February 5th, 2008

Chicago Cup, originally uploaded by jbar2008.
Tonight the men’s greco team had a dual meet with the Bulgarian team. We beat them 5 out of six matches. Lindsey Durlacher started the night off right by beating his opponent. It was a close match, he found a way to win. Willie Madison lost to Armen Nazarian, and for those of you who know who he is you know that he is tough, a multiple time Olympic and world champion. Harry Lester looked explosive as ever and dominated his match. TC Dantzler was a home town favorite and won his match by turning his opponent in two consecutive periods. I won my match. I have been wanting to score more on my feet and I was able to do that tonight as I won my match. Dremiel Byers also won his match by reverse lifting his heavyweight opponent from the mat and tossing him over his head for a bid five point throw. We wrestled in the welsh ryan arena at Northwestern University and there was a pretty good sized crowd there to watch it.
All in all the event was very well organized and it was a lot of fun. We started the day off by working out at niles high school, and I actually met one of my high school coach’s coach. He coached down in the San luis valley, coincidentally where my wife is from. It is amazing that it is such a small world. A few years ago I didn’t even know that the San luis valley existed and now I run into people with ties there all of the time. After our workout we went to city hall and met the mayor of Chicago. We snapped some photos and had a good time, then we ate at the espn zone and played some games there. When we has finished with that we went back to the hotel and rested before it was time to head to the competition site. We went to the competition, signed some autographs, wrestled, had a nice meal and now it is the end of a long day. The event was great though. I wish that we had more events like this one, and I hope Chicago wins the bid for the 2016
olympics.