Daton Fix and Daniel Kerkvliet Jr. Win the Wrestling World Team Trials

If you haven’t bought your OSU wrestling season tickets for the next four years you should probably call the ticket office this weekend. Daton Fix will be worth the price of admission.

Let’s recap the World Team Trials starting with Fix, whose star just continues to rise.

Seniors

Fix wrestled like a house on fire this weekend. I don’t think it’s some big secret for fans now, the kid is special. He teched former Cowboy and All-American Eddie Klimara in his first match in 2:07. He then beat two-time All-American Zane Richards 9-2 and teched four-time All-American Zach Sanders in the final of the trials tournament.

Then came the big finale. A best-of-three matchup with Tony Ramos who beat Fix just a few weeks ago at the US Open. Fix looked great here. You could tell he game planned well and was ready for this.

In the first match at the US Open, Daton seemed to push the pace well and have a lot more offense than Tony, but the veteran and two-time world team member played defense until he got an opportunity and scored. That didn’t work here. Daton’s offense was too much and Tony couldn’t slow it down enough to keep him from scoring. Fix got an early pushout in the first and picked up a shot-clock point in the second. Ramos eventually scored on a shot-clock point as well. Daton picked up a takedown on this incredible late scramble to close out the match.

Daton Fix takes match one over Tony Ramos thanks to this incredible scramble.

He’s one match away from punching his ticket to Final X. pic.twitter.com/45Q3CWtB42

— FloWrestling (@FloWrestling) May 20, 2018

The second match wasn’t nearly as close. Fix really controlled the whole thing. Hit a huge throw for four points in the middle of the match and finished it off with a late takedown.

“I’m coming!”

Daton Fix is headed to Final X Lincoln for a showdown with Thomas Gilman. pic.twitter.com/BhtEjsYjuK

— FloWrestling (@FloWrestling) May 20, 2018

Alex Dieringer didn’t fare as well. He dominated his way to the final, but in an upset very few people projected Alex dropped two in a row to Zahid Valencia in the final. Valencia is a big-time talent but still in college and I didn’t think he’d be able to hang with Alex at this point.

Jon Morrison, Eddie Klimara, and Austin Schafer all participated as well. Schafer was hurt and injury defaulted out. Eddie lost out in the consolation semis and Jon finished fourth.

Daton will now move on to the Final X in Lincoln, Nebraska for a best-of-three series with Thomas Gilman to make the senior world team. Not excited about that yet? This is Thomas Gilman.

Juniors

The junior level tournament was Friday and Saturday and one current Cowboy and two future Cowboys participated.

OSU commit Daniel Kerkvliet Jr. is going to be a superstar. The future Cowboy heavyweight flat out dominated his way through the junior 97 KG tournament and qualified for the Junior World Team. He’ll go for his second world title in September in Slovakia. He’s still Cadet-Eligible and plans to wrestle on the cadet world team as well. The only thing that could slow him down in the future and when he’s in college will be Gable Steveson and that’s going to be an amazing rivalry over the next few years that as fans we’ll be lucky to get to witness.

?coming right at ya. pic.twitter.com/fArNpX6uwh

— FloWrestling (@FloWrestling) May 19, 2018

Travis Wittlake Jr. finished third. His only loss was to the World Team qualifier at the weight who also knocked off All-American Alex Marinelli. It would’ve been nice for Wittlake to qualify here, but overall I think he did look better down a weight at 74 KG vs. 79 KG where he wrestled at the US Open.

Freshman Kaden Gfeller also wrestled at 65 KG here and was beat out of the tournament.