How Bo Bassett Upset Beau Bartlett | WTT 2025

Here we have Bo Bassett, a phenomenal high school wrestler, taking on Beau Bartlett from Penn State, multiple time NCAA all american and finalist, could have easily been an NCAA champion if not for Jesse Mendez.

20 seconds in, Bartlett is charging in super hard which prompts Bassett to hold ground fairly aggressively, leaving that right leg ripe for the picking. Circling away from that angle might relieve the pressure a little more and keep your leg farther away, but then you also run the risk of your opponent throwing that underhook over and attacking the leg anyways, so holding strong here is a fine idea. Bartlett dives at a double, not really much of a setup, doesn’t use the arms at all to get there, so the shot isn’t amazing. Bartlett comes up with a single, but Bassett does a great job of staying in position and keeping his knees off the mat. If a knee hits here then Bartlett would get the takedown, but it doesn’t. Bartlett even gets behind, and yet Basset is still able to hold good position and not give up a takedown. Bassett is actually awarded a step out point for his efforts. This is an interesting call, but I’m okay with it.

Basset holds ground really well in the second, moving forward, not risking any crazy shot attempts or anything, just really solid handfighting. Basset keeping control of the center is super important here. A lot of times wrestlers will drop back and go into defense mode, but basset doesn’t do that, which means he doesn’t get put on the shot clock at all.

As the clock winds down, and Bartlett doesn’t look very aggressive, it starts to dawn on Bartlett that he’s losing. This is a super important point to be made. This is the issue with trying to play too many games here in this sport. Getting up on points and then riding it out in the third. You end up losing super close matches here and there because you didn’t fully understand the score. You thought you were winning but you weren’t. If you would have just kept attacking and looking for more takedowns, that situation would never happen. Not trying to take anything away from Bassett, he wrestled a really good match. But match strategy gone wrong ends up making you look foolish. Don’t stop trying to score because you think you’re winning. Get those next points, seal out the victory.

Regardless of this, Bassett shows that he is definitely capable of standing with the best wrestlers in the scene. He makes a lot less mistakes wrestling these world class wrestlers than he does random AA wrestlers.