Michael Moser recently won his first Kranzfest. Not yet 20 years old, he is putting fear into his opponents.
When Michael Moser surprisingly won the Emmental Wrestling Festival in Burgdorf ten days ago, comparisons to a great from the Bernese ranks were quickly drawn. Hadn’t a certain Christian Stucki also celebrated his first Kranzfest victory at the Emmental? And wasn’t the future king a similar age to Moser back then?
In fact, in 2003, when Moser was not yet born, Stucki, aged 18, achieved the first of a total of 44 festival victories. Moser followed suit 21 years later, aged 19.
«Fighting Bears» became enemies of flesh and blood
As a child, the farmer from Biglen aspired to be like another king. When Kilian Wenger won the Federal Championship in Frauenfeld in 2010 out of nowhere, the 5-year-old Moser’s passion for wrestling was also ignited. In front of the TV, he grabbed a stuffed bear (“I told him Kämpfbäru”) and laid it in the imaginary sawdust.
I’ve never been the heaviest, maybe that’s why I developed this technical style.
The little boy has long since become a 1.92 m tall giant. Moser is not entirely happy with his fighting weight, however. He thinks it should be 105 to 110 kilos in the future. At the moment he weighs 95 kilos. Even so, he has already impressively demonstrated his dangerousness. He can rely on a strong technique. “I was never the heaviest, maybe that’s why I developed this technical style,” he says.
At the Emmental, the passionate cattle breeder beat two Swiss, Florian Gnägi and Patrick Gobeli, and in the final round he also wrestled a draw from Adrian Walther. Using the careers of Stucki or Wenger as a reference would perhaps be a bit of a stretch. But the future looks bright for the up-and-coming teenager.
