On a brisk spring evening in Times Square in New York, some civilians saw an unfamiliar site as they walked the streets. What they saw was an international wrestling event known as Beat The Streets where the best freestyle wrestlers in the USA pounded the best wrestlers in the world into submission winning by a final score of 8 matches to 3.
One of the USA’s most promising young wrestlers showed just how talented and how much potential he has. This wrestler is Kyle Snyder who is only 18 years old. He completed his senior year of high school while training at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado with some of the best senior level athletes around.
At Beat The Streets, Snyder took on five-time world champion Khadjimurat Gatsalov from Russia. Snyder wrestled a great match against his counterpart, who is 12 years older than him, but despite a valiant effort dropped the match 6-3 to Gatsalov.
Some recently graduated college all stars competed for Team USA and did extremely well. David Taylor is one of these wrestlers. He won his match against Yabrail Hasanov from Azerbaijan by a final score of 6-0 in dominating fashion.
Ed Ruth, who is Taylor’s teammate from Penn State, also wrestled and was even more impressive in his technical fall victory over Taymuraz Friez from Spain. A couple other graduates of the class of 2014 include Logan Stieber and Nahshon Garret,who both suffered rough losses.
Jordan Oliver and Brent Metcalf, former NCAA Champions, both wrestled at Beat The Streets and both won very decisive matches. Metcalf, who has been on a hot streak as of late, defeated the number one ranked wrestler in the world in Magomed Kurbanaliev from Russia. Metcalf downed the top ranked wrestler after coming off a perfect performance at the World Cup, where he went undefeated.
The USA closed the night by sending out 74 kilogram wrestler, Olympic gold medalist, and two-time world champion Jordan Burroughs to face Atsamaz Sanakoev from Russia. The match started out slow for Burroughs, but late in the final period Burroughs exploded for points and ended up winning by a touch fall. This capped an immaculate night for the American team as they showed how promising the future is for USA wrestling.
Beat The Streets is estimated to have raised over 1.6 million dollars for youth wrestling programs all over the state of New York. A lot of this success can be attributed to the President of operations Mike Novograts. This was the third annual Beat The Streets held in New York and is planned to be held there again next year.
