The first top-level national competition held by USA Wrestling since the 2004 Olympics will take place Friday, April 29, and Saturday, April 30. This is the annual U.S. Senior National Championships, and it will be held at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Competing for the honor of being the U.S. national champion in the seven weight classes each in men’s freestyle, Greco-Roman, and women’s freestyle wrestling will be the top active wrestlers in America. As usually happens after an Olympic year, several of those who competed at the 2004 Olympic Games will not be wrestling. Some, like Greco-Roman heavyweight Rulon Gardner and freestyle heavyweight Kerry McCoy, have announced their retirement. Others, like 2004 freestyle gold medalist Cael Sanderson, are simply sitting this event out, leaving unstated their future plans. Thus the door is open for a new class of wrestlers to pursue their dreams of winning Olympic gold, this time in Beijing in 2008. Also of special interest will be that this event will be the first U.S. Nationals contested under the controversial new rules of FILA, the international wrestling federation. The Nationals are also a major step on the road to the World Championships. The top seven place winners in each weight at this event qualify for the 2005 Senior World Team Trials, which will be held in Ames, Iowa, June 17-19. After that, the top U.S. wrestlers will compete at the 2005 World Wrestling Championships, which this year take place at the Laszlo Papp Sportarena in Budapest, Hungary, from September 26 to October 2, 2005. A one-hour tape-delayed highlight broadcast of the finals of the 2005 U.S. Nationals will be shown in the U.S. on ESPN2 on Monday, June 6, at 5:00 PM EDT. The broadcast team will include play-by-play announcer Van Stokes, color commentator and former UFC and U.S. Greco-Roman national champion Randy Couture, and wrestling broadcaster Joe Miller.There will also be a live audio webcast of the earlier rounds of the U.S. Nationals on Takedown Radio, working in conjunction with TheMat.com. According to TheMat.com, ‘Hosts Scott Casber and Chris Chickering will provide play-by-play, interviews, scoring updates and commentary throughout the two-day event. Play-by-play will not be available for the gold-medal matches due to USA Wrestling’s television contract with ESPN, but scoring updates will take place during the gold-medal sessions.’ Also, ‘The broadcast can be accessed through TheMat.com’s new Audio/Video web site, and is available for all wrestling fans, not just USA Wrestling members.’ TheMat.com has a special coverage section for the U.S. Nationals which includes previews by style and weight class, schedules, seeding information, and much more. It can be seen at: http://themat.com/specialevents/2005/usnationals/default.asp
