Wrestling UWW European Championships 2022

[MHSN 3,627]

watching Petriashvili hopeless and miserable like that in first period was really hard for me, he was always one of most favorite wrestlers at least he gave his everything in 2nd period and made it a bit respectable and lost only 5-2. Akgul's defense on Geno's last single leg attempt was superb. they both deserve all respect in the world

UWW commentator talked about his long chat with Geno which was about the Olympic final where he lost 3 pts lead in last few seconds. that was heart breaking to hear Geno's side of the story

 

Russia (despite being absent) ended up with 4 gold medals. (and something around 10 medals) but to me the most impressive wrestler of the tournament was the Turk guy at 92kg. who the hell is this guy? I first saw him during Euro U23 few weeks ago and he is like a bulldozer, he will challenge top guys for the World title this year.

[hckošice 14,846]

35 minutes ago, phelps said:

congrats to Salkazanov for not givin'up until the last second...

 

but I just can't believe how Frank threw this gold medal away...after the first throw who earned him 4 points (5 with the lost challenge by the Slovak coach), he did absolutely nothing for more than 5 mins...and those last 6 seconds! how can he always lose this kind of bouts, it remains a mistery to me (it's certainly not the first time it happens)... 

 

tbh, I'm really, really disappointed with today's performance by Frank...

Maybe he was too confident he´ll be able to defend his lead, that early 4 points counter-throw was seriously impressive and would demoralize quite a lot of opponents.

 

Tajmuraz had the advantage that he already did it once against Chamizo also last year at the Europeans, when he similarly returned back from 0-4 I think to win in the last seconds 6-4. and if I heard right, that was what the coach said him in slovak during the pause, "you already did it to him once !"

 

Anyway, it was a nice match to watch for a non-so-much-wrestling regular viewer like me. Sadly this success will still end almost unnoticed in the country, Maybe just among a bunch of die hard sport fans. Wrestling (all combat sports in fact) have so little audience and publicity in Slovakia, it would deserve much more and this is why I hope Tajmuraz will make it to Paris, if it happen it could open the doors for the large public and make so much good for this sport in Slovakia.

[George_D 1,205]

[MHSN 3,627]

best move of the day
unfortunately Chamizo was ultra defensive and eventually lose the match but still he deserves some credit for this

 

 

[Makedonas 2,155]

I'm sorry, but it is kind of annoying to see so many people here winning medals for countries that they are not from 

 

8 hours ago, MHSN said:

Khosonov beat an Iranian wrestler in the World U23 semifinal so I had close eyes on him since then to understand the level of our own guy. I believe that was just a lucky break for Khosonov. he finished 5th in Euro U23 few weeks ago and I believe that U23 Silver will be the best medal of his career (I might be wrong though) he knows big throws and this sometimes help you in matches when you are the underdog. you can throw the guy and pin him before he start to collect points.

 

on other hand Kougioumtsidis caught my attention during the Olympic qualifiers where he failed to qualify but he was impressive for someone with little international experience and now with more experience he is getting better and better. he still gives up silly points sometimes which is a weakness he should work on it. (and almost cost him the Euro gold yesterday ) but I won't be surprised if he medals this year at the World Championship. but sooner or later he has to make a decision to move up or move down to an Olympic weight. I would advise moving up to 86kg

  

 

fixing a final ? hmm. that's interesting. I wonder if it was against a Russian wrestler? they are notorious for doing these kind of things . I know they did that at least few times before.

 

I understand his situation. that's always the problem when you are active in a sport which is NOT big in your country. lots of our athletes in minor sports have these kind of problems. but not our wrestlers, this is obviously a big sport here. they are usually relatively well paid. most of them have no other job and only focus on their wrestling career. that's the only way to keep up with the Russians and Americans.

 

I wouldn't say Pilidis can medal in 2024 (65kg is a very very tough weight) but that's not completely impossible for him. he is not that far and they should invest on him.

Thank you for all of this. Your knowledge of some of these sports is really incredible 

 

I believe Pilidis said it on the show and then when he left the show and went back to "normal life," people wanted answers including the Greek and European Wrestling Federations, and from what I remember (like I said I haven't completely followed the story and don't know all of the facts) he either tried to pretend he didn't say it or wouldn't give clear answers. It was a big story in Greece a couple months ago, and he recently gave an interview saying that his relationship with the federation was very bad both before and after his appearances on Survivor. That they used to make the youth wrestlers pay from their families money in order to be in the national team and travel abroad for competitions, and that they didn't want to bring his coach to Tokyo or that they didn't want to pay for that or something.

