Olympic champ David Taylor tops Hagerstown’s Aaron Brooks at Final X
A changing of the guard will have to wait as the 86-kilogram weight class still belongs to David Taylor in men’s freestyle wrestling.
In a showdown of Penn State legends, Taylor swept Hagerstown’s Aaron Brooks 2-0 in a best-of-3 series during the Final X wrestling extravaganza Saturday at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J.
Taylor — the reigning world and Olympic champion — won the first bout 6-0 and the second 5-4 to earn a spot on Team USA for the 2023 world championships in Serbia in September, with Brooks as the first alternate.
Final X featured the country’s top two wrestlers in each weight class in men’s freestyle, women’s freestyle and men’s Greco-Roman.
Brooks, a 2018 North Hagerstown graduate, earned his spot in Final X by winning the U.S. Open on April 28 in Las Vegas. As the defending world champion, the 32-year-old Taylor had an automatic berth.
At Penn State, Taylor went 134-3 and was a two-time NCAA champion and a two-time runner-up. He won the Hodge Trophy as the nation’s top college wrestler in 2012 and 2014.
Brooks, who will turn 23 this month, is a three-time NCAA champ at 184 pounds for the Nittany Lions with a year of eligibility remaining.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Olympic champ David Taylor tops Hagerstown’s Aaron Brooks at Final X
