Kyle Dake vs. Frank Chamizo: Match Preview
Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Although the 2020 Olympics–originally scheduled for this week–have been postponed, we’ll still get to see some of the top wrestlers in the world do battle as Kyle Dake (#2 in the latest TFS rankings at 74 kg, #3 pound-for-pound) takes on Frank Chamizo Marquez (#4 at 74, #11 PFP) on Saturday. The event is in Austin, Texas and will air at 8 pm eastern on Flowrestling. For our discussion of the undercard, and some of the drama and controversy surrounding the event, be sure to listen to the podcast Ed Gallo and I recorded; this article will focus on the main event.
Both wrestlers are known for their defensive skills, but what is most striking to me is the level of understanding and pure genius they bring. This match will pit two different approaches to scrambling, and to wrestling overall, that should be very exciting. Let’s take a look at how each athlete operates, and then see how they match up.
Kyle Dake
Kyle Dake is perhaps best known for his college career at Cornell, where he became the third wrestler to win four NCAA Division I national championships. Even more remarkably, he did it at four different weight classes, progressing from 141 as a true freshman in 2010 to 165 as a senior in 2013. Internationally, however, injuries and the legendary Jordan Burroughs kept him off the US world team at 74 kg. Despite a win over world champion Denis Tsargush and great scrambling, it wasn’t until 2018, when UWW added the 79 kg weight class, that he was able to compete at worlds. He took full advantage of the opportunity, capturing the 2018 and 2019 world championships in dominant fashion.
Dake is generally a defense-first wrestler, often quoting the cliche from ball sports that “defense wins championships”. This begins with his stance: he is usually low enough to put a hand on the ground and will sometimes drop to one knee. He almost never makes first contact with his opponent, but instead moves into range until they reach their hands out to make contact with him. Only then will he look for his own tie up, building from wrist or elbow control up to a collar tie or underhook. He’s very difficult to move out of position or gain a dominant position against, making him hard to attack.
Offensively, Dake mainly hits variations on one shot. He reaches with his right hand to his opponents’ right leg while stepping in and dropping to his right knee. He can vary the shot and follow through to make it resemble a high crotch, a single, or a duck-under, but the motion is basically the same. He finishes very well, and almost never gets countered.
Recently, he’s also shown a good single leg to the other side, especially off the front headlock. He also is effective with underhooks, either to set up a leg attack or to attack the body like a Greco wrestler. He has great explosiveness in his hips, and when he gets to a dominant position he always looks big.
He’s very good on the edge of the mat, both in terms of driving his opponent out and reversing the position to keep himself in, especially with his use of underhooks.
What really sets Dake apart, though, is his defense and scrambling. When opponents get to his legs, he aggressively pressures back into them. Instead of just focusing on keeping himself upright, Dake looks to break down the opponents’ position (for more on Dake’s scrambling, take a look at this video from Dan Sweeney). In recent years, he has used the chest wrap to score big, and the threat of it often prevents opponents from driving in to finish their takedowns.
Dake rounds out his game with world-class top work, especially his gut wrench. While American wrestlers often struggle to score from par terre, Dake can turn even the best international wrestlers. Most recently, he manhandled frequent world and European medal winner Soner Demirtas.
In his 2019 wrestle-off for the US world team spot against Alex Dieringer, Dake showed a new look with his stance and motion. Instead of staying in a low, square stance and stalking forward, Dake looked to circle away from his opponent from a much higher stance. He was repeatedly warned for passivity, found himself pushed to the edge of the mat frequently, and didn’t really generate any offense. His ability to dig in with an underhook when Dieringer closed in and his superiority in the resulting positions allowed him to win convincingly, but it seemed strange for a world champion to change so dramatically. He used this new look to some extent at the world championships, where he again won every match without much trouble.
Watch the Dieringer matches here and here
One of Dake’s weaknesses was lateral movement and wrestlers who attack a weighted leg, rather than the unweighted leg (that is, they circle and pull one direction and then shoot to that same side, rather than the more common approach of swinging back to the other leg). This was because his low stance left him slightly heavy on his feet. He also had to fend off far more leg attacks than a wrestler of his caliber usually does, in part because he spent so much of the match within arm’s reach of his opponent. In some ways, his more movement-based approach is perfect, because it solves those problems and still gives him some opportunities to enter the positions where he excels. I still don’t love it, but I’m very interested to see whether he keeps it up.
Frank Chamizo
Frank Chamizo Marquez began his wrestling career in Cuba and won a bronze medal in the 2010 world championships. At the time, he was just 18 years old, and competed at the lightest weight of 55 kg. After putting on some size and marrying a woman from Italy, he became a star for the Italian national team by winning the 2015 world championship at 65 kg. He followed it up with an Olympic bronze, then moved up to 70 kg and won another world title. In 2018, he moved up again to 74 and launched an intense rivalry with Burroughs. He finished fifth at 2018 worlds and then captured the silver medal in 2019.
