Wrestling UWW Under 23 World Championships 2018

[MHSN 3,813]

well the last session was a bit better for Iran. finishing the freestyle competition with 1 gold and 4 bronze and 3rd place in team ranking. even though we lost so many close matches in last 10 seconds ! Taheri (125) and Ghiasi (65) should win the gold and Sadeghi (61), Shahbazi (92) and Zangeneh (74) should make it to the final at least. Ghasempour did great beating the current European Senior Champion in the final, unfortunately for him he is in the same weight as Hassan Yazdani , he also comes from the same club and same city.

 

I watched the whole freestyle competition since I had free time this week. I have to say our freestyle was actually a pretty good team (except 1 or 2 very bad wrestlers in the team) they just couldn't finish the matches.

 

57, Sarlak, not  so much about him. he lost 2-1 to eventual gold medalist and later 16-15 to the American ! he could be easily on the podium.

61, Sadeghi, he is a 2 time World Junior Champion for God's sake. but he never improved in senior level. here he got robbed twice. in semifinal vs USA and bronze medal match vs China. still I mostly blame himself for being a minimalist ! when you want to win matches by minimum possible margin things like this happens. not a sure thing he could beat Russia in the final but he could be in silver medal position at least.

65, Ghiasi, he almost beat Olympic silver medalist Higuchi , leading the match 4-2 with less than 20 seconds. it was 6-2 but a dubious challenge from the Japanese made it 4-2 and gave a chance to Higuchi. hard to judge from that camera angle. he also didn't deserve to lose 6-0 in bronze medal match. he made all the attacks but then made some dumb mistakes. if he could get passed Higuchi he could win the gold for sure.

70, Eshfaghi, he was the definition of disaster here.

74, Zangeneh, won a lucky bronze with a dream draw. he could be easily in the final and won the silver medal if it wasn't for a dumb mistake. can't see a good future for him. he was just lucky here.

79, Asghari, never heard of this guy before and I hope to never hear his name again. he lost to someone terrible from Japan 3-3. he had a very easy draw but wasted it

86, Ghasempour, did great winning the gold beating Naifonov (2018 Euro Champion) in the final

92, Shahbazi, as a World Junior Champion he didn't get any better since then. here he made all of his matches close and almost lost all of them in last seconds ! losing that semifinal to Russia was unbelievable. having a come back from being 7-0 down to lose in the very last second.

97, Shabani, never heard of this guy before. had a dream draw and won a bronze. I found out this is his first ever international competition. so he did OK considering his experience.

125, Taheri, he had gold medal in his pocket but just gifted it to Russia again in the last seconds. he is Asian Senior bronze medalist and should wrestle better than this.

Edited November 19, 2018 by MHSN

[Prashanth 185]

India finish with 1 Silver medal and some good performances in Freestyle, rest were not impressive at all.