To find the last time the Iowa vs. Iowa State wrestling series had this much intrigue, you’d probably have to travel back to the Feb. 23, 1986, edition of the rivalry.

Under legendary coach Dan Gable, Iowa had won eight consecutive national titles and 36 straight duals, including a 10-match win streak over the Cyclones. Iowa State was no slouch, however, with the programs combining for 16 of the last 18 titles at that point in time.

The Cyclones, under the tutelage of first-year head coach Jim Gibbons (all of 26 years old), broke their losing streak against Iowa by defeating Gable and the Hawkeyes that day by a score of 19-16.

It was one of the most contentious, back-and-forth days the rivalry has seen, with some of the best individual wrestlers the sport had to offer. Royce Alger, Marty Kistler, Tim Krieger and Eric Voelker just to name a few. Among the 20 who participated that day, there was a combined 47 trips to the podium as an All-American, 12 of them went on to win national titles, and 15 of those 20 were finalists.

Flash forward to 2023. Iowa has won 18 consecutive duals against Iowa State. Tom Brands has won four national titles since taking over. Cyclone coach Kevin Dresser, a member of the Iowa team that lost to Gibbons’ Iowa State squad, is leading one of the best ISU teams on paper in recent memory.

“I think that we’re gonna see some really good wrestling,” Gibbons said. “I really can’t prognosticate on this thing because I have no idea.”

It’s only appropriate that the docu-series, “The Dual,” executive produced by Gibbons, highlighting how that day in 1986 came to be, is releasing in December on several streaming platforms. As the next edition of the Cy-Hawk inches closer (2 p.m. Sunday, ESPN), it is one of the most anticipated matches the two teams have had since 1986 and will bring a lot of attention to the rivalry and our state.

“We all know that wrestling is not the biggest sport, not the most watched, it’s not like football is, but it is what we’re known for,” Gibbons said. “You can say what you want, we’re not the biggest sport in the state of Iowa, but it is what we’re known for.”

Sunday’s dual will be the first regular-season match in collegiate wrestling history to be televised on the flagship ESPN channel. Council Bluffs native and ESPN play-by-play voice Shawn Kenney and Olympic gold medalist and two-time NCAA Champion Jordan Burroughs will be on the call with Gibbons for a historic day.

This is something that ESPN had been looking to do for a long time, according to senior director of programming Dan Margulis. Iowa vs. Iowa State was an obvious choice for the network to show wrestling on the flagship network, but there had always been conflicts with the Big Ten Network taking the rights of the match when at Iowa or conflicting events that prevented ESPN from doing so.

It’s a huge moment for the sport of wrestling to be showcased on a platform of ESPN’s magnitude. Opportunities like this help the sport to grow. And it will come with some extra content.

“Our production guys are really putting a lot of energy into the access part of this as well, so you’re able to just not just show it, but feel it,” Margulis said. “We’re pretty excited.”

Here’s a closer look at Sunday’s Cy-Hawk dual:

Projected starting lineups

• 125 pounds – Iowa’s Drake Ayala vs. Iowa State’s Kysen Terukina
• 133 pounds – Iowa’s Brody Teske vs. Iowa State’s Evan Frost
• 141 pounds – Iowa’s Real Woods vs. Iowa State’s Anthony Echemendia
• 149 pounds – Iowa’s Victor Voinovich vs. Iowa State’s Casey Swiderski
• 157 pounds – Iowa’s Jared Franek vs. Iowa State’s Cody Chittum
• 165 pounds – Iowa’s Michael Caliendo vs. Iowa State’s David Carr
• 174 pounds – Iowa’s Gabe Arnold vs. Iowa State’s MJ Gaitan
• 184 pounds – Iowa’s Brennan Swafford vs. Iowa State’s Will Feldkamp
• 197 pounds – Iowa’s Zach Glazier vs. Iowa State’s Julian Broderson
• 285 pounds – Iowa’s Bradley Hill vs. Iowa State’s Yonger Bastida

Which weights will decide the dual?

Before we dive into the four biggest matchups, let’s quickly touch on the other six:

At 133, Teske squashed any questions about his health last Sunday, winning by major decision (18-8) over Gabe Whisenhunt and holding 3:49 of riding time over his opponent. On the other hand, Frost has been credited all year long by everyone in the Cyclone program as being one of the toughest guys in the room. Teske’s got the edge here on paper, but this could just as easily could end up being a coming-out party for Frost.

At 141, Woods is going to have the edge here against Echemendia, but Gibbons pointed out that he’s particularly interested in watching this matchup with the athleticism of both guys. Woods has looked stellar thus far and is the proven commodity, so he’s undoubtedly the favorite here.

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Chittum at 157 is the underdog, but with the motivation he’s going to have in this one as a former Hawkeye and the high ceiling he has as a prospect, you can’t count him out against Franek. However, it’s a tall mountain to climb against the No. 2 guy in the nation.

Caliendo and Carr at 165 is intriguing, with the high-octane offense of Caliendo keeping him in almost any match. Can he pull an upset against a Hodge Trophy candidate?

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At 184 and 285, Iowa State has a distinct advantage with Feldkamp and Bastida. The two have been particularly good for the Cyclones so far and are dark horses in the championship race in each weight class, whereas the Hawkeyes have been decimated here from the state’s gambling probe and subsequent NCAA suspensions.

If you’re keeping count, that’s three favorites for Iowa and three for Iowa State, leaving four big toss-ups to decide who walks out of Hilton with a win.

