PJ Duke returns to Minisink Valley High on Monday for his last day of his high school. He’ll bring with him one of the most talked-about victories of the men’s freestyle wrestling season.
Duke, the Penn State wrestling recruit who will enroll in late June, pinned four-time NCAA champion Yianni Diakomihalis on Saturday at Final X to win the 70 kg men’s freestyle title. Duke won their best-of-three series by taking two matches after losing his opener in the USA Wrestling event at Newark’s Prudential Center. With the victory, the 18-year-old Duke earned a spot on the U.S. Team that will compete at the Senior World Championships in September in Croatia.Duke’s win over the 26-year-old Diakomihalis, a world silver medalist, reverberated throughout the freestyle wrestling world. Seven-time world and Olympic champion Jordan Burroughs said on the FloWrestling broadcast that “PJ Duke is officially goated” after rebounding from a 10-0 loss in the first match to finish the shock of the event.
“We never thought he would do it,” Burroughs said on the FloWrestling broadcast. “He’s proven to be not only the match of the night but also the superstar looking forward for Team USA. It’s insane. He’s 18 years old. … We’ve got a superstar in the making here.”
Duke is the youngest member of the U.S. Senior World Team and the only wrestler who hasn’t yet competed in a college match. Duke, who recently won a U20 national title, appeared simultaneously confident and stunned after finishing the second-period takedown in the decisive match. He punctuated the win with a back flip, releasing what Duke thought was an advantage over Diakomihalis.
“Those exchanges wore him out a little bit,” Duke told reporters at Final X after the match. “The more wrestling that happened, the better it was for me. I caught him on his back, and it was a wrap.”
Diakomihalis initially looked to wrap the series early. He dominated Duke for a 10-0 technical fall in the first match and led their second match 9-2. But as Duke said, he kept the match going, which proved to work in his favor. Duke hit a pair of four-point moves to rally for a 17-10 win and force the decisive match. At that point, he looked toward his father.
It’s tough to lose when I’m looking at my dad in the corner and I know how much he puts in for me,” Duke said in his post-match interview. “I’m never going to look at my father in the corner, and think about him in my head, and quit in a match. Those dog moments in a match where you’ve got to push, it’s just something that’s in me.”
Duke also drew motivation from an interview that Diakomihalis did with FloWrestling the day before Final X. Duke looked up to Diakomihalis, a four-time NCAA champion at Cornell, as a mentor. He trained with Diakomihalis’ younger brother. In the FloWrestling interview, Diakomihalis discussed their relationship, how thoroughly he had scouted Duke and his approach for the series.
