Wrestling Notebook: Forrest Controversially Falls Short of Bronze, Wolbert Flips to Michigan

Jax Forrest began celebrating in Croatia, thinking that as a high school senior he had won a medal at the World Championships, but then everything went haywire.

An Oklahoma State class of 2026 commit, Forrest finished fifth at his first Senior World Championships, but that came after the clock hit all zeroes with Forrest having a lead on criteria.

Trailing 9-8 in the final 30 seconds of the match, Forrest started looking to score when his opponent, Assylzhan Yessengeldi, clearly grabbed his singlet in defense. Yessengeldi was warned, but Forrest wasn’t awarded a point.

Cowboy RTC coach Zoheir El Ourraqe can be seen clearly hammering his challenge button, but it wasn’t working.

The match went on, and Yessengeldi was called for another singlet pull, where this time Forrest was awarded a point. That made it 9-9, but Forrest led on criteria. The clock ran out, and Forrest put his fists in the air as a World medalist. … But then the Kazakhstan corner challenged the singlet grab, and upon review, it wasn’t deemed worthy of a point. So three seconds were put back on the clock, Forrest couldn’t score in time and Yessengeldi was awarded the win.

The U.S. corner was finally able to challenge, but at that point they’d only review the most recent exchange and wouldn’t go back to the clear singlet pull.

This entire sequence was explained much better in this video that Flo put out (starting about 12:34).

Flo interviewed USA Wrestling executive director Rich Bender after the dust had settled, and Bender said that USA Wrestling had filed a complaint with United World Wrestling (UWW), but nothing has, at least publicly, come from that at this point.

Forrest took to social media on Tuesday posting a photo and saying “Mission Failed” and “U23s next.”

Mission Failed
U23s next pic.twitter.com/a9KpaRMOS6

— Jax Forrest (@JaxForrest6) September 16, 2025

The U23 World Championships are set to take place Oct. 20-27 in Serbia, where Forrest will again be the United States’ representative at 61 kg.

Worlds Freestyle Wrap Up

The freestyle portion of the World Championships closed Tuesday.

Cowboy RTC athlete Zahid Valencia was one of three Americans to win gold, and Valencia was the most dominant wrestler of the entire tournament. He beat his five opponents by a combined score of 49-0.

That’s a massive result for Valencia, who before this had been to one World Championship where he took bronze. It’s also a big deal for the Cowboy RTC, showing it can progress wrestlers to the top of the world podium.

The U.S. closed freestyle in second behind Iran in the team race.

Here’s a look at how all the Cowboy RTC athletes performed:

Rin Sakamoto (57 kg/Japan): 1-2 (injury defaulted out of the repechage)/DNP
Roman Bravo-Young (57 kg/Mexico): 3-2/5th
Mirzo Khayitov (74 kg/Uzbekistan): 0-1/DNP
Zahid Valencia (86 kg/United States): 5-0/1st
Wyatt Hendrickson (125 kg/United States): 0-1/DNP

Kellen Wolbert Flips to Michigan

David Taylor’s 2026 recruiting class was (and still is) stacked, especially with guys projected to wrestled from 133 to 149 early in their college careers.

Well, it no longer looks like one of those guys is headed to Stillwater after all, as Wisconsin wrestler Kellen Wolbert announced Monday that he has flipped his commitment to Michigan.

Wolbert is the No. 36 wrestler on Flo’s big board for the class.

OSU’s depth in the class at that weight was featured at Fargo. Wolbert met up with Jordyn Raney at the 138-pound final, where Raney won the wild match 19-14. Raney is also committed to wrestle at OSU, as is his twin brother Jayden. Jax Forrest is around that weight as well.

Then you add the fact that OSU’s 2025 class featured the likes of Sergio Vega (a projected 141) and Landon Robideau (a projected 157), and you can see that spots in the OSU lineup are going to be rather competitive over the coming years.