Hendrickson Ready for Final Step to Team USA with Final X

STILLWATER – The Year of Wyatt continues this weekend in Newark, N.J. where Oklahoma State and Air Force Academy product, 2025 NCAA Championships heavyweight champion, 2025 Dan Hodge Award winner, U.S. Open champion, Pan-American wrestling gold medalist, and 2025 and three-time winner of the Schalles Award as college wrestling top pinner Wyatt Hendrickson takes the final step to Team USA membership. Hendrickson has done it all in 2025 finishing unbeaten in his college schedule at 27-0 and now unbeaten this summer at 7-0 and Final X is all that stands between him and being on the 2025 Team USA senior men’s freestyle world team.

Hendrickson will collide at 1 p.m. inside the Prudential Arena in Newark, N.J. against Trent Hillger. The two wrestlers met in the U.S. Senior Open in Las Vegas on April 26 with Hendrickson taking a 10-4 decision in the semifinals. It was Hendrickson’s closest match in the event. 

Bruce Waterfield/OSU Athletics

Hendrickson has his trademark win over Gable Steveson

The two wrestlers only other meeting was in the 2021 NCAA Championships where Hillger wrestling at Wisconsin beat Hendrickson of the Air Force Academy 6-3. That was a different Hendrickson as he is on a complete roll in 2025. 

Hillger bounced back from his eventual fifth place finish at the U.S. Open to win at the Team Trials. It was a three-man field and he defeated Jordan Wood 13-2 and 10-4 over Demetrius Thomas. 

Hendrickson has never been this close to being on a World or Olympic team, but he is a vastly improved wrestler and is embracing wrestling for the Cowboys Wrestling Club and Regional Training Center. He is also part of the Air Force and Armed Forces World Class Athletic Program (WCAP). Few wrestlers have ever been on this kind of hot streak and make no mistake about the confidence and prowess gained by Hendrickson with the NCAA finals win over Minnesota’s Gable Steveson. 

Hillger wrestled collegiately at Wisconsin, but he wrestles freestyle under the Gopher Wrestling Club banner.

The general consensus is Hendrickson is favored to beat Hillger again in the best of three competition.

Tony Rotundo, Wrestlers Are Warriors

Joey McKenna in the Pan American wrestling.

There are two other members of the Cowboy Wrestling Club in Newark to earn Team USA berths. U.S. Open champion and former Stanford and Ohio State wrestler Joey McKenna will wrestle former Iowa wrestler Real Woods at 65 kg. The two have not met.

Another premier match involving a CWC wrestler is at 86 kg where Zahid Valencia of CWC will battle four-time NCAA champion Kyle Dake. Valencia lost to Dake twice in Final X 2018. In this spring’s U.S. Open he defeated Valenica 8-4. All of the meetings have been close. 

Oklahoma State recruiting commitment in the class of 2026 Jax Forrest has been beating grown men as a 17-year-old and he will try to do so again against Vito Arujau at 61 kg. Because of injuries to Arujau, the match has been postponed to July 14 in Fargo, N.D. 

Again, the first of the best of three matche start at 1 p.m. on Saturday, The second matches begin at 4 p.m. (CT) with a third, if necessary to follow if needed.