USA Wrestling sets Blades vs Mir best-of-three at Final X
The 2024 Olympic silver medalist draws a two-time age-group World Team member, with no weight class listed in the announcement.
Kennedy Blades and Isabella Mir will meet in a best-of-three series at 2026 Final X, USA Wrestling announced. The series is scheduled for September 25 in Hilliard, Ohio. USA Wrestling described Blades as the 2024 Olympic silver medalist and Mir as a two-time age-group World Team member.
The best-of-three series is scheduled for September 25 in Hilliard, Ohio.
That is the whole of what has been announced. The post, presented by Kerberos Capital Management, did not list a weight class for the series, and no match times or streaming details came with it.
What is actually new
Blades' name was already in circulation this month. She turned up on the UWW U23 World Championships entry list earlier with the Final X result still pending, so the opponent and the date are the new pieces here rather than the fact that she is wrestling a Final X series at all.
Mir is the part worth sitting with. USA Wrestling's own framing puts a two-time age-group World Team member across from an Olympic medalist in a best-of-three, which is the only format in American women's freestyle where a challenger gets three cracks at that gap instead of one.
Things to watch
September 25 in Hilliard, Ohio is the date. USA Wrestling has not said which weight class the Blades and Mir series will be contested at, and nobody has explained why the weight was left off the announcement.
Our take: with the U23 entry already carrying Blades' name against a pending Final X outcome, this series is the domino that settles more than one roster line at once. Until USA Wrestling posts the weight, though, everything past the date and the two names is guesswork.