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Daton Fix Wins Bronze at Junior World Championships

Fix bounced back in a big way after dropping his semifinal.

Published

6 years ago

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Daton Fix went to Slovakia this past week to defend his Junior World Title. He ended up finishing with a bronze. Here’s how it broke out.

Fix started out with a pretty standard Daton Fix match. He has arguably the best gut wrench in the game, and he really knows how to use it. He methodically worked his first takedown, locked up his patented trap arm gut and went to rolling. He got three turns and close to a fourth. Chris Perry was in his corner and started to challenge the last turn. Daton stopped him. He then quickly picked up this takedown to finish off the match.

Fix’s second match was nearly just as dominant. No real drama, another quick tech and onto the semifinals.

Then came his somewhat controversial semifinal loss. Here’s how USA Wrestling describes it.

Fix led 2-0 at the break with a step out point and shot clock point. In the second period, Naveen was awarded two takedowns on the edge and a step out to pick up five points. Trailing by three in the final minute, Fix scored on a takedown, but wasn’t able to score on a turn. When the clock ran the score read 5-4 in favor of Naveen. [USA Wrestling]

I wasn’t able to watch this match. I spoke to some wrestling media types that did and this is what was explained to me. For the first takedown, none of Daton’s supporting points touched. Meaning the other guy did get in on a shot, but for it to be a takedown a hand or elbow or some other point on his body has to touch, and it didn’t.

For the second edge takedown, there is a video floating around.

What happens here is Naveen pushes Daton to the edge. Daton puts in a whizzer (where you see him catch Naveen’s arm with his inside elbow) to avoid getting pushed out. If you get pushed out it is 1 point for the other guy. Daton does get pushed out, but still has the whizzer in, which by pretty much every wrestling point-scoring standard should’ve been called at most as 1 point for Naveen. This was called a takedown for 2. You can make your own assessment, but I would argue it was probably just 1 for the pushout and that’s it.

Controversy aside, I’m told Naveen did really bring it and wrestled well here. Losing this dropped Fix into the bronze medal match.

He bounced back nicely and dominated the match for bronze with another 10-0 tech. He got a 4-point takedown and gut wrench in the first to go up 6-0. Here it is.

In the second he hit an ankle pick and another gut wrench to finish it off 10-0 and take home the bronze.

It’s not what he wanted. But winning world medals at any level isn’t easy and Daton has won a bunch of them. Even Gable Steveson, who is widely thought of as the greatest heavyweight prospect ever, lost here. Daton is one of the best I’ve ever seen when it comes to making quick adjustments to his game. He’s also a pretty level-headed wrestler, meaning he knows how to lose, learn from it and bounce back. He’s consistently done it throughout his prep career.

One has to think this could put a chip on his shoulder heading into his first college season. They’ve yet to announce what weight we’ll see him at, but there is a possibility of a matchup with defending NCAA champ Seth Gross in about two months when the Cowboys wrestle South Dakota State in the first dual this season. I’m really looking forward to watching this kid in orange over the next four years.

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