Unveil Epic Gold for New Champion of #ChampionWrestlingHeavyweight 2024!
We preview the heavyweight bracket at the 2026 NCAA Wrestling Championships, beginning this Thursday afternoon in Cleveland, Ohio.
We kick off our previews of the 2026 NCAA Wrestling Championships with the heavyweights. We are going to go through every weight class and look at the favorites and the sleepers. And, of course, since this is an Ohio State website, we will place extra focus on the Buckeye wrestlers and their paths to becoming All-Americans.
Before we start, just one word about the team competition: It's Penn State's to lose. The Nittany Lions have one of the most absurdly dominant wrestling teams in history. It would take an absurd amount of bad luck and upsets for anyone else to win.
But the fun part about starting with heavyweight is that it's Penn State's weakest weight class. So, let's look at the contenders. Favorites: Yonger Bastida (Iowa State), Isaac Trumble (N.
C. State) The top two seeds in this weight class are the two undefeated wrestlers on the season. Trumble competed a relatively abbreviated year, with only 16 matches, but he was pretty dominant in winning all of them.