MHSN

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.

this is becoming funny. another match losing in last 5 seconds. the Chinese guy almost didn't even touch Sadeghi's leg for entire 6 minutes but then when it comes to the last seconds . our wrestlers ALWAYS found a way to let them score. even a super defensive wrestler like Sadeghi can't defend when it comes to the last seconds. of course Sadeghi's leg was out of bond for few seconds and ref could and had to stop the match and gave 1pt to China . instead they let the Chinese continue the action and score a 2. to win the bronze 3-3. of course if it was other way around. they would call it out of bond first and then takedown meaning only 1pt. amazing how all challenges go against Iranian wrestlers. specially in last couple months when Iran lost its position in UWW bureau ! this tournament doesn't really matter so I rarely talked about the officiating which was disgusting and terrible. that's hardly news.

Salkazanov easily won the gold, this is funny that when he beat our wrestler Emami (who is still under 23) in World Seniors 7-7 by a very controversial last second point. so many people here bashed him for losing to "Slovakia" . well Salkazanov turned out to be a very good wrestler !

yay. we have a finalist after million years well that was impossible for Ghasempour to not make it to the final which such easy draw. but other 4 all will wrestle for the bronze ! but watching these matches was like a torture for me, I wouldn't care much about the Worlds U23 in normal situations but losing continuously like this is unbelievable . yeah our wrestlers were crap mostly yesterday but today all 5 of them could easily go to the final and I mean it. they all lost to weaker wrestlers. and instead Russia brought 5 wrestlers to the final. not because they had the better wrestlers today. just because they had better strategy. better coaching. Sadeghi whom I hate his style, wasted 5 minutes to attack only in last seconds and at the end the American wrestler won it without a single attack which is amazing ! Sadeghi wasted his challenge opportunity in a stupid way and when he had a 4pts takedown late in the match he had no chance to challenge it. Zangeneh had a dream draw, he was all over the Romanian wrestler (who eventually made it to the final) leading the match and dominating it. made a super dumb mistake and got pinned. as easy as that. Shahbazi ! the idiot, first he made the Russian wrestler Sadulaev by letting him score 7 quick pts but then he found out Sotiev is nothing special. made a come back took the lead 8-7. gave up a stupid TD 8-9 again scored a takedown 10-9 but guess what. in dying seconds he let Sotiev grabing his leg and they both went out of the mat with 1 second to go. and while all 3 refs didn't give a point to Russia. a challenge from Russia changed it to 10-10 , win for Russia ! Taheri, again he was all over the Russian fat guy, but decided to sit on a narrow 2-1 lead. the Russian wrestler was dead tired and did nothing for the entire 2nd period but as I knew he saved himself for one last attack in last 10 seconds and Taheri collapsed easily. another match we lost to Russia in last 2 seconds ! how the hell our wrestlers can't just defend in last 10 seconds ?! we lost something like 10 matches like this in Worlds Seniors and this tournament. when they are up only with 1 or 2pts lead in last 20-30 seconds I know something bad is going to happen.

The biggest surprise of today came from a Chinese wrestler at 57 ! Zou ! he beat Russia and Cuba (5th place in Worlds Seniors) but he lost to Japan in semifinal in a match he should won. he was dominating and leading the match but made a mistake in his own attack in last 30 seconds. I'm sure China never had such a good freestyle wrestler. he was clearly the best wrestler in this weight today.

what's surprising about this ? Salkazanov only narrowly lost to Jakobishvili (eventual bronze medalist and 2017 World Champion) in World Seniors few days ago. he was top favorite for the gold here. but first day of freestyle was disastrous again for the Iranian team. no surprise at all, this is a very bad team. but Morteza Ghiasi almost beat the Olympic silver medalist here (yes no kidding, Japan sent Rei Higuchi Olympic medalist to the Worlds U23 !!) he was leading 4-2. only 20 seconds left and you can guess the rest of the story Ghiasi was the only wrestler who did "good" today. the other 4 were shameful. I didn't even know two of them ! no finalist in Worlds seniors and still no finalist here, after 15 weights of Greco and Freestyle but I think we have better chances tomorrow with Ghasempour. Sadeghi, Shahbazi and even Taheri. they are all experienced in senior level.

