Tag: Yianni Diakomihalis

Yianni Diakomihalis: Bo Nickal has a ton of potential, but ‘hasn’t really been tested by anybody’

“I think he’s got a ton of potential there – especially so early in his career relative to these other guys.”

[autotag]Yianni Diakomihalis[/autotag] thinks the sky is the limit for [autotag]Bo Nickal[/autotag], but wants to see him pushed.

A fellow multiple-time NCAA Division-I wrestling champion, Diakomihalis has a vested interest in MMA, and has been following Nickal’s (4-0 MMA, 1-0 UFC) rising career.

In just four MMA fights, Nickal has emerged as one of the most highly touted prospects in the sport. He made good on his UFC debut with another first-round finish over Jamie Pickett at UFC 285, but Diakomihalis says Nickal is yet to be properly tested.

“I worked with the guys at Treigning Lab a little bit, so I do kind of hear what they say about Bo, and they’re really excited about what he’s doing, his skills, his striking and everything,” Diakomihalis recently told MMA Junkie Radio. “He looks great. He hasn’t really been tested by anybody. When you see a guy like that and he’s just coming in and putting people on top of their head really quickly, you can’t help but wonder how far they can go, right? I think he’s got a ton of potential there – especially so early in his career relative to these other guys.”

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A four-time NCAA Division-I champion, Diakomihalis is considering potentially crossing over to MMA himself. But first, the 23-year-old wants to see how far he can go in wrestling, and has the 2024 Olympics in sight.

“Right now, my heart is all in for the wrestling,” Diakomihalis said. “I really want to make a run at this 2024 Olympic year, then hopefully down the line continue to compete, and then maybe segue into coaching – or who knows after that.

“There’s a ceiling we all have where I’m not going to get any better than I am right now, and I want to see what that is. If that takes me two years or eight years, whatever. But that’s I think when I’m ready.”

NCAA’s conundrum with wrestling and the Olympics

The NCAA has to figure out how to deal with the 2021 Olympics, assuming they happen. It’s not so simple for wrestling.

The coronavirus pandemic has obviously affected things far more important than sports all across the world. The impact on sports cannot be understated, though. The biggest domino in all of global sports fell on Tuesday, when the IOC announced that the Tokyo Olympics would be postponed until 2021.

This postponement will obviously have ripples throughout the sports world. Individual sports will have to figure out how to work around the Olympics. Will World Championships be held as scheduled, or postponed as they usually are in Olympic years? Will qualifying for Olympic sports reset? Will it be extended? Will deadlines for sports with rankings be based on this year’s rankings or next? All of these questions will have to be answered, of course.

For the NCAA, it will have a very unique set of problems for Wrestling.

Olympic Redshirt

NCAA Wrestling has a unique relationship with the Olympics. The NCAA allows any qualified wrestler (being qualified is essentially based on whether a wrestler has a serious chance of qualifying for the Olympics) to take off an Olympic season without using up a year of eligibility. The redshirted wrestler can train with his team but cannot compete in dual matches. The point of this is that the wrestlers is taking the year to train for the Olympics–so even though they are not injured, they get a redshirt.

Several of the top wrestlers in the NCAA–like Daton Fix, Yianni Diakomihalis, and Max Dean, among others–opted to take a redshirt in 2020. Diakomihalis, in particular, should have been expecting to medal in Tokyo. What happens to all of these athletes in 2021?

The basic principle behind the Olympic redshirt should still stand. Any wrestler who can qualify for Tokyo 2021–whenever and however that is–should be able to take the year to train without losing a year of eligibility. It seems like an easy decision, but it could be complicated further. Now students who were freshman in 2016 or 2020 could effectively be in college for seven years to wrestle (redshirts in three of 2016, 2020, 2021, and 2024). That’s a long time, even if we’re expecting them all to be attending graduate school.

Furthermore, the NCAA has a general problem of what to do about athletes in winter sports, which wrestling falls under. I’ve already made the claim that everyone should be granted another year of eligibility since they didn’t get to compete for a championship. But what happens to wrestling in particular?

Giving a second Olympic redshirt year will create a huge advantage for schools with athletes who have qualified players. Not only do they already have world-class wrestlers, but those wrestlers can still be competing in 2020. In fact, the existence of the redshirt already gives those schools a huge advantage if all wrestlers don’t get another year. These world-class wrestlers preserved a year of eligibility while the other top wrestlers lost one–and it didn’t cost the redshirts a chance at a championship.

The Olympic redshirt has the chance to create a huge inequality in 2021 and 2022, whether the NCAA grants a second year of it or not. Its very existence means that–unless the NCAA gives every wrestler who competed in 2020 another year of eligibility–those wrestlers who took one will be able to dominate college wrestling the next few years while most of their top rivals graduated.