Wrestling: Tanner Farmer in Final X Today

Former Husker offensive lineman Tanner Farmer, who played from 2014-18 for Nebraska, will take on Cohlton Schultz for the World Team spot at 130 kg in Greco-Roman today at Final X in Stillwater, Okla.

Action starts at 2 p.m. Central with the first match of the best-of-three series taking place in all 15 weights (men’s freestyle, women’s freestyle, and Greco-Roman). Action will air on FloWrestling (subscription required). Then, at 7 p.m., the second matches will take place. If a third match is needed, they will begin immediately after the final match of the second round.

While on the football team, Farmer often worked out and practiced with the Husker wrestling team. In fact, he competed as a freshman in 2015 at heavyweight, going 5-1 in open tournaments. As he became a bigger part of the football team’s success, Farmer didn’t compete after that season, mainly because of the weight cut to 285 pounds when Farmer was playing football well north of 300 pounds.

After graduating, Farmer went on to get some looks from some NFL teams like the Indianapolis Colts and the Houston Texans before moving on to the CFL with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

After that brief stint with professional football, Farmer found himself taking graduate classes at Concordia while being a volunteer assistant for the football team. After finding out that he had a semester of eligibility in another sport, Farmer joined the Concordia wrestling team and had to cut 25 pounds to make the 285-pound weight limit, but he went 26-1 and finished as the runner-up at the NAIA National Championships in 2020.

Since, Farmer has competed pretty consistently over the past two years or so. In 2021, Farmer won the Last Chance Olympic Qualifier.

Then earlier this year, Farmer won the Bill Farrell Open with a 4-0 record. With that win, Farmer earned the spot on the Pan-American team. Farmer ended up going 0-2 at Pan-Ams as he ran into a pair of world medalists.

Then in late May, Farmer went 2-0 at the World Team Trials to advance to Final X.

Farmers opponent will be Greco-Roman phenom Cohlton Schultz. Schultz just finished his redshirt freshman season at Arizona State with a runner-up finish at the NCAA Championships. He fell to Olympic Champion and two-time NCAA Champion Gable Steveson, arguably the best heavyweight of all time.

Schultz is good at folkstyle in college, but it’s in Greco that he really shines. First of all, he’s enormous. And in Greco, at heavyweight, that absolutely matters. But it seems that he won’t really enjoy his usual size advantage against Farmer, who has to cut to make 130 kg (286 pounds).

As far as Greco goes, Schultz is as accomplished as they come at his age. In 2017, he was a Cadet World Champion, while he won Junior World Championships in both 2018 and 2019.

He then went on to win three Senior National Championships while making the 2021 World Team where he failed to medal.

I’m really interested to see how Farmer does against someone as seasoned and talented in Greco as Schultz is.