John Fuller\/TheMat.com<\/p>\n
Good things usually come to those who wait. And if that is true, then Joe Warren should have a platter full of good things coming his way over the course of the next four years.<\/p>\n
Warren finally captured a national title, winning at 60 kg\/132 lbs. in Greco-Roman this year. For the past four years, he has sat quietly behind two-time Olympian Jim Gruenwald, and up until last year, Olympic medalist Dennis Hall.<\/p>\n
Warren will lead a new breed of Greco-Roman wrestlers into this year’s Olympic Trials- most of them very young.<\/p>\n
TheMat.com sat down with Warren to talk about his success and the future of Greco-Roman.<\/p>\n
TheMat.com:<\/span> What were your feelings when you finally knew you were about to win your first national title? TheMat.com:<\/span> Over the past five years, you have continued a steady progression. Fourth at Nationals in 2001 and 2002, third in 2003 and 2004 before winning it this year. How have you gotten yourself over the hump? TheMat.com:<\/span> Even though it was your best U.S. finish, was placing second at the Olympic Team Trials last year a hard thing for you to accept? TheMat.com:<\/span> Obviously, Jim Gruenwald is still that guy that you would have to prove yourself against if he came back. Is he someone you would like to face again? TheMat.com:<\/span> The U.S. Greco-Roman team appears to be getting a lot younger. How good for this for Greco-Roman in the U.S.? TheMat.com:<\/span> When you look at your weight class, which wrestler other than yourself do you feel has the most promising upside? TheMat.com:<\/span> What are your thoughts on the new international rules? John Fuller\/TheMat.com Good things usually come to those who wait. And if that is true, then Joe Warren should have a platter full of good things coming his way over the course of the next four years. Warren finally captured a national title, winning at 60 kg\/132 lbs. in Greco-Roman this year. For the past […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B7Di-hV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Warren:<\/span> It was a relief. It’s just another step towards a final goal. This year, I’ve made a lot of steps to get closer to that goal of winning an Olympic championship. It was more relief than anything else.<\/p>\n
Warren:<\/span> I started wrestling Greco-Roman four years ago. I’ve had the same attitude and the same intensity for years. I’ve had to learn a lot of patience and technique. Greco-Roman is a completely different sport than freestyle. I just come to practice every day and work hard. If you keep believing in yourself, good things are going to happen.<\/p>\n
Warren:<\/span> I believed I was the best at that weight class, and I believe that now. Jim Gruenwald is a great wrestler. I still believe that I could have won those matches and it was very disappointing, just to know that I’ve worked four years for something and it was gone. It was a good motivating factor for me coming into this summer. Losing at the Trials was probably the best thing to happen to me.<\/p>\n
Warren:<\/span> If he comes back, he hasn’t trained. I’ve been training as hard as I can. I would love to wrestle Jim. He’s one guy that beat me that I’ve never gotten revenge on. I’ve stepped up my competition. I’ve improved so much, that I would enjoy wrestling him. I don’t think he’s wrestling anymore, though. I think he’s made his mind up. He has had a great career. Every good battle I have is with him. We are very close. He would love to see me win the Olympics. I think he would get as much enjoyment out of that as I would.<\/p>\n
Warren:<\/span> I think the bottom line is that the generation of me, (Brad) Vering, Darryl (Christian) and Justin Ruiz “we’re a little older than Hazewinkel and Lester. We were all All-Americans and national champions in college. All we needed was some high quality wrestlers talent-wise that have been training in an intense environment. I think that it will get younger and younger. We have a lot of great Greco-Roman youth wrestlers. They just need to decide that they want to compete in Greco-Roman. Plus, we just had a veteran class retire. There’s going to be a set of new faces in there and I think it’s great that it’s us.<\/p>\n
Warren:<\/span> There’s a guy from the Ukraine that has beat me twice. That’s the only wrestler that’s in my mind. I don’t look past wrestlers. I wrestle match-to-match now. It doesn’t matter who you put in front of me. I’m too strong mentally to be beat right now.<\/p>\n
Warren:<\/span> I like them. I enjoy it. It makes a good technician win. It takes the referee out of the match and lets the best wrestler win the match. I know a lot of people don’t like this because there’s no forced par terre. Well too bad! If you want forced par terre, go wrestle in college and get some riding time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"