, that almost sounds like. I don't know, maybe maybe more of like a bulldog headlock or even like yeah, Nelson almost like hard to say. It's it's yeah, little confusing. Yeah, or this other one you're under hook with your right arm, wrap your arm around his where he is.
00:41:05
Speaker
taken where he has taken the underhook. So maybe it's on the other side. Attack the side with your left foot. It sounds like it's saying to do a sweep motion almost, right? Yeah. With a go over under maybe. Something I find interesting in this source is there is a bunch, like three times this came up, writing specifically about a lot like
00:41:31
Speaker
The wording is, get your knee behind their knee for a trip. So there's multiple times we see, I think one of these is Ajax trip someone doing this. There's a case where they do it like outside trip, where they're locked around their body and they, you know, they trip, you know, it says like,
00:41:53
Speaker
Stopped his foot by putting his foot behind the other foot from the outside. And then there's one where it's, um, blocked the knee with his own back of the knee from the inside. So clear. So definitely an inside trip, like an inside trip. Yeah. They were hitting inside and outside trips for sure. And if they, you know, they clearly are hitting things from under hooks and over hooks, probably they were, they were hitting some nice, uh, some interesting, uh, over hook over, under trips.
00:42:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's really interesting. I think that's really cool. And then this other writing that I found, it's also on Greek papyrus dated a little bit later than that last one. But the last one was only evidence of martial art, not evidence of sport. And this second example is one that gets pointed to a lot as one of the earliest examples of primary written source about an actual sport.
00:42:54
Speaker
Um, and so this was also found in Egypt and it was found from we actually know the name of the tournament that this uh, that this uh, uh took place at and it was called the great the great Anton and to know a antony the great antony tournament and it was from the
00:43:14
Speaker
138th tournament. So this is a big prestigious wrestling tournament from the ancient world, which is cool because it's like it's like going to Jargren or something, right? So big tournament that lots of people go to. There's religious festivals going on here. Oh, it's taking place and
00:43:31
Speaker
And it and Anna to pop Anna to pop Paulus Anna to Paulus Anna to Paulus Egypt That's a tough one and it guess what it's to honor Antaeus the young lover of Emperor Hadrian as we all know, right? And so it's once to honor not a god, but you're you're a rulers And so this is the first evidence also this what I'm about to read you is the first evidence of
00:43:58
Speaker
of a match being fixed as well. This match is a fixed match. So it's a contract between, it was the boys division. So we have two teenagers who are going to be fighting. And in the contract, the father of one of the wrestlers, and this wrestler is named, is Nicanteus. I'm gonna call him Nick. Nicanteus agrees to pay a bribe to his son's opponent.
00:44:26
Speaker
So the father was offering the this was essentially like a written agreement. The father was offering his son his son's opponent some money to throw the match. So he was offering. Yeah. And the opponent's name was Demetrius. So I'm just going to read this real quick. So they're agreeing to the conditions of the match. So quote, when competing in the competition for the boy to fall three times and yield,
00:44:57
Speaker
So they're saying in the competition, you will fall three times and you will yield.
00:45:04
Speaker
And in return, you will receive, quote, 3800 drachmas of silver of old coinage. I don't know if old coinage is better than the new coinage. I'm not sure. This sounds like a lot of drachmas to me. I'm not sure what the exchange rate is, but I would love 3800 drachmas if maybe if I was a young lad who maybe didn't have enough.
00:45:29
Speaker
Who knows if he actually took this deal or not, but the contract also includes a clause that Demetrius gets the money Even if the referee somehow realizes that the match was fixed which is which is a good idea So if Demetrius were to win Yeah, yeah, if Demetrius were to win Instead of instead of the referee finds out but if Demetrius were to win quote you have to pay my same
00:45:57
Speaker
You have to pay the same penalty for committing a crime With three talents of silver from ancient coins without delay or inventive argument So I guess he's saying that you'll have to pay my same I think he's I think what they're saying there you have to pay my same my same as in my son a penalty for committing a crime and
00:46:22
Speaker
with three talents of silver from ancient coin without delay. So they're saying, hey, if you don't throw this match, you're gonna have to pay us, we'll come after you. But if the ref finds out, you still get paid. So Demetrius is getting his money either way, is what Demetrius is saying. And they're saying if you if you if you betray our
00:46:45
Speaker
our agreement here, you'll have to pay us. And they talk about ancient coins now, which I'm also not sure how that compares to the silver to the old coinage, but maybe it's the same. Who knows? But I thought that was really funny. Like, imagine if your Nick and your dad's like going to Demetrius, like, I'll give you money. My son can't defeat you. He sucks. I need you. I need you to throw the match, please. I'd feel bad. It'd be too bad for Nick. I don't know. Would you take the money?
