Any idea/word on why he performed badly? World Champ in 2015 to did not even place in 2016? Any word on injury or illness?
I thought maybe he just gave up. The match with the Russian was pretty close, right? And that guy only lost to Burroughts by 1 pt at the world championships last year. However, then he got tech falled the next match.
Does a world champ of JB's caliber give up like that? I would find that hard to believe. I didn't see the matches yet but will when I have time. But I read themat.com forums where they were commenting and most all said he did not look right. Perhaps he gave up but I think that goes against his nature.
mspart
I don't know that giving up is the right term for it, but his reaction to the loss to Geduev (which I agree wasn't that odd...he let the score get too far away from him and got beat by a very good wrestler) was extremely emotional, going over to his family. Based on that and his post tournament statements, I think he put a lot of pressure on himself to win gold and, when that was no longer possible, just didn't have anything left. Maybe if he scored first against Bekzod it would have been different, but momentum is a two way street and it snowballed on him in a bad way. Even Burroughs is not immune to bad thoughts running through his head and hurting his performance, I can only imagine what he felt as he got further and further behind.