How Bo Bassett Teched Zepeda | U20 WTT Semis 2025

Bo Bassett and Daniel Zepeda wrestled each other again, familiar foes, this time in the u20 world team trials semis, and they put on a show, though the match didn’t go the entire distance, let me explain.

About 15 seconds in, Zepeda grabs a two-on-one or a russian tie up, and then Bo does something that I’ve seen him do and something that I don’t necessarily recommend, but so far Bo is proving me wrong with this, he immediately hops in and grabs the inside leg with his free arm, lifts it up a bit as he circles around, covers the far hip and gets his takedown. Looks easy enough, but to the normal human wrestler if you try to do something like this, you’re implanting yourself into a merkle, where your opponent grabs a head and arm, digs his near leg in, and you basically give him a takedown. So that’s why I would never usually teach this or recommend it as a viable strategy, but I’ve seen Bo do this many times, so I’m gonna hold off my judgement until I see how it fares for him in college on a consistent basis. If you’re going to do this, elevating that leg and keeping it on the outside might be super important as well as getting the angle quickly so you don’t donate points to your opponent. 2-0 Bo.

About a minute in, they get into some collar ties, Daniel takes like a lefty high crotch, interesting looking shot, because he has a righty penetration step going but he’s heading in the opposite direction, almost like he’s taking a double, Bo is able to snap, disappear, and get onto a shot of his own. This might be due to just plain good reaction time and motion, or the penetration step Daniel was doing wasn’t giving him the distance or strength it needed to get to the leg, could be a mixture of both. Bo snaps, cuts the angle, gets onto a high crotch, Daniel gets a good body lock and tries to lift and throw bo, but just doesn’t get the clearance needed to get back exposure, Bo kind of just hops to the side and gets back exposure for himself, 4-0 Bo.

As Daniel heads back to his base, Bo grabs what’s known as a Navy ride, hooks underneath that bottom leg with his right arm, which gives him complete control of the hips and allows him to lift, elevate, and roll Daniel across his back for another set of back exposure, 6-0 Bo.

As Daniel is rolling towards Bo, he grabs the low leg cradle grip, which allows him to maintain control of the hips, so he can push forward and get another set of back exposure, 8-0 Bo. This is a common drill, going from the Navy ride to the low leg cradle grip and back, allows you to keep control of the hips and gives you many options on one side or the other, very well executed against a top tier opponent.

Bo then pulls him backwards and gets another set of back exposure, which looks to me like 10-0. This just confuses me, shouldn’t the 10-0 tech stop the clock immediately and give Bo the win? Daniel gets 2 for the reversal because Bo was in danger I guess, kind of risked it all for that 10-0 tech, just to have it turn into 10-2. Not much to say about that.

Daniel gets a piece of the right foot and attempts like a half gut wench half leg lace, but doesn’t have good control of it, forces it way too much. There’s still a lot of time in this match, you don’t need to force things, you just need to get momentum moving back in your favor by scoring that next set of points, but do it solidly.

Bo is able to grab that bottom foot, elevate it, which is exactly what you should be targeting, again controlling the hips pretty well, bringing the score to 11-2.

Not long after, Bo goes snap, Daniel takes a rather random righty single, but is able to pull it in, Bo goes shin whizzer and faces away, which tightens the grip of that arm and makes it more difficult for Daniel to get it free, which he would have to do one way or another to get the takedown. Bo pulls the shoulder forward, somehow sneaks his leg out, sits under, and finds his way to a deep crotch lock and gets the takedown pretty easily here. 13-2, 14-2 after the failed challenge.

So Bo Bassett techs Daniel Zepeda, interesting.