MHSN

not sure if you know but refs (and humans in general) have nothing to do with those scores. that's electronic system. and if you kick to the face (and not the helmet) that's no point unless the center referee starts to count for the knockdown. and they do that only if you hit really hard. refs are only important for cautions, punch points and turning kicks, the rest are electronic scoring system. (and of course the center ref always can cancel a kick for grabbing and other fouls)

Yeah the Greek guy was even a bigger surprise than Alessio . even though this time Beigi will destroy him in the final most probably. speaking of 80kg we had some accidents in top half, World #1 Cheick Cisse got disqualified when he punched to the face of Taiwanese athlete accidentally and the Taiwanese guy could not continue the competition, so it was walkover for Hernandez of Dominican into the medal round. who lost to our Greek friend in the final. of course the Greek guy still deserves lots of credit, he beat Ordemann as well. he wasn't "just" lucky. regarding Olympics Alessio is in the same weight as Botta and Italy has to pick one. normally you would pick World Champion without hesitation but Botta is also an experienced fighter and Alessio will lose a bit of his height advantage in 80kg. I assume the 2nd place goes to Dell'Aquila.

Really impressed by this young Italian kid never saw him before. that's the problem with Grand Prix competitions. because there is no room for new athletes outside of top 32 in World Ranking. we always see the same group.

season 7 wow ! more than just "a little" so let me spoil it for you. they will fix the elevator finally in the very last episode

am I the only fan of the Big Bang Theory here ? I was watching this for more than 10 years and It was like I know these characters in real life. I feel like someone who lost a friend already

no not the same girl. that Kimia is recovering from her 5th surgery (no kidding 5 and she is just 20 ) still a good result for "this Kimia" she beat Williams which was already a huge surprise and her match vs Azizova was close until the last minute when she started to attack blindly and gave up lots of points. good tournament for our women's team so far. almost all of them under 18 and even if they lost they lost to eventual medalists (most probably gold medalists) looks like that joint camp with Serbian team really helped them. on other hands what a bad tournament for Serbia, there are lots of former world medalist in Serbia squad and still no medal ! next time don't invite the Iranian team to train with you

That was ugly, very ugly. what a shame. Walkden won the gold 11-20 !! yes the loser scored double points as the winner, 1 cheap punch point + 10 cautions while Zheng scored 20 clean points. I can say half of those penalties were nonsense. at some point it was like Sumo for Walkden. pushing Zheng out of the court with 2 hands, that's not legal but who cares. even in UK almost half the spectators were booing Walkden , that was one of the worst officiating in this sport I ever seen.

what a disappointing day, Bakhshi lost in Golden round in QF (he had 1 pt lead with less than a second to go in regular time) and both girls Kiani and Javadi lost to Panipak and Jade Jones (I think both of them will win the gold) Javadi had some great results before getting destroyed by Jones. to make things even better. our second athlete Erfan Nazemi also denied visa completely and will miss the competition. which leaves Iran with only 6 athletes. I think it's almost a sure thing we won't win a gold medal here. Bakhshi had a very easy road to the gold medal but threw away his chance.

His draw isn't "that bad" actually. Badr Achab is different that Jaouad Achab, very young , I saw him in YOG final. won't be a problem for Seif Eissa if he is half ready. if I had to make a prediction I think his only "tough match" will be in quarterfinal which is normal, you have to expect at least one tough match before the medal round. but yeah Abu Ghaush in this weight is surprising, if I'm not wrong his points still will be counted for his 68kg Olympic ranking. so that will be a smart move if he medals here but I doubt that. Rafalovich will be the favorite from that quarter. btw it seems Iran has actually two teams in this tournament. because that "refugee team" is almost a complete team of Iranians ! each day when they publish the draw I see some more new names competing under the code "WT" ! this time Kasra Mehdipour. it seems the number of Iranian refugees are bigger than people from Yemen or Syria or Iraq where there are "real wars", of course by lying

It's very rare to see Lee Dae-hoon losing and this guy is such a nice person, there were at least couple of very dubious kyunggos against him and he lost it by 1 point at the end but he didn't protest even a bit. he is one of the best athletes ever in this sport and without doubt the best right now

That's funny because nowadays it's kind of a joke here. there is a famous book and a famous TV series based on that book called "My Uncle Napoleon" and the main character there had Anglophobia who thinks that UK (or as we call them England even though I know that's wrong) is responsible for everything bad happens it was true at some point if someone read the Iran's history. nowadays it's kind of a joke. that people use it to taunt others who believe in consistory theories , "Yes, The English are behind it " even when a cat falls from the tree people still use this phrase

Semifinals Men's 54kg: Melo vs Bae Popov vs Hadipour Men's 68kg: Lee vs Sinden Perez vs Denisenko Women's +73kg: Walkden vs Acosta Pole vs Zheng

well this is not a direct Olympic qualification tournament and UK is not India. so I'm sure no. and I'm almost sure there will be no penalty for them. the maximum WTF could do about it was letting him to participate even if he could make it to Manchester tonight (they said to Iranian officials they will have weight-in only for him few minutes before the competition) but no chance even for that.

now it's a sure thing that Mirhashem Hosseini (2017 World Silver medalist and 2018 Asian Games Champion) will miss the World Championships. at least by our own coach he was considered as our best chance for the gold medal. beside that now his Olympic qualification is seriously in jeopardy . he wrote a very sad post in his instagram that he is thinking about ending his sport career (at the age of 20) and he will decide about it soon. incident or not, that was a good news for his rivals in Olympic qualification ranking, not-so-surprisingly one of them is British, Bradley Sindon. they are giving visa to the rest one by one, (only one more left) of course how they will perform in the competition after being under huge stress for few days is another story. --------------------------- we had a heart breaking defeat today, Palangafkan losing to Farag (EGY) 10-9 despite having 9-6 lead with 3-4 seconds to go but then Momenzadeh made up for that with a great comeback, she was down 20-9 with 70 seconds to go but came back strongly to win the match 30-20 ! at the age of 17 she will become only the second Iranian girl to win a medal in TKD World Championships.

