I’ve got a Yahoo 360 profile going and I’m trying to work on getting a network of other amateur wrestling fans. So, if you’d like an invite just leave a comment or use the contact form to send me your email. Hope to see you there!

After a year off and a transfer, native son claims another NCAA crown
By Jim Hague

Mocco had decided to take a year off from collegiate wrestling to concentrate on the international style, with the hopes of qualifying for the Olympics. So he left the University of Iowa, where he had won the 2003 NCAA heavyweight championship with an undefeated season, to spend the entire year getting ready for the Olympics. The dream died in the semifinals. Only two heavyweight wrestlers went to Athens, and Mocco came in third.

Mocco returned from the Olympic Trials as a college wrestler without a home. The University of Iowa didn’t welcome Mocco back. They were upset that he took a year off and left them in the lurch.

So Mocco had to transfer to Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Okla., to get a chance to return to the pinnacle of collegiate wrestling.

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“I had a lot to prove to everyone who felt like I made the wrong decision to take the year off and try for the Olympics,” Mocco said. “I knew what I had to do. People were telling me that I shouldn’t take the year off. People were telling me that I should switch schools. I put myself in a tough situation, but I had to make the most of it.”

Bryan Van Kley/W.I.N. publisher

Mocco pinned name on Hodge Trophy

Oklahoma State’s Steve Mocco finished a perfect 37-0 season at the NCAA Championships in St. Louis, Mo. with his second national title. The Cowboy junior rolled up 17 pins this year, an incredible 16 of them in the first period.

Because of that absolute domination of the heavyweight class, Mocco was selected the 2005 Dan Hodge Trophy winner by the International Wrestling Institute and Museum and W.I.N. Magazine. The Hodge Trophy is given annually to the sport’s top collegiate wrestler. A number of criteria are used with a heavy emphasis put on pinning and domination.

“It’s really a great honor to receive this award,” Mocco said. “I grew up hearing stories, almost fairy tales about (Dan Hodge). I’ve been at little kids tournaments and seen him crush apples with his hands.”

Mocco has been the one who has been a crushing force in Division I wrestling this year. In addition to his 17 pins, the first-year transfer from the University of Iowa also had three technical falls and seven major decisions. Two reversals were the only offensive points he gave up all year.

Guys we know the rules weren’t explained enough and this is a result of the fire we had. We planned on showing every second of the quarterfinal round matches and there we explained the rules much more in detail. After the fire, we had to shorten the episodes to 9 and the quarterfinals became highlights. We either had to drop matches to insert other things or drop some of the explanation moments.

We have all our rules explained on this website. We’ll put a link to them off the home page to make them easier to find. We also are trying to make room for more rule explanations in the show.

Undertand this, all other pro leagues have lots of dead time in their sports to talk about things like rules etc. Even then they only deal with very technical issues because everybody already knows basic basketball, football, baseball rules. People learn the rules over time as kids.

Wrestling has a much harder job then these other sports. Most adults want everything laid out simple and organized and this is okay. However, we don’t have lots of dead time with which to do this. As it is we are showing 49 matches in 9 hours.

A new league of superhero’s made its long-awaited and highly-anticipated television debut Sunday.

Real Pro Wrestling, which features many of America’s top freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestlers competing for $250,000 in prize money, was shown Sunday across the nation on PAXTV. The league consists of eight teams made up of seven different weight classes.

It’s real wrestling with no scripts, no fake blood (but plenty of the real stuff), and no room for crybabies. This is about real athletic competition, and for the wrestling community, a chance to finally showcase to the rest of this sports-crazed society just what the world’s oldest sport is all about.

Sunday’s debut episode featured competition in the 121-pound weight class, showing highlights of the four quarterfinals matches, and the complete semifinals matches. Tim Johnson provided play-by-play, while 2000 Olympic Gold Medalist and 2004 Olympic Bronze Medalist Rulon Gardner and 1988 Olympic Bronze Medalist Nate Carr provided commentary, analysis and opinions. Gardner provided solid information on what each wrestler needed to do to win, while Carr wasn’t afraid to express his opinions and speak his mind.

SOLACE ON THE MAT
After a family tragedy, Toby Willis turns to the sport he loves–wrestling

By Michael Hirsley
Tribune staff reporter

NASHVILLE — When Toby Willis lost five brothers and a sister in a gruesome traffic accident that had a bitter political aftermath, he knew of two places to seek solace.

Both had been shown to him by his father, Rev. Scott Willis, a Baptist minister.

One refuge the younger Willis sought was “in the Good Book,” the Bible. The other was in wrestling.

