Kaori Icho (JPN) vs. Sara McMann (USA) - 2003 Senior World Championships
We continue with the history lessons for women's history month.
Kaori Icho would end her career as the consensus greatest women's wrestler and most decorated freestyle wrestler in the history of the sport. She's a 10x world champion and a 4x Olympic champion (a record for men and women's freestyle). She was one of the foundational blocks of the dominant Japanese women's wrestling team. Needless to say, if you're measuring greatness in women's freestyle - you're being measured against Icho.
Sara McMann is no slouch though. McMann would actually face Icho at the Olympics in 2004, the very first to include women's freestyle. She would take home the silver, becoming the first American woman to earn the Olympic medal for wrestling. And while most people probably know McMann from her career in MMA where she challenged Ronda Rousey for the UFC women's bantamweight title, she was a long successful international wrestler before MMA for women was even a 'thing' (in the US anyway).
But all the way back in 2003, Icho that was going for her 2nd world title. She had won the previous year, beating out Sara McMann in an earlier round along the way. Sara McMann had come back reinvigorated, having won gold at the Pan-Am Games earlier in the year. Both had been dominant, teching and pinning almost all their opponents en route to this year's final.