Forrest, Ramirez to Travel to Virginia Tech as Oklahoma State’s 133-Pound Spot Remains a Mystery

STILLWATER — Jax Forrest and Ronnie Ramirez will both travel this weekend. Who will wrestle? David Taylor is still keeping that close to the vest.

“I guess we’ll find out,” said a smiling Taylor.

Both are freshmen. Ramirez has now used his five dates, meaning if he took the mat against Virginia Tech, he’d burn his redshirt. Forrest, who enrolled at the semester after wrestling the fall semester at Bishop McCort High School in Pennsylvania, has wrestled four dates. That means if he wrestled Sunday, it’d be his last available date to keep his redshirt.

So, it’s coming up on a time where OSU’s 133-pounder for the postseason will become evident one way or the other. After this Virginia Tech dual, all the Cowboys have left is Iowa on Feb. 22 before the Big 12 Championships.

“You just gotta give guys a chance to wrestle,” Taylor said. “One of the pros and cons to having two good guys wrestling is, one, we know who we’re gonna wrestle and opponents don’t know who we’re gonna wrestle. And I think there’s some good stuff to that. It’s a long season. There’s a lot of things that we gotta balance. We’re always trying to balance more than just what’s going on right now in this moment and the dual meet. There’s always a bigger picture that we gotta keep in mind for everybody.”

Whichever guy makes the walk Sunday in Blacksburg will be up against another tough freshman. Aaron Seidel burned his redshirt and is 11-0 on the season with a 100% bonus rate.

Seidel’s last three dual appearances have included a 12-0 major decision against No. 7 Tyler Knox (Stanford), a 16-0 tech fall against No. 25 Zach Redding (NC State) and a 15-0 tech against Marlon Yarbrough (Virginia). That’s 33-0.

Seidel and Forrest actually have some recent history, as Forrest beat Seidel in Seidel’s final high school match — the Pennsylvania state final last season.

It was a tight match throughout that Forrest won 7-1. The score is misleading, though, as it was 4-1 in the final moments before Seidel went from broke and attempted a late throw that Forrest scored a takedown off of. That match stopped Seidel from becoming a four-time Pennsylvania state champ.

“He’s a tough kid,” said Taylor of Seidel. “He was a tough kid in Pennsylvania and was a tough kid since he was a little guy. Jax and him wrestled last year in the state finals. That was a pretty big match. Kind of move forward, Seidel had a really good start to his redshirt year, and then they started to wrestle him.

“I just think he’s been really good. He’s wrestled all the elite guys his whole life. He’s a tough wrestler. Both of our guys are looking forward to the opportunity to wrestling him. You gotta beat good guys to win dual meets. You gotta beat good guys to be a national champ. Those are the fun things. You don’t look forward to the matches that you get to go out and wrestle someone that’s not gonna challenge you.”