A Cowboy, a Fireman, and an Assassin: Greco Wrestler Chandler Rogers is One of a Kind
Photo courtesy of Oklahoma State Athletics
This article is part of our first “long article” request through Patreon! A huge thank you to Alteroc (@crwate01) for this excellent topic suggestion.
In an effort to learn more about combat sports, Alteroc laid out an article format that covers three athletes from a specific sport:
An all-time great
A specialist
Someone “weird”
For our first edition of the Greco-Roman series, we’ll start with #3 - someone “weird”.
There’s a saying in American wrestling circles that “wrestling is wrestling”. That is, the differences among the various rule sets are minor, and the truly skilled can translate their skill sets from one style to another. In reality, this adage doesn’t really hold true, thanks to the level of specialization at the highest levels of the sport and differences in what the rules reward or minimize.
For Chandler Rogers, though, wrestling is wrestling. As a college wrestler, he was unique for his upper body skills and propensity for big moves; now, wrestling Greco, he stands out for his movement from space and attacks that are more common in freestyle and folkstyle.
College
Chandler Rogers excelled in all styles of wrestling in high school. He won four folkstyle state championships in Washington and Oklahoma, and at the national championships in Fargo he claimed multiple All-American finishes in freestyle and three Greco titles. After graduating in 2014, he joined the Oklahoma State Cowboys, one of the top college programs in the country. Unable to break into the stacked lineup, he redshirted his first year and then served as a backup to two-time All-American Kyle Crutchmer at 174 lbs in 2015-16. He actually beat Crutchmer at the Southern Scuffle, but only got his break after Crutchmer suffered an injury late in the season. Rogers jumped in and performed well, earning a win over the highly-ranked Ethan Ramos of North Carolina and reaching the round of 12 at the national tournament. The next year, with Crutchmer back and three-time NCAA champion Alex Dieringer gone, Rogers went down to 165 and had an even better season, eventually finishing fifth at NCAAs. The following year, after a strong regular season earned him the eight seed, he was upset in the first round. This gave him a brutal path to placement, but he won three thrillers in a row over elite competition (Logan Massa, Anthony Valencia, and Chad Walsh) to finish eighth–an All-American once again.
Rogers was an unusual folkstyle wrestler in several ways. Generally, folkstyle is a grind, and success comes from incrementally improving your position. Wrestlers handfight furiously, usually vying for inside control. Rogers’ preferred tie, though, was the two-on-one on his opponents’ left arm. He controlled high on the arm and would look to circle to the outside of the opponent, setting up his fireman’s carry. Unlike the typical carry, he steps with his outside leg, rather than his inside leg, and never actually grabs the opponent’s leg. Instead, he drops into the space just in front of their leg while pulling hard on the arm and rotating his hips. This causes the opponent to flip over their shoulder, often straight to their back.
A typical carry, by contrast, involves grabbing the leg and lifting the opponent over the shoulders, which gives the move its name. Watch the recently retired Nazar Kulchytskyy do it:
Rogers’ version is a hybrid between a shot and a throw that can work in any rule set. (To learn more about the technique, take a look at this video.)
He was also deadly from upper-body positions, especially the over-under and double overhooks. While the underhook is generally considered advantageous, Rogers was able to clamp down and control the tie, making college wrestlers feel uncomfortable and look to back out. From there, Rogers would step in and pull up on his overhooks, and usually hooked the outside leg before throwing. His opponents’ fear and tendency to back away greatly lowered the risk of being countered.
Rogers could also throw from the over-under position, and when opponents got there they usually tried to back away. When they didn’t, they usually paid the price.
Rogers was very good from the top position, both with forward pressure and claw rides as well as throwing in legs. What made him stand out, though, was his use of the assassin. The assassin is a pinning combination Ben Askren often used, but is still fairly rare. In its most basic form, the top wrestler uses a front headlock grip while positioned behind the opponent, then steps over the bottom wrestler’s body, pulling the bottom wrestler to their back. Purdue All-American Chad Welch demonstrates here:
Rogers’ innovation was to lock up the hold while the opponent was still in their base rather than flat on the ground. From this position, it’s easier to get the lock, but much harder to drive across and turn the opponent. Rogers instead pulled opponents toward himself and drove them over their own heels. It might not look like it, but the hold is very tight, and once he got them over it meant the end of the match.
For his senior season, Rogers was once again ranked highly at 165 as Oklahoma State tried to manage the upper half of their lineup through injuries and weight descents. Ultimately Rogers was forced to wrestle off against Joe Smith, son of Cowboy head coach and Olympic champion John Smith. Rogers lost and was forced to sit and watch as Smith failed to place at the national tournament.
Greco-Roman
After college, Rogers decided to focus on Greco-Roman full time. Although 77 kg (170 lbs) seemed like a natural home for the former 165 lb wrestler, Rogers chose to wrestle at 82 kg. (Of course, being the maniac he is, he also wrestled freestyle at the Pan-American championships that April and won at 79 kg.) He had a good run at the 2019 US Open, finishing third and qualifying for the World Team Trials.
After a disappointing 0-2 performance at the Trials, he began preparing for Olympic qualification. Since 82 kg is not an Olympic weight, I assumed he would move down to 77; instead, apparently determined not to cut weight, he went all the way up to 87 kg, 27 lbs heavier than he finished his folkstyle career. This gives him both a strength and a length disadvantage, a tough combination. He’s shown that he can deal with it, though; in 2018, he wrestled 86 kg at the U23 freestyle championships and had an impressive run to the final series, beating Taylor Venz and pushing Myles Martin to the limit. 82 will probably be his home after the Olympics, but his insistence on going up in weight might just be another quirk.
Although he was strange in folkstyle for his upper body wrestling, what makes him unique in Greco is the way he wrestles like a folkstyle or freestyle competitor. We’ve already seen his no-leg carry; while working from outside control and not grabbing legs is rare in collegiate wrestling, however, the way he changes level and penetrates like a leg attack is what makes him distinctive in Greco.
Moreover, his stance, while more upright than you typically see in folkstyle, is more hunched over than his opponents in Greco. He likes to operate at a much longer range than most Greco wrestlers, preferring to set up his attacks and then bring his hips in rather than pummeling with his chest against his opponents. When trailing late in a match, most Greco wrestlers step in aggressively to create scoring chances. Rogers, by contrast, likes to circle and move more from the outside, looking for angles to get his two-on-one or a deep overhook. His bent-over stance and short stature for the weight make him susceptible to front headlocks, but he clears out of them very well. He’s also good at avoiding going over when his opponent tries to throw. When Rogers does get in position for more conventional throws, he’s money.
He mostly scores with unorthodox moves simply because he’s better at setting them up.
When he gets on top in Greco, Rogers has a serviceable gutwrench. He’s very good at keeping hold of the arm from his carry and locking up a trap-arm gut, which can be a match ender.
Of course, he also works the assassin quite a bit too. Circling out front from par terre is actually fairly common in Greco-Roman, but the assassin is not. Since the bottom wrestler in the international styles will put his chest flat on the mat, Rogers finishes with the classic stepover rather than pulling into himself.
About a year ago, Rogers took a job on the coaching staff at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. This location allows him to work out with the full-time wrestlers at the US Olympic Training Center, also in Colorado Springs, so he’s been getting serious Greco training for the first time. It remains to be seen what impact this will have on his style. As his college career progressed, his baseline skills improved, and he became a somewhat more orthodox wrestler. Hopefully, training with the best Greco wrestlers in the country sharpens his game without transforming it too much. Watching the sport is more fun when guys like Chandler Rogers take wacky stuff to a high level. Stay weird, Cowboy.