Abas finished starving for wrestling
By DAVID WHITE<\/p>\n
It’s national tournament time, and here’s what Stephen Abas is not doing:<\/p>\n
Starving. Dehydrating. Experiencing persistent pain.<\/p>\n
Instead, the former Fresno State wrestler is feeling fine heading into the U.S. Senior National Championships, which run Friday and Saturday in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
The reason: Abas has given up on cutting weight to 121 pounds and has bumped up to 132 pounds for this weekend’s freestyle qualifier for the U.S. World Trials.<\/p>\n
“I was really having to dehydrate my body to make weight, “said Abas, who won a silver medal in freestyle wrestling at the 2004 Olympics. “It was getting pretty tough to make (121 pounds). I was feeling it in my kidneys. Twenty years of wrestling … it takes a toll. After the Olympics, I knew I didn’t want to dehydrate my body like that anymore.”<\/p>\n
Abas, 27, has competed internationally at 121 pounds since 1998 and won three NCAA titles as a Bulldog at 125 pounds.<\/p>\n
He first considered the weight jump when longtime friend Eric Guerrero, a lock on the U.S. world team at 132 pounds since 2001, retired after the 2004 Olympics.<\/p>\n
Abas decided to test the new class at a February tournament in Cuba. How’s this for a mind maker-upper: Abas beat reigning Olympic champion Yandro Quintana 3-1, 7-5 en route to a silver-medal finish.<\/p>\n
“You’ve got to understand, “retiring Bulldogs coach Dennis DeLiddo said. “That Quintana kid is unbelievable. I didn’t think God himself could beat that guy. After he beat that Cuban, you knew Stephen was going to stay there.”<\/p>\n
Just to be sure, Abas tried to make 121 pounds one more time for the World Cup last month in Uzbekistan. He went 10-0 to win the gold but never felt so horrible winning a tournament.<\/p>\n
It was the first time Abas weighed 121 since August.<\/p>\n
“That was by far the hardest time I’ve ever had to make weight, “Abas said. “It took a lot of dehydrating to get there. My whole body was tingling. I was just feeling really, really bad. Usually, I recover once I make weight.<\/p>\n
“This time, I never did recover.”<\/p>\n
Added DeLiddo: “I knew he was having a hard time once he started consistently weighing 140. In college, he never had to cut (weight) like that. He’d be sitting on the ground for weigh-ins playing Nintendo while everyone else was running. He just grew into his body.”<\/p>\n
Abas already is ranked first in the nation at 132 pounds. He’s aiming for his third straight Senior Nationals title and fifth straight berth on the U.S. World team.<\/p>\n
E-mail David White at dwhite(at)fresnobee.com<\/p>\n
(Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service, www.shns.com.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Abas finished starving for wrestlingBy DAVID WHITE It’s national tournament time, and here’s what Stephen Abas is not doing: Starving. Dehydrating. Experiencing persistent pain. Instead, the former Fresno State wrestler is feeling fine heading into the U.S. Senior National Championships, which run Friday and Saturday in Las Vegas. The reason: Abas has given up on […]<\/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-1225","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-jL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225","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=1225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}