 

Pilidis said his goal was to win a medal in Paris, so of course he will say that. No one says after already going to the Olympics once at 21 yo that "my goal is to finish top 8 at the next Olympics" or something . Normally we wouldn't invest in him although I think he will receive a lot of sponsors. Unfortunately it is not because of his wrestling achievements and gold medals in youth categories. The only reason he will receive sponsors is because he became known to the Greek public through competing on Survivor and the viewers of the show loved him, and everyone knows that the reason he went to the show was for money to support his wrestling career even if it meant sacrificing his 2022 season.

[Federer91 2,801]

3 womens finals from the expected trio Nikolova, Yusein and Selishka. Don't know what has clicked in Evelina Nikolova, but after the Tokyo bronze, she is a completely new wrestler. Calm, confident, clinical, no wonder UWW has taken notice and had her as the poster woman. Straight wins in Dan Kolov, Yasar Dogu, a final here with ease. They even gave her the nickname "Pinolova", as she won 6 out of her last 7 matches with falls, 2 at the Euros so far, and 4/5 at Yasar Dogu. Still needs to prove it against the Asians and Maroulis though.

 

Too bad the rest, didn't do anything above their usual performance, it was a perfect opportunity with the lack of competition at this Euro.

[Makedonas 2,155]

 Maria Prevolaraki is into the final in 53kg 

 

This will be her 6th European medal (she already has 3 silver and 2 bronze). She also has 2 bronze from World Championships. It would be really nice for her to finally win a gold medal and this will be a great chance for her without any Russians.

 

She has golds from the 2020 World Cup (which was basically the World Championships for that year), and twice from the Mediterranean Games but I think this would be her most important medal.

 

Also quite sad that she has been to the Olympics three times already and her best result was 10th place. I really hope she can change that in Paris because she said it will be her last Olympics. She is still only 30 but it feels like she's been around forever, probably because she has been our only female wrestler really in the last 15 years. I worry that women's wrestling in Greece will be completely dead after 2024, although maybe the success of our young guys can inspire something.

[Makedonas 2,155]

Unfortunately Prevolaraki lost in the final and ends with silver. So at European Championships she has 4 silvers and 2 bronze. I don't know if she'll ever get a better chance to win gold 

 

I want to consider her the best Greek female wrestler ever, but Sofia Poumpouridou won gold at both the World and European Championships. Even though Prevolaraki has far more total medals, she doesn't have gold in either. Poumpouridou only went to the Olympics once though and ended her career earlier. Prevolaraki has already been to the Olympics 3x and if she makes Paris then that would be the 4th one.

[phelps 7,688]

9 hours ago, Makedonas said:

Unfortunately Prevolaraki lost in the final and ends with silver. So at European Championships she has 4 silvers and 2 bronze. I don't know if she'll ever get a better chance to win gold 

 

I want to consider her the best Greek female wrestler ever, but Sofia Poumpouridou won gold at both the World and European Championships. Even though Prevolaraki has far more total medals, she doesn't have gold in either. Poumpouridou only went to the Olympics once though and ended her career earlier. Prevolaraki has already been to the Olympics 3x and if she makes Paris then that would be the 4th one.

tbh, I think the refereeing was really poor in that match and heavily penalized the Greek woman, the mat ref never gave her the time to develop her parterre work, even when it was clear that she was truly going for a decisive move and the Swede was on the verge of being turned on her back in a danger position...

 

I know the rules have changed and there's not much patience anymore to avoid wrestler wasting too much time on the ground, but I'd like to see them at least not being stopped when they're really trying something and are quite on the move...

 

by the way, our brand new Russian born guy, Danila Sotnikov, is in the gold medal match in the greco-roman superheavyweights! 

I'm really curious to see what he can do against a great wrestler like Taha Akgul (who actually doesn't seem to be on top of her game, but still is good enough to easily make the final at the Europeans)...

[MHSN 3,627]

Turpal Bisultanov maybe this guy is the next big thing in Greco wrestling.

 

he destroyed everybody here without mercy. some of the better guys lost to each other in the other side of the draw and he didn't face them on his way to the gold but I really believe all of them would have the same fate against him. he lost the Euro U23 final few weeks ago but I can see he is improving tournament by tournament. with Beleniuk out of the picture (probably retired) I believe Bisultanov is #1 in the world right now.

 

still to prove that I would like to see him against likes of Datunashvili, Maskevich, Abbasov and those Russian guys. he is Russian himself but I think he mostly grew up in Denmark.