that's the same in Iran. but only if that sport exists in military. wrestling doesn't. for example in Football/Volleyball/Basketball there are military related clubs in the league. but even in that case, they still have to train 2 months in "real military" before that. so Mohamed Salah has to go to military ? in Iran until a week ago it was Olympic medalists (any color). Gold and Silver medalists in World Championship and Asian Games (not the Asian Championships) gold medalists but they just changed it few days ago. and now all medalists from those 3 competitions are exempt and I just heard they added Worlds U23 into that list. (not 100% sure though but it seems so) and thanks for letting me know about the Olympic channel. it works perfectly and easily. much easier than UWW live stream. I didn't know Olympic channel is interested in Worlds U23 at least I can see the last 3 matches without freezing.

the main website which hosts UWW live stream events doesn't work in Iran. I have to go through changing my IP etc and sometimes (like tonight) it just kills the whole speed and makes it super super slow. oh thanks I could watch the 2nd period. but the whole team was disaster here. one bronze more or less doesn't change that. but at least our coach (whom I like a lot personally) was very happy at the end. so I'm happy for him at least but the whole point of this competition is to produce good wrestlers for the senior team and unfortunately I can't see that potential in any of our wrestlers here. but all of 3 bronze medalists were very happy at the end. because "apparently" per new rules winning a medal at any color in a Worlds U23 will make them exempt from the military service that's quite a motive

everything you can see on the poster in English is correct, not google translate. that just can't translate Persian calendar which is entirely different.

Congrats unfortunately my internet connection isn't working well tonight and i missed everything right after the first bronze medal match , just saw the result but I saw him yesterday and he was indeed impressive. quite an improvement even though the level of World Juniors isn't necessarily lower than this. even though the level here is higher than my expectations. we had 2017 World Senior Champion winning the gold for Japan at 60kg. Pataridze. Tsurtsumia, Cataraga they are all experienced senior wrestlers.

well yeah. this is wrestling after all. that was disgusting because they refused the Romanian challenge in first place but apparently "somebody" told them to change it. and it took so many minutes . and I'm sure Romanian coaches would never even challenge that if they weren't the host. that match reminded me of 2014 Asian Games in Incheon. where Korean coaches were told to challenge everything because somebody in challenge panel would make sure they get the points. that Romanian guy was good when he was in top in Par-terre, that was the plan for him today. he won the rest of his matches the same way. even though I can say even his throws are controversial. he usally took it BELOW the waist which is illegal in Greco-Roman but well host nation should have a finalist ...

ok this is official. we suck big time in wrestling right now . specially in Greco. not a single finalist ! we will have 4 (maybe plus 2 more) wrestling for bronze but who cares. they were just terrible. all of them. always the same style. most of them losing the same way. they usually wait for "caution" to score on par-terre but cautions usually don't go in favor of Iran. I can't remember if I saw a single big throw from the Iranians in standing position. looks like they never even train such things I know this is not probably the best possible U23 team and they formed this time a bit late and since the federation president resigned they didn't even know if they are going to participate or not. but still it doesn't justify losing so many matches by superiority. most of them to weaker wrestlers. we had a great U20 team. maybe they should send the same team here. (I know Kavianinejad and Mirzazadeh were in the list but got replaced last minute because of the injury) and the freestyle team won't be any better.

I'm sure you guys saw this before that coaches slapping to the face of weightlifters before their attempts just to make them focus more. but during this competition, 105kg category. while Iranian coach Barkhah did this to our weightlifter Mohammadreza Barari (before his 2nd CJ attempt), he caused a ruptured eardrum ! poor guy Barari is now waiting a surgery ! he claims that was the reason he was dizzy in his last 2 CJ attempts and therefore missed the podium. Barkhah is usually a nice and polite guy ! i'm sure he will never slap anybody else. he officially and publicly apologized for that.

watching the squads (and also brackets for the 1st day) I see so many familiar names. some of them even wrestled in World Senior Champs less than a month ago in Hungary !! Tsurtsumia, Pataridze, Abbasov etc. how desperate are those counties to win medals in this level ?! Tsurtsumia almost won the seinor world title in Budapest. it doesn't make sense to make him cut weight again in such a short time for what ? winning the Worlds U23 ?

