A whole lotta wrestling going on

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

There’s the potential for plenty of intriguing matchups at the Mann Classic wrestling tournament, hosted by Servite and held at Cal State Fullerton this weekend, particularly in the middle weight classes.

Check out the seedings at 135 pounds -- there’s four wrestlers (top-seeded Bear Barnes of Laguna Hills, Andrew Higins of San Clemente, Oscar Gadea of Garden Grove and Ryan Blackburn of Chaparral) with six tournament championships this season among them. And four wrestlers in the 140-pound class (Mitch Newcomer of Laguna Hills, Paul Bihari of San Clemente, Tyler Sweet of Vista Murrieta and Alex Candelaria of Villa Park) have accumulated five tournament titles among them this season.

-- Image from http://www.wrestlingsbest.com/gifs/wrespictclips01.html.

The 17th annual North Torrance Tournament of Champions, held at Cerritos College this weekend, is huge, with more than 60 teams on hand. Several top-ranked teams in the CIF Southern Section preseason coaches’ poll are scheduled to take part, including Hesperia (No. 4 in Division I), Los Alamitos (No. 10 in Division I), Royal (No. 3 in Division II), Mayfair (No. 6 in Division II) and the top three teams in Division III (Santa Fe, South Hills and St. John Bosco).

Other events slated for this weekend include the Black Watch tournament at Upland and the Brute Invitational at Chino Hills.

-- Chuck Schilken, guest blogger