‘It Was a Pretty Awesome Match’: David Taylor Recaps Jax Forrest’s Win Against Aaron Seidel

STILLWATER — David Taylor got a front-row seat to one of the better wrestling matches of the college season this past weekend.

In a battle of freshmen phenoms, Jax Forrest beat Aaron Seidel 10-9 in a bout where both guys left it all on the mat.

Seidel took Forrest down twice in the opening period, but Forrest’s second-period takedown came with four nearfall points, which ended up being the difference in the match. The win moved Forrest to 8-0 while it stopped Seidel’s streak of 12 straight bonus-point wins to start his college career.

“It was a fun match to watch and be a part of,” Taylor said Wednesday. “Both of those guys, they’re young and they let it fly, very much. It was a fun match to kind of be in the corner. It was a great learning experience for Jax. That first period went about as bad as it could go. He got taken down twice, kid had almost 40 seconds of riding time, and he didn’t really get deterred and was able to just kind of refocus and find a way to win.

“You’re gonna go through your college career, and there’s gonna be matches that you’re just gonna have to do that. So, it was a good learning experience, but overall, yeah, it was a pretty awesome match.”

It was a highlight of perhaps the deepest weight class in college wrestling this year, and much of that depth is youthful.

Of the top seven guys in Intermat’s 133-pound rankings, five are freshmen. No. 6 Forrest and No. 7 Seidel join No. 2 Marcus Blaze (Penn State), No. 3 Ben Davino (Ohio State) and No. 5 Kyler Larkin (Arizona State) as highly ranked freshmen in the class.

That group of five is a combined 74-3 as freshmen. Two of those losses are to another freshman (Forrest beat Seidel, and Blaze beat Davino), and the other is a medical forfeit from Larkin.

These guys’ weights could fluctuate throughout their careers, but this season could spawn rivalries that span the next four or five seasons.

Taylor said Forrest having to navigate some deeper waters against Seidel will be good for him in the long term.

“When you’re a guy who is used to dominating, how do you react when you’re in a match and you’re not doing that?” Taylor said. “I think that it was a good test for him. You want, obviously, to be the best, you gotta be able to do both of those things. It’d be great if you could go out and do that to everybody, but there’s really good guys in the weight class, in the country, in the world. He’s gonna have to learn how to wrestle the closer, competitive matches also. That was a good one.”