Semifinals Men's 58kg: Braganca vs Plaza Jang vs Guzman Women's 46kg: Tan vs Momenzadeh Sim vs Khantikulanon Women's 73kg: Ble vs Lee Kus vs Espinoza

After being without a coach for 4-5 months, finally we know the name of our next coach (well we heard the rumors for few days but it's official now) Marc Wilmots he is more like a downgrade comparing to Queiroz. and I can say the general response from the fans and media here was very negative. he achieved nothing with the golden generation of Belgium and couldn't bring CIV to the World Cup. he was a big name as a player not as a coach.

speaking of "mixing sports with politics" there is a chance for Iran-Israel in 3rd round of men's 58kg, I hope Egyptian athlete takes care of that. even though our youngster has to go through Olympic silver medalist from Thailand to go there. so that Iran-Israel is not very likely for now. I was checking the draw, in the first day there are two athletes participating under the name of "WT" ! both of them originally Iranian. ironically that guy Hosseini (who lives in Germany but apparently not a citizen yet) will start here against another Iranian Meisam Rafiei (who is representing Iceland for a long time) but this is interesting to see Dina Pouryounes is listed under WT, she participated for the Netherlands before and under their flag in World and European Championships, so what happened to her ? now she is 3rd in the World Ranking, why she is countryless again ?!

as of now, 3 athletes are still without visa, Armin Hadipour received his visa Tuesday evening and will fly to UK tomorrow in the morning. he will arrive in the location couple hours before the weight-in. (what he will do in the competition after being under huge stress for 2-3 days and not sleeping well two nights before the competition is another question) but it seems Mirhashem Hosseini is going to miss the competition he has to be in Manchester tomorrow afternoon for the weight-in and still no visa for him. and the last flight from Tehran to UK before the weight-in is 5 in the morning. soooo only couple hours left. two more are still in Tehran Sajjad Mardani and Erfan Nazemi. women's team had no problem getting visa, and for the men's team, which is very young this time, only 3 of them had been to World Championships before, and these 3 are our only chances in the ranking to qualify for the Olympics, they had been to Manchester only few months ago for the World Grand Prix and all 3 of them finished on the podium. and surprisingly all 3 of them (plus another one Nazemi) denied visa in 1st and 2nd try. just a co-incidence ? PS: from what I heard the whole Armenian team also denied visa Iran's ambassador in UK is still hopeful

This time Draws will be held daily after the weight-in for each weight. to avoid lots of not showing / not making weight here is the first day draw http://www.worldtaekwondo.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Draw-Day-1-Manchester-2019-WTC.pdf

One day before the competition, half of the Iranian team are still in Tehran and still without visa. this is funny that almost all of our top athletes (and not the youngsters) denied visa , Hadipour, Mardani and Hosseini they are all former world medalists, top 10 in World Ranking and had been to UK so many times before (the last time few months ago for the Grand Prix). I can't see any logical reason denying or delaying their visa . I hope they get the visa in time but mostly I blame our own federations for not doing anything about it. Sending the whole team together (and not in pieces like this) or nobody at all.

I know even though I think Tormund, Samwell and Gili (and Ghost) left the series when they said goodbye to Jon Snow. and I don't think we will see Nymeria again.

well I was thinking

wow. what a dramatic end . the ball danced on it for a second but decided to go in !

yeah but IJF made it a big news like they already achieved something. and from now on it will be impossible to simply ignore that (as they did so far) and I have to say the letter is confusing but anybody who knows a thing about the politics in Iran knows that Parliament doesn't have the last word regarding these matters. (or anything important) and not facing Israeli athletes was never a "legal rule" ! ironically the man who signed that letter "Arash Miresmaeili" is the biggest victim of this. if they really want to make a change, they know who to talk with and that's not the Parliament. people probably didn't notice but Iran didn't participate in any World Cup or Grand Prix after what happened in Paris. (they only sent a team to the Asian Championships) and that's probably what they will do in next months/years. to lay low. lowering the risk of getting Israel in the draw. maybe after couple years people forget this. and who cares if that jeopardizes the Olympic qualification and the whole Judo community in Iran in general.

IJF posted these news regarding Iran https://www.ijf.org/news/show/historic-agreement-reached-by-ijf-and-iran https://www.ijf.org/news/show/historic-breakthrough-iran-judo-to-end-boycott-against-israel they call it a "historic agreement reached by IJF and Iran" !!! but if you read the letter they never say they are going to compete with Israeli athletes. actually they never officially said "We boycott Israeli athletes" they always make other excuses. that's an unwritten rule. I wish that was true but unfortunately this is just misunderstanding from IJF. even Iranian media are surprised and confused by this, still no word from the Iran Judo Federation or the Iran NOC though regarding this letter but Mr Marius Vizer will be surprised next time Iran gets Israel and still boycotts the match. so I assume the suspension of our judo federation is going to happen soon. specially at this moment and current situation in Iran, nobody cares even if IOC suspends them from the Olympics. PS: it also made few things more clear in Molaei's story. it seems IJF was involved in his decision not going to the Asian Championships. it seems they promised him somethings. I won't talk more about it since I'm not so sure.