00:47:16
Speaker
Look, 3,000 drachmas sounds a lot of drachmas. 3,800 drachmas. It's almost 4,000 drachmas. Do you know how much stuff that I don't know you could buy for 3,800 drachmas? Things might have been a bit more precarious. It seemed like it might have been a way to go just to get the money. True. Contract sounds, you don't want to get in with these guys though.
00:47:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, so far, it just sounds like modern wrestling, international wrestling. So far, a lot of this is just a lot of a lot of analogies to what we're seeing now. Yeah, I mean, that's that's about all I have for this kind of time during the ancient Olympics when it was kind of at its heyday.
00:48:03
Speaker
And this style of wrestling was at the top of its game and popularity. Yeah. I don't know. Do you have anything you want to add or include on this? Yeah. I mean, so there's a couple of interesting things on here. I do think it's pretty interesting, but like we have multiple sources clear. It's pretty clear that it was, you know, it was three first to three was the one who won. So that's pretty interesting. We have that so well known.
00:48:31
Speaker
Um, and the same with the, uh, strangle. So it seemed like something I found interesting. Another part of, uh, like the rest, the rules developing over the hundreds of years, this is going on. Is there is a case in here where someone is, um, so it looked like you could take someone down, but if they're like in the prone position on their belly, they would almost, uh, some, a couple of these talk about people kind of going.
00:49:00
Speaker
you know, arms spread out kind of like a par tear situation to keep themselves from getting, you know, pinned and put over to their back. And then it seems like one of the main ways to deal with that was to basically do an RNC. Yeah, so we have we have one thing in this in one of these poems about Dionysus basically, there's this poem where Dionysus
00:49:27
Speaker
Um, we'll be able to, I guess, wed this woman if he can defeat her in a wrestling match. Okay. And her father is the referee. And in this poem, it says that he, he takes her down. She basically is, you know, she's prone. She's in what is basically a, like a par tear position. Um, and then he starts doing the strangle and then the father calls it off and I was like, all right, I see that you, you're going to, I don't want you to kill her.
00:50:02
Speaker
Yeah, so it's pretty clear that, you know, that that was part of the rules. And then another thing we see, there's another one, easy dating would be if that were if you were
00:50:15
Speaker
easiest thing in the world. This is like, this is the future some people want in this country. But, um, another one that was interesting was an account of something that happened like at a game where, uh, someone like got the same position, basically took them down somehow they're on their belly in his hitting this, you know, strangle. And then the ref in, in this account, the referees have to come over and stop the match because
00:50:44
Speaker
What it says is, basically paraphrasing here, it says, at that time in the games, there was no clause that someone could submit by tapping their opponent. So in order to basically not let this guy die, the referees had to say, OK, you won this one.
00:51:04
Speaker
So it seems like at some point there was a strangle involved in here where you could RNC someone, you know, from, and it talks about, he, he basically gets in double grapes prone. He's got the short ride. So he's not all the way down. He's kind of riding up. It specifically says that he's, he, you know, gets his legs in, puts them through his belly, uh, onto his legs and is riding up like really high and then pits this RNC on him.
00:51:32
Speaker
And the rest are like, we have to make sure he doesn't die. So it also seems like at some point they didn't have a tap, maybe assuming that people would go to their back if they got in this position. But then they had to add it in because they realized it was obviously very dangerous.
00:51:49
Speaker
Something I noticed also is I don't feel like there was much reference to leg attacks, which I guess we should be surprised of because Greco Roman, we don't think about them doing leg attacks, right? Yeah. But I don't know. I guess I was a little bit surprised I didn't see a little bit more of leg grabbing referenced. I guess I thought that they might have actually allowed that in the rules.