Chamizo doesn’t like to lock up with his opponents, instead keeping a bit more space as he changes level and circles to create openings. He will sometimes hold a loose collar tie with his left (lead) hand, but just as often he’ll post on his opponent’s shoulder or tie up their fingers. He keeps a fairly high stance, which allows him to move freely and rely on his incredible scrambling ability to keep him out of trouble.
Offensively, he looks to get angles on his opponents and then chase down a leg, especially with misdirection and snapdowns. When he gets his opponent to step out of position, or makes them come out of position with a heavy snap, he circles hard and attacks a leg.
He’s also great at dropping in on an outside-step high crotch, slipping past an opponent’s head-hands defense and then sliding his inside knee in to improve his position.
Though he isn’t a high-volume shooter, his finishing is excellent.
Even more so than Dake, Chamizo’s defense is mind-boggling. While Dake mostly looks to collapse space and break down his opponent’s position, Chamizo likes to maintain space and keep himself balanced and mobile. He always works to keep his hips free, either by pushing opponents down below his knee or pulling them up with a whizzer. He continues to wrestle through bad positions, including after the takedown has been awarded (see the winning score from 2015 world final); he often seems to outlast his opponents who expect the scramble to be over. If you watch any of the video clips in this article, make it this one:
Chamizo is also great from both sides of the seatbelt-whizzer position, and looks to score rather than holding on. His underhook defense is also unique: instead of fighting to stay square and pummeling inside, Chamizo sometimes circles into the opponent and steps behind their leg, then swims his arm underneath. The result can be a merkle position, which in freestyle is usually an advantage for the bottom wrestler; a Peterson roll, which takes the opponent to their back; or he can reach all the way to a far leg, usually leading to a high crotch position.
The Matchup
So how will this match play out? Increasingly, I see freestyle matches as having two components. There’s the battle of the one-pointers, i.e. shot clock points and stepouts, and the bigger value scores. Dake is excellent on the edge and with an opponent pushing into him, and it seems hard to imagine Chamizo taking him out. Moreover, Dake tends to attack at the start of matches, often getting to a leg in the opening 10-15 seconds. This helps him avoid passivity calls, even if he plays his new-look, shifty game.
If Chamizo can’t win this match on stepouts and shot clocks, he’ll have to win the takedown battle. Frank’s outside step shot is sneaky in the way it allows him to get underneath the opponent’s hands and cover distance, but even if he gets in good position, being head-outside against Dake is always a dangerous place to be. Dake doesn’t take a lot of half shots or bad shots, making it difficult for Chamizo to chase down reattacks like he can against other wrestlers. He’s also very good at holding position and not being moved by his opponents’ snaps and pulls, which limits Chamizo’s offensive opportunities even more. Dake doesn’t have many matches against speed- or misdirection-based wrestlers, but again, even if Chamizo can get to the legs, he’s less than halfway to scoring. Still, that’s probably Chamizo’s best chance: catch Dake by surprise on a single leg, get it up, and finish cleanly.
Chamizo is also very difficult to score on, and has scored on the counter against some of the best leg attackers in the world. The problem I see is that Dake attacks high on the hip, and is happy to have his leg attack turn into an underhook or seatbelt. Frank Molinaro isn’t really a guy who comes to mind when I think of elite leg attackers, and he was able to score on Chamizo at the 2016 Olympics by attacking the hips rather than low on the leg. Dake is great at getting to the hips and body, and great at scoring from there. Dake’s size advantage could make this even more of a problem for Chamizo. Chamizo’s trick of swimming out of the underhook seems less viable considering Dake’s scrambling ability (plus, Dake and training partner Gabe Dean have been working on that exact position).
Finally, Dake’s par terre game could be a problem. Dake has put up big points against the world’s elite with his tight squeeze on top, and in a close, low-scoring match that’s a game-changer. Chamizo’s defense on bottom is pretty good, but Dake’s strength advantage could be decisive. When Chamizo gets on top, he sometimes gets a quick turn in transition, but when opponents have the chance to get set defensively he doesn’t have much success.
My commentary thus far has been very favorable to Dake, but that doesn’t mean I think the match will be a blowout. Dake is notorious for winning tight matches, both pulling out the close ones but also letting opponents hang around that he should beat by wider margins. His approach to the Dieringer series, in particular, showed he is willing to limit his own offense a little to shut down that of his opponent. The downside to that approach is the margin for error in a way becomes smaller: in a match that comes down to two exchanges, losing one can be fatal. The ongoing pandemic has reduced everyone’s access to training partners, and Dake hasn’t had the opportunity to see anything like Chamizo’s speed recently. Chamizo is also great at finishing leg attacks, and it’s not absurd to think he could score a takedown. Still, I think the overall dynamic of the matchup is that Dake will get to his positions more than Chamizo gets to his own, and Dake has a better chance of scoring when he does get where he wants. The pick is Kyle Dake by decision.