That was quite a comeback Abazari and Askari lost their matches, Poursheib and Khodabakhshi made it 2-2 and it all came to the last match of Ganjzadeh. poor guy has to go home with a ruined face the Turkish guy threw everything without any kind of control to his face. that was surprising they didn't disqualify him after that illegal punch which made Ganjzadeh bleed again. also a very surprising bronze medal in team Kata ! I never trust the "results" in Kata, I don't know if they were really better than Turkey or it was just a random decision from the refs. Iran finished 3-0-3 last time in Austria which was supposed to be impossible to repeat but they almost got the same result here (1 more medal but 1 less gold) and since Karate made it to the Olympics this was supposed to be tougher than the previous edition. I can't complain , great result. they won 3 medals (3 different colors) in Olympic events. this will be great if they can repeat that in Tokyo but first they have to qualify !! which I believe will be harder than winning the medal !

the Italian youtube link but that works only with Italian IP and the second session

so at the end of all Individual finals. 12 gold medals went to 11 different countries ! and if we only count Kumite. we have 10 gold medals , for 10 different countries ! 8 for Europe. only 2 for Asia ! Men Women

in certain sports, miracle happens when you are the host. Spain just beat Japan in Women's Kata final

Derafshipour won the bronze. which means Iran finished the day with 5 medals (1-1-3 ) but losing the women's kumite bronze was disappointing

they talked about this AFC final in media for two weeks non-stop . I'm glad this is over . never been a fan of Persepolis. even though I always support any team from Iran but honestly not much this time. the hype about this match was disgusting. they made it like a World Cup final or something like that. Iranian clubs had been there before. this isn't the biggest achievement of all time ! it's still a mystery that how come Persepolis managed to get into the final with such a boring style of football and with such a weak squad. (as I said before Persepolis is banned from signing new players because they tried to cheat in a transfer last year and FIFA caught them)

Bronze for Sara Bahmanyar, quite unexpected I didn't even know her before this competition, at least our women's team won't leave the competition without a medal.

Persepolis is red. yes. is the quality that bad that you can't see players face ? Iranian and Japanese faces are hard to not recognize

so at the end, Iran finished the competition with 3 medals (which was the max I was expecting) 2 gold and 1 bronze. I think in general the team did well. I mean considering the expectations. we knew this time our team isn't that good. some of those youngsters showed some potential here. I think we will hear more from Davoudi, he could finish 4th or 5th here but risked it for a medal which was the correct decision. I hope we can send a better team next year. this year their focus was on the Asian Games. even though Iran can qualify only TWO weightlifters for Tokyo so the Olympic qualification is not a big thing for Iran. from those 9 banned countries, China and Belarus came back very strongly, Armenia was also good, (despite some dumb coaching mistakes) but I think it was very poor showing for the rest. specially Russia and Kazakhstan. I wonder if they can recover at all ?! the doping control is more strict nowadays. which is not a good news for them.

there is no re-testing for the World Championships. if he is supposed to get a medal that will be in next few months PS: when they disqualified Ilya Ilyin from both of his 2008 and 2012 gold medals they didn't take his other titles from him. he only lost his Olympic gold medals. nothing more.

as expected Talakhadze ate everybody alive but Salimi and Alihosseini won gold and silver in Jakarta with 461 and 456, they could be silver and bronze here. that's a shame they both decided to not participate here that was stupid for Salimi to retire right now 2 months BEFORE the World Championships. no surprise though he proved to be stupid before. but I hope Alihosseini comes back soon. he is easily 2nd best in the world behind Talakhadze