00:52:17
Speaker
But I mean, I know where I know that Greco Roman was like the modern style was created to mimic the old style as best as possible. Yeah, I don't know. I just thought I just thought that they would have would have had some of it at least. I don't know. Yeah, I found that really interesting, too. I mean, I'm checking a lot of things out here, you know, multiple references to like inside and outside trips. A lot of referencing to strangles. And I also I didn't see any reference to
00:52:48
Speaker
leg attacks. Something that I do find kind of interesting though, which, you know, we're going to have to look at the interpretation here is, um, so, you know, one of these, uh, sort of philosophers Galen writes in On the Natural Faculties. Uh, this was, he was born in, uh, 129 CE. So, you know, fairly later, like the, the sport had evolved by then. Uh, but this is a direct quote.
00:53:17
Speaker
uh where he says but whenever someone is impudently folding himself around the opponent and not yet conceding that he has fallen down he is the same as the idiots of the wrestlers who having been made to fall down by the wrestling experts and are lying with their backs on the ground are so far from noticing the fall that they keep control of the next of the ones having thrown them not allowing them to escape
00:53:46
Speaker
And because of this, they assume that they win. Now, I don't know about you, but I read this as maybe one of the first cases of someone talking shit on guard pulling. So I interpreted initially as complaining about a fish. Like, oh, this guy, this is like a fish. I don't even want to touch him, man. He's awkward to touch. He's all clingy. You throw him and they're just hanging on to you. It's like, come on. Yeah.
00:54:16
Speaker
But no, no, I find I knew what I find the most interesting here is he specifically talks about lying on their backs. They're not noticing that their back is on the mat and they're keeping control of the neck. So what I read there, my interpretation of this is it seems like sort of a classic, you know, maybe like a guillotine situation or a wrestler is, you know, put one in, you know, like a front headlock or a guillotine and is going for that submission or something.
00:54:46
Speaker
And then they get taken down. So. You know, I don't know about your interpretation of this. Yeah. So I don't know your interpretation of this. I guess what I see is that my idea kind of seems like, you know, that could allude to maybe double leg takedown or maybe just set them, you know, like a body lock sort of inside trip situation where, yeah, one person is, you know, being guillotined and
00:55:15
Speaker
maybe is either getting their head up and getting that down somehow. That's what I read that as. So not necessarily necessarily say double leg, but it's interesting. Yeah. Maybe, maybe it's a high dive position. Who knows? But yeah, yeah, I, I, I, I visualizing the same thing. So for that, yeah. And yeah, you're right. It could be totally, it could be another completely other situation.
00:55:41
Speaker
There's also some tell of oh also, you know, we forget to mention I always wondered if this was true or not from looking at Some of the sources in here does seem like yes, the Greeks did wrestle naked Yeah, I mean, you know, I feel like that goes without saying these days Because there's also some sources that talk about other countries and other civilizations finding it extremely vulgar and gross and disgusting that they do that and
00:56:10
Speaker
And then being like, nah, this is awesome. This is so cool. I mean, it doesn't sound great. You know, like, just from a practical standpoint, like, don't you want to support at all? Like, I don't know. I don't get that part. Like, you know, at least a jockstrap makes sense to me. Yes. Just so things aren't flopping. You know, you just want it to be you want everything to feel secure. Right. Yes. They should know that.
00:56:39
Speaker
So an interesting thing for this, maybe this could be part of maybe our next episode. It seems like Turkish oil wrestling, which we all know we all see where they have their oiled up, everything except their pants. It seems like maybe there's some evidence that the reason they added the pants was because of that basically finding it immodest and being like, OK, we'll do the same wrestling. We're going to do something similar.
00:57:08
Speaker
But we got to put some pants on and that might have evolved, you know, having everything be oiled up and, you know, having a lot can happen when you just get all oiled up in your night kid. You know, yes, there's just there's just too much slipping around and and, you know, you really you got to be careful. I think it makes sense to wear the pants. Yes. So it does seem like maybe, you know, it does seem like Turkish oil wrestling might have evolved fairly directly out of Palais.