125: Drake Ayala vs. Kysen Terukina

If you had asked about this matchup prior to last weekend, most people would have likely pointed to Ayala as the early favorite here. After his loss and Terukina’s upset win over Wisconsin ‘s No. 5 Eric Barnett (14-3 MD), we need to re-evaluate where these two stand a bit.

Dresser had challenged Terukina earlier this year, saying that he hadn’t done the little things to become a great wrestler in college, and had instead just been a good wrestler.

“He’s a tremendous athlete, he’s got a tremendous ceiling, but he’s got to understand consistency,” Dresser said. “I talk about it all the time, doing the little things and he’s never been able to do that.”

Since then, he has answered the bell. The Hawaii native won his first two matches by technical fall (the first ones of his Cyclone career) and upset Barnett, which Dresser said was the best match of his career. He’s got the credentials to be more than he has been so far as a four-time state champion in high school, and with a start like this he may be on his way to finally tapping into that.

“If that guy shows up in March, he’s going to be a threat,” Dresser said. “It’s his job and our job to make sure we try to keep him as consistent as possible.”

Ayala has been a mixed bag with a lot of expectations on him. Winning by major decision over Cal Baptist’s Elijah Griffin (18-8) and thrashing opponents at the Luther Open, the offseason hype looked very real. Last Sunday, he got a bit of a wake-up call with his 7-6 loss to Oregon State’s Brandon Kaylor, but associate head coach Terry Brands was thrilled with his response after.

“He came back in and went to work right away,” Brands said. “He was accountable to it.”

Brads added that everyone in Carver-Hawkeye saw a version of Ayala that we are not used to seeing, but seemed confident in his ability to bounce back.

These are two guys with lofty goals in a wide-open weight class nationally. It’s a great chance for either to make a statement about where they are in that race. This is probably one of the biggest toss-ups of the bouts we are going to see.

149 pounds – Victor Voinovich vs. Casey Swiderski

NCAA qualifiers as freshmen, both were just on the outside looking in on All-American status last year.

Both have had their own struggles this season. Voinovich has had an inability at times to finish takedowns when needed, including against Oregon State’s Nash Singleton. The match dragged into overtime as Voinovich controlled much of the match, but couldn’t finish takedowns as Singleton locked arms with Voinovich when thrown to the ground to prevent three points from being added to the scoreboard.

“(Singleton) would keep dragging you out to deeper water, keep slowing it down,” Brands said. “There, you have to have quick finishes.”

In overtime, Voinovich seemed to flip a switch, and fairly quickly made his move to end his day with a takedown, something that he’s going to have do through the entirely of his match with Swiderski.

Swiderski is an interesting one, considering he did not start the year at 149 and was beat out by Echemendia in wrestle-offs. Echemendia was actually the one to tell the coaching staff that they should find a way to get the sophomore in the lineup, even if that meant he needed to shift to 141.

Dresser had said that Swiderski has had some of his best practices since losing in wrestle-offs to Echemendia, but the question will be if he’s knocked off the rust in time to defeat one of the best wrestlers in a top position.

174 pounds – Gabe Arnold vs. MJ Gaitan

Arnold is the talk of college wrestling after his upset over then-No. 11 Travis Wittlake of Oregon State. He “shocked the world,” as Terry Brands had asked him to do in the days prior. Tom Brands liked that from his true freshman and exudes a lot of confidence about where he stands.

“I kind of like that, put them on notice, that’s right,” Tom Brands said. “Score a lot of points, convert when you get an opportunity and he converted when he had an opportunity.”

When you turn and ask Dresser about Gaitan, however, you’ll hear much of the same thing.

“Don’t ever count out MJ Gaitan, because he’s going to be ready for that match,” Dresser said. “He’s excited for that match. That guy better come ready.”

Each coaching staff has a lot of confidence in their young guy at 174. Arnold looked like a polished, experienced wrestler against Oregon State, while Gaitan flashed his pinning ability at a moment’s notice when givem the opportunity.

Can Gaitan find his chance? Or will Arnold’s all-around talents be too much to handle?

197 pounds – Zach Glazier vs. Julien Broderson

This matchup is a mystery.

Broderson has been with the Cyclones for a long time, but we’ve only seen two matches with him at 197 pounds after being the starter at 174 pounds last year. Against Davidson and Wisconsin, Broderson pinned Davidson’s Cameo Blankenship in 46 seconds and beat the Badgers’ Josh Otto by a 5-2 decision. He was out with sickness against Cleveland State.

We really haven’t seen much of Glazier as a starter for Iowa. However, he’s been dominant in those limited opportunities. He won both of his dual matches by major decision and won the 197-pound class at the Luther Open with two technical falls and two pins.

It’s hard to take too much from duals against the likes of Davidson and California Baptist, so we’re going to learn a lot more about these two on Sunday and where they stand.

Who’s going to win the dual?

Last year, the Cyclones and Hawkeyes split the 10 matches, leaving the winner to be determined by who got bonus-point victories. That was Iowa by a score of 18-15 thanks to Spencer Lee, Cobe Siebrecht and Nelson Brands getting major decisions.

That’s especially important now with the new rule changes in the sport, where the three-point takedown has made it significantly easier for guys to add up points quickly.

That bodes well for Iowa State because 184 and 285 appear to be the only mismatches in Sunday’s dual, based on what we have seen out of Iowa’s Swafford and Hill so far.

For the Hawkeyes, they’ll be looking for Teske, Woods, Franek and maybe even Arnold to try to secure bonus-point wins to keep pace.

It’s cliche, but this is going to be one of those rare times where truly every point and every match matters.

Eli McKown covers high school sports and wrestling for the Des Moines Register. Contact him at Emckown@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @EMcKown23.