NBC's Poor Olympic Coverage Isn't New; Karelin Can Attest

Former RINGS star and the man who somewhat retired Akira Maeda, Aleksandr Karelin is proof of poor Olympic coverage, proving that NBC's recent, poor coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics is not without precedent. Cage Side Seats takes a look at how the epic encounter between Rulon Gardner and Aleksandr Karelin was covered not as a tale of triumph but a comical event.

Anyway, in 2000, the match for the gold medal in heavyweight Greco-Roman wrestling, Alexander Karelin took on Rulon Gardner.  Karelin was Russian and was so dominant that he was undefeated in international competition and hadn't lost a point in the previous six years.  Allegations that he used performance-enhancing drugs were so rampant that he was nicknamed "The Experiment."  Gardner was an American farm boy with a soft, normal physique who had worked as a teacher and lost to Karelin in the 1997 FILA Wrestling World Championships.  It was the perfect Ebersol human-interest story, and the coverage suffered for it, with the post-production turning a great moment into a cartoon.