00:57:38
Speaker
Um, and maybe have been either they put on the pants because it was a modest. And then maybe at that point, the wrestlers of that time realized having something to grab onto was really useful. And who knows maybe that evolved into the style where it became all about grabbing the pants. Um, so that'll be something really that I'm really interested in looking up to is, uh, that connection and, you know, did how closely did it evolve out of the sort of, you know, ancient Greek wrestling.
00:58:08
Speaker
Well, I'm happy to close the books for now on this kind of time and space of wrestling history.
Future Episode on Turkish Oil Wrestling
00:58:15
Speaker
But because you're bringing this up, something I wanted to ask you about was, you know, we've done a couple episodes here. It'd be cool to maybe break something up. I know we've talked about doing film reviews. We've talked about covering wrestling from specifically from different cultures. Is that what you think would be fun to do next episode? Maybe we could do a little bit of a dive into the Turkish oil wrestling.
00:58:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think that would be really interesting. Judging, you know, by from what I'm finding here, it does seem like I would hope we'd be able to find some interesting writing on, you know, how that sport evolved, how the use of the garment evolved to become, you know, such a major part of the sport. And I think, yeah, it's fairly kind of pretty similar. It seems like there's
00:59:01
Speaker
I mean, location-wise, it's right there. Seems like maybe the closest thing we still see to this type of wrestling in some way, possibly.
00:59:12
Speaker
Yeah, quite possibly. Well, all right. Well, let's do that then. We'll check it out. That's what people can expect next episode. And if anyone has any suggestions or want to get in touch with us, if we left anything out that you think we should have talked about, you can always email us at archaicwrestling at gmail.com. But before we go, Sasha, anything on your mind, anything you want to talk about in the wrestling world?
00:59:38
Speaker
You know, we gotta, we might have to start doing something drastic about Penn State. I'm not sure we can let this, I don't know if we can let this keep happening. They can't keep getting away with it. Pennsylvania State University. They can't keep getting away with it. We can't do something about Penn State. I mean, you know. We might need to compromise them to a permanent end sometime in the near future.
01:00:06
Speaker
Well, it sounds, it sounds final. But I mean, yeah, I mean,
01:00:15
Speaker
It's always tricky because what makes sports good and fun to follow is you do want to have teams that are pretty dominant. It's actually good to have them. It pulls fandom in. It gives people someone to root for and someone to root against. I'm someone who really likes to root for underdogs. It's more fun for me.
01:00:36
Speaker
Right. And it's harder to root for Penn State when they're that good. Right. But it's it's fun to to think about, like, oh, I hope so and so climbs the podium a little bit more this year. Right. Yeah. That's that's something that's exciting. And you don't get that if you have perfect parity. Right. So, you know what? I think there's stuff that could be adjusted to make things a little bit more equitable and college wrestling and create a slightly better product. I think we're trying a lot of new things now.
01:01:05
Speaker
that we kind of got to wait and see how they're shaking out. But I do agree that I am seeing less and less. Here's my big frustration with all this, just from a personal standpoint.
01:01:18
Speaker
I am seeing less and less of athletes going to school and developing under a coach in their system and becoming a better wrestler because of that. That is still happening. Make no mistake. Plenty of athletes. That is the case of what's going on. But what I'm seeing with the best athletes in the system right now is they're coming into college already very, very good. Right. And they are now making choices to go to colleges.
01:01:47
Speaker
And it's less about how they're going to develop as a wrestler. That's still a huge part of it. Don't get me wrong. That's still why a lot of people want to go to Penn State. I'm not suggesting that Penn State doesn't develop people. They do. But I guess let me put it this way. When I was coaching high school, there was another school nearby that was kind of a powerhouse of wrestling, like you would recognize the name. Their coach,
01:02:14
Speaker
When I watched him coach, I really thought of him as not a very good coach. He didn't impress me. But lots of people would go to that school because that school had such a long legacy of a lot of success. The baseline of wrestlers that he was working with was very high. They're coming to him already good wrestlers. They're going to this, they're training since they're kids, and they want to go to the best wrestling school in the area.
01:02:43
Speaker
And I did not feel he improved wrestlers very much. And just watching him coach in matches, I'm like, what's this guy even doing? Like, like, he's not coaching at all. Like, he's actually very bad at this, it seems. Whereas, like, I would see my wrestlers come in and I would get kids from, you know, who had never wrestled before.