“Once you’ve wrestled, everything else in life is easy,” said the ex-Northwestern wrestler and Illinois high school champion.

His terse candor neither glorified his sport nor trivialized something that had been unimaginably harsh.

“I don’t talk about that much with most people,” he said of the freakish freeway tragedy on Nov. 8, 1994.

His parents and six of the family’s nine children were heading from Chicago to an outing in Wisconsin with Rev. Willis driving their van when a loose taillight assembly fell off a truck onto the pavement just ahead of them.

They’ll be competing for $250,000 in prize money on national TV

By Tom Reed

Beacon Journal staff writer

Markus Mollica and Joe Heskett are entering a world of professional wrestling void of turnbuckles, turncoats and turn-and-look-away referees.

The Walsh Jesuit High graduates will not wear capes, leap from top ropes or fear reprisal from Vince McMahon. In the new sport called “Real Pro Wrestling,” the pinfalls and takedowns are unscripted and unrehearsed.

The wrestling is legitimate, but will it translate into positive TV ratings? An anxious American wrestling community will find out starting today as Real Pro Wrestling debuts nationally on the Pax Network at 4 p.m.

Fifty-six of the nation’s top amateur wrestlers have been divided into eight teams representing different regions of the country. The wrestlers are vying for $250,000 in prize money and incentives. Mollica is a member of the California Claw, and Heskett, who reached the U.S. Olympic Trials finals last year, wrestles for a team called the Iowa Stalkers.

The eight one-hour shows will be broadcast alternately on Pax and Fox Sports Net. The matches were taped Oct. 8-9 in Los Angeles.

By CARMINE FRONGILLO, Sun Staff

DRACUT — Professional wrestling on television has come a long way since the days when the Grand Wizard, wearing a turban and sunglasses, Bruno Sammartino and Chief Jay Strongbow were the rage.

While World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Inc. shows such as SmackDown! and RAW remain as popular as ever, there really isn’t much on television in terms of Olympic-style wrestling that is available for the sporting public.

This is about to change.

The days of our nation’s best collegiate wrestlers having nowhere to turn, other than to set their sights on the Olympics, once their eligibility runs out is over. Wrestlers finally have a league of their own, albeit one made for TV.

And Dracut’s Sean Harrington, 31, who earned Division 2 All-America status twice while wrestling at UMass Lowell, couldn’t

be happier.

Harrington is one of 56 wrestlers from throughout the United States who make up the rosters of the eight teams that will compete in Real Pro Wrestling (RPW), a new pro sports league that features competitive wrestling in a ‘Survivor’-like format.

Go figure-four

MASKS, CHAIRS NOT ALLOWED

By John Ryan

Mercury News

Our head is spinning. We grew up in the glow of baseball’s purity, and now we don’t know where to turn.

But wait. There’s something new, something real, to restore our faith.

Pro wrestling.

Pro wrestling?

Pro wrestling.

“What makes our league different from all the other leagues out there is we have a zero-tolerance policy for any performance-enhancing drugs, foul language, showboating and bad behavior,” said Chris Chickering, VP of marketing for Real Pro Wrestling.

Again we ask: Pro wrestling? What in the name of Sergeant Slaughter is going on here?

The circuit makes its TV debut on PAX with a one-hour show at 4 p.m. Sunday, the start of a seven-part series featuring 56 wrestlers on eight teams who battled during a tournament in October. (Reruns will air on Fox Sports Net.) Borrowing from the format of the boxing reality show “The Contender,” it highlights personal stories from each athlete. It’s an introduction to what promoters hope will be a league that will begin in 2006, perhaps with a live tour.

If you tune in PAX-TV today at 4 p.m. or Fox Sports Net on Wednesday at 3 p.m. and think you see West Liberty-Salem prep legend Tim Dernlan wrestling, don’t call your cable company or try to fix your television.

And don’t worry, you are not caught in some sort of time warp. It really is him, competing in the Real Pro Wrestling League for the Minnesota Freeze.

This is not just another WWF or WCW knockoff. The RPW is exactly what the name implies — real Olympic-style wrestling, the brainchild of a pair of determined collegiate teammates from Northwestern University.

When you watch RPW action, you will be seeing, according to a league press release, “pure athletic performance and family values-based entertainment, presented in an exciting and dramatic fashion.”

You will also be seeing the last in the long line of one of the best wrestling families in Ohio history. Tim, now 30 years old, and brothers Jeff, Steve and Matt combined to win 10 state wrestling championships during their Tiger days. It is truly fitting that the Dernlan name be associated with RPW.