20-Year-Old Prodigy Becomes World Champion Without Stepping in an NCAA Match

The last time an American won a Senior World Championship in lightweight freestyle wrestling was in 2006. That year, Bill Zadick defeated Georgia’s Otari Tushishvili in the 66kg final in Guangzhou to win gold. Zadick had already made his mark in college wrestling, winning an NCAA title for the University of Iowa in 1996 before reaching the top of international freestyle wrestling. Twenty years later, another American has finally brought the title back. This time, it is 20-year-old Bo Bassett. But unlike Zadick, Bassett achieved the feat without wrestling a single NCAA match.