Three time World Team member Brent Metcalf went ‘On The Mat’ a few weeks ago with Kyle Klingman to discuss training for a World title, what it is about Terry Brands that makes him so great, and a little into Metcalf’s wrestling origins. If you have never heard ‘On The Mat’, it can be heard on 1650 AM (Waterloo) or you can head over to The Open Mat, and check out the podcast center (while you are there, check out Jason Bryant’s Short Time podcasts as well).
Some of the comments that were made by Brent starting with would he prefer to go to the Team camp in Colorado or to just stay and train with the HWC Brent said, “Obviously you would like to stay home, but you have a larger variety of training partners and high level partners [in Colorado]..I would like to be at home, but that’s the thing about wrestling, sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do.” That pretty well sums up wrestling in a nut shell. You would like to be able to stay home, but if you want to be the best sometimes you have to go somewhere else. Somewhere you may not want to go, but you know you should be there.
When asked about the structure of the camp that coach Bruce Burnett puts together and how he likes it, Metcalf responded that Burnett does a good job. He goes on to say that since he has been on three World Teams he knows what he needs to do to get himself ready, and that probably helps him from worrying about whether he would rather be training this way or another. Metcalf also mentioned that he would like to work out with Jordan Burroughs in a live go scenario more often, but the structure of the camp doesn’t always allow for that. He also said that he is still motivated to wrestle by the goals he hasn’t achieved.
Klingman then asked who is giving him more input at the moment, Tom or Terry Brands and Metcalf responded with Terry. He called Terry one of the greatest technicians available and that he tries to tap that resource as much as possible. When Klingman pushed for further explanation on what makes Terry such a great coach Brent responded, “There’s no gray area with Terry, there is a right way, and there is a wrong way. Just like there is a right way to drill a single leg, and a wrong way to do it. For a guy like me, that is what I need.”
Toward the end of the interview Metcalf offered reasoning why this time he won’t be coming home empty handed, “This time will be different because I will make it different. I am going to take one match at a time, like I always have, and when it is time to go, I am going to let it fly.” The final thing Metcalf touched on is his family and how he got started in wrestling. He also speaks on how gymnastics was beneficial to him, it’s a very interesting take. Overall a really solid interview start to finish, definitely worth the listen.
USA Wrestling also released their World Preview for the 65 KG weight class. On their preview they list off the FILA rankings which we talked about when Metcalf finally broke through the rankings at #11. Unless you are already a World medalist, it’s hard to get a lot of recognition from the FILA rankings for Americans, because a lot of the tournaments used for ranking criteria are overseas. In the end it won’t matter, because Metcalf has already shown he can beat the guy at the top of the rankings. If Metcalf truly is the best in the world, he is going to have to prove it by beating the rest of the world, and there is no other way around it.
Metcalf is currently riding a hot streak and his win over Haislan Garcia of Canada at the Golden Grand Prix looks to be his strongest win (technically the win over Kurbanaliev was exhibition) as Garcia was the 7th place finisher at the 2012 Olympics, and 8th place finisher at the 2013 World’s. If Metcalf wrestles like he did at the Grand Prix, or the U.S. Open there is nothing that anyone on Earth will be able to do to stop him from reaching the peak and bringing home gold for Team USA.
Date of competition: Tuesday, Sept. 9