01:03:04
Speaker
you know, before they stepped on to a wrestling mat in high school and getting to see them grow and how good they could become within four years. That's something that I really like seeing at the college level, too. Right. Yeah. And we're seeing we're going to see less of that happening. Like we're going to see fewer people rising to the top because of that. Or at least I think that that's the case, you know.
01:03:26
Speaker
But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe maybe guys are just coming in so good already. And we know that this is the case. They're coming into college way better wrestlers than they used to be. Right. And maybe that's just not that important at that level anymore. You just got to get the right guys in. They they're good. They're going to improve. However, they're going to improve. You know, you're not going to.
01:03:45
Speaker
I don't know if any coach is really showing that they have the magic sauce to help the number one imagination be a great wrestler as much as it used to be. You know what I mean? The coaches like Aaron Nagal, right, is a good example of
01:03:58
Speaker
good California wrestler, no one's like thinking that he's going to be the next big thing necessarily, goes to Minnesota, obviously improves while he's there. And so Minnesota invests in him. We all get to love him and see him improve and see what kind of wrestler he's able to become after some development and getting it with the right people. And you know what? He's going to go somewhere else.
01:04:22
Speaker
and he's going to get further development. I'm sure he's going to continue to improve and all that, but the people receiving him are receiving somebody that
01:04:32
Speaker
had some growth that they're going to benefit from that they were not directly involved with necessarily, right? And that's okay. But I'm going to miss the narrative of this guy has grown with this coach for these four years, develop relationships with this assistant. They graduate, maybe they follow them to a
01:04:52
Speaker
Olympic Training Center, whatever it might or to the or to RTC or whatever it might be. And I'm just I am feeling less of I'm feeling wrestlers. I shouldn't say that because I'm not in those rooms. I don't know what kind of relationships they're forming, but I feel like I'm not getting to see the same relationships build as like, you know, who's a good example? Like, like.
01:05:21
Speaker
Kale Sanderson and Bobby Douglas. When I watched them work together, you can see there was someone that they were people that they invested in one another to allow Kale to be who he was and become amazing. He wasn't perfect at the beginning. He had to build during his redshirt year, but you can see how he grew. We will see less of that going forward the way things are.
01:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's becoming a bit more business-like, definitely a lot less of people developing while they're in college and at the highest levels, certainly. At the lower levels, I'm sure things are basically the same. I mean, probably there's still a higher level than they used to be. Guys come in, not that good, develop, become great in D3, NAIA, D2, everything, for sure.
01:06:15
Speaker
Um, but it's just becoming increasingly, increasingly rare in D1. Uh, especially with NIL, I mean, it seems like a little bit more of a business like relationship possibly, um, where, you know, and you might be expected to just kind of be who you are coming in and then maybe you get a little bit better, but
01:06:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's just not the same like the romance to the narrative, right? Yeah. And that's just kind of too bad. And I do got to keep it in perspective. 90% of the wrestlers in college, this is not the case for. They're going to a school. They're walking on. They're not getting much money. This is really just about the top athletes.
01:07:02
Speaker
And it's not as big a thing as we're going to make it out to be in terms of, you know,
01:07:09
Speaker
that for the individual wrestlers in their development and all that. But it is I do think it's just going to be another situation like the rich are going to get richer here. It's it's it's still going to filter stuff up. People, you know, wrestlers are going to feel replaced. They're going to feel cast aside. They're going to have to go somewhere else. And I don't know. I just all the movement sure makes things feel less stable. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see.
01:07:38
Speaker
We'll see how this season shakes out. I don't know, man. You got anything else? That's about it. I think that's about it. We covered, I think, a lot of information today. More than I thought we were going to find.
01:07:53
Speaker
Yeah. I'm excited to dive into the Turkish wrestling. It's always been something that I look at from a distance. It's like you see a thing here, a highlight here on the right internet groups and stuff like that. I look from a very confused standpoint. Yeah. I mean, hey, you know what though? It's wrestling. I'm going to like it, so I'm excited to check it out and talk about it, man. Yeah.