Hyperbole
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In the surprisingly good movie, The Greatest Showman, Phineas T Barnum says, “hyperbole isn’t the greatest crime”, but I find it damn annoying. So many times a team wins a title, a player has a great season, there’s a great game, etc and people say it’s one of or the greatest of all-time. They’re the GOAT (which is funny because 30 years ago calling someone a goat meant they blew a big moment) is said all the damn time. When everyone is the GOAT, no one is. It seems to be indicative of the self-absorbed one moment culture we find ourselves in. Yet, here we are having to talk about a couple greatest of all-time performances.
Zahid Valencia won his first World Championship with five wins outscoring opponents 49-0 in one of the most dominant American performances ever. His 2025 will be legendary. He won the spot over Dake, Starocci, Kekeisen, and more making you wonder why he doesn’t just transfer to Mexico for 2028. I guess if you believe you are the best in the world you don’t care. This is probably the part where you are supposed to compare it to other performances, but that’s difficult to do across eras and rule sets. What we do know is it’s an Olympic weight class and he beat a 2-time World Champ from Iran in the semis. You can’t poke holes in it. You will forever have to bring up Zahid in 2025 when you talk about the best American performances of all-time
There were 30 World/Olympic gold medals for USA Men’s Freestyle since the 2000 Olympics before this World Championships. There are one handed football catches, diving plays in baseball, and amazing basketball plays all the time. The sample size for come from behind American gold medal wins is much smaller. Trent Hidlay was down eight and a challenge away from losing by technical fall. The review came back points for Hidlay letting his trademark pace and underhooks stage a comeback we may have never seen before. It’s almost a too good to be true movie script match. It’ll live on forever
Like I said, the over use of greatest ever’s bother the hell out of me. We just happened to see two of them in the last few days.
