Olympic Gold Medalist Gable Steveson Returns To Minnesota For Senior Year
A look at everything Gable Steveson has done thus far in Freestyle Wrestling
Gable Dan Steveson has very quickly become widely known around the world, just after claiming Olympic gold last month in August.
He’s one of just two American men, and just one of three Americans overall to claim a gold medal whilst wrestling at the 2020 (2021) Olympic Games.
Steveson first defeated 2016 Olympian Aiaal Lazarev via tech fall, 10-0, in his first match, before defeating 2016 Olympic gold medalist, seven-time European champion, and two-time world champion Taha Akgul 8-0.
The remarkable thing about this: Akgul wrestled three other matches where not a single opponent scored a point on him, while Steveson scored eight on him, and he couldn’t score on Steveson himself. That’s just astonishing.
Akgul went on to claim bronze, becoming a two-time Olympic placer.
Next Steveson defeated fellow young gun Monkhtoriin Lkhagvagerel 5-0, before going into his gold medal match with Geno Petriashvili, a three-time world champion, and 2016 Olympic bronze medalist.
This was Steveson’s only competitive match, his only opponent that could score a point on him. He ended up winning the match 10-8 to claim the Olympic gold medal.
Two of these guys he beat had already placed at the Olympics, and two of them also placed at this one, behind him.
This improved Steveson’s worlds record to 35-6, and he’s defeated five of those opponents that defeated him.
What is it that’s made Steveson so unbeatable?
Well, for starters, his parents are obsessed with wrestling, hence the reason they named him Gable Dan Steveson, after Dan Gable, a two-time NCAA Division I National Champion, and the 1972 Olympic gold medalist in freestyle wrestling. He even has a grip coined after him, the ‘Gable Grip’, and finished off his career with a collegiate record of 117-1.
Steveson’s parents put him into wrestling once he could walk. He won a number of youth national tournaments, en route to a championship final as an eighth grader. He’d go into that match with a seasonal record of 39-2, and would lose at the finals to a superior athlete.
However, Steveson really learned from this effort, and didn’t lose another match throughout high school. In fact, in his final four years, all four high school years, he claimed the State Championship, winning his last 171 matches straight prior to leaving for college.
This made his school record an astounding 210-3.
Following this, he decided to join the University of Minnesota, an NCAA Division I college.
During his first year, he completed a record of 35-2 for the team, before going 15-0 his sophomore year.
Steveson claimed second place at the Big Ten Championships as a freshman, and took first place as a sophomore.
Next came another perfect season, going 17-0 en route to the NCAA Division I National Championship at 285 lbs, also winning the Big Ten Championships that year as well. This improved his overall collegiate record to 67-2.
As you might’ve noticed, Steveson still has yet to complete his senior year.
Many of us have been left wondering what’s next for him after capturing Olympic gold.
We’ve recently been enlightened however that he’ll be returning to the University of Minnesota for his senior year.
This is incredibly exciting to hear, because we’ve also been made aware that he signed a contract with WWE.
That’s of course good for his name value, but for someone that’s tossed the idea of a mixed martial arts career around, it’s great to see him continuing to compete in a sport that’ll make him better at that.
Not to mention, Steveson is just 21 years old. He won’t turn 22 until next May, and that’s very exciting, he’s seemingly got all the time in the world.
Could he follow in Brock Lesnar’s footsteps? A man that had an NCAA Division I record of 106-5, a two-time All-American who claimed silver at the 1999 NCAA Division I National Championships, and won gold that next year in 2000.
As we’ve seen, Steveson is a wicked athlete, like Lesnar, and you may be interested to hear, Lesnar also won it at 285 lbs. And Steveson, like Lesnar, is a two-time NCAA Division I All-American, perhaps soon-to-be three-time All-American.
Of those two lone defeats in college, where he’s gone 67-2 thus far, they both come to fellow NCAA Division I National Champion Anthony Cassar 3-4.
It appears Gable Steveson has the entire world at his fingertips.
After winning the Olympics, he thought trying out for the Buffalo Bills would be interesting. He then flirted with the idea of trying professional wrestling, continuing with amateur wrestling, and an MMA career.
We now know he’s doing two of which. How long do you think it’ll take before we see him claim another freestyle championship, and how long do you think it takes before he steps inside the octagon?
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