MHSN

it seems the King of doping, ilya Ilyin will comeback to the competition for the World Championship this year ! he will participate at the non-Olympic weight of 102kg ! Speaking of the World Championship, Iran will have a very weak team this time. out of our World/Olympic Champions. Salimi announced retirement (at the age of 29) after the Asian Games, the idiot genius Rostami will take a break, Saeid Mohammadpour was injured the whole year (I think he is done with weightlifting after back to back injuries) and Saeid Alihosseini is a bit injured. so looks like Sohrab Moradi is the only big name remaining. we were VERY upset when IWF announced the new Olympic qualification system which limits Iran to only 2 weightlifters ! (even though IWF is going to review that later this year but probably no change) but it seems after all we won't have more than two competitive weightlifters when it comes to Tokyo

Yep exactly the only interesting part of opening ceremony for me. and they ruined it. that was like a sprint with flag competition

Iran's squad for 2018 World Wrestling Championships in Hungary Freestyle 57: Reza Atri 61: Mohammad Bagher Yakhkeshi 65: Amir Hossein Maghsoudi 70: Younes Emami 74: Mostafa Hosseinkhani 79: Ezzatollah Akbari 86: Hassan Yazdani 92: Alireza Karimi 97: Mojtaba Goleij 125: Parviz Hadi 4 wrestlers are making their debut, (Yakhkeshi, Maghsoudi, Emami and Goleij) Atri and Hadi once represented Iran at the World Championship and won nothing but the remaining 4 wrestlers are former or current World medalist. but only Yazdani (the current World and Olympic Champion) had won a gold medal before. beside Yazdani who has a great chance for gold again. I think Karimi has a very good chance for medal at least. I expect 2 or 3 medals unfortunately. last year Iran won just one ! Greco-Roman 55: Moslem Naderi-Khadem 60: Mehrdad Mardani 63: Mohsen Hajipour 67: Mohammad Reza Geraei 72: Mohammad Ali Geraei 77: Pejman Poshtam 82: Saeid Abdevali 87: Hossein Nouri 97: Mehdi Aliyari 130: Shahab Ghourehjili 3 debutantes, (Naderi, Reza Geraei and Poshtam) and only 3 former or current world medalists, Abdevali, Nouri and Ali Geraei , they all won bronze last year ! (Abdevali had some other medals as well including a gold) I think these 3 guys will be our chance for medal. specially Abdevali and Nouri. doesn't look like a great team, we have to wait 2-3 more years to see some of our great junior wrestlers in the senior team.

It's hard to predict, most athletes are unknown but for no big change Iran as usual we expect medal in certain sports. this time mostly Wrestling, Taekwondo and Karate. in wrestling, all 4 wrestlers should win a medal. because there are only 3 or max 4 good wrestlers in each weight. in taekwondo, we have a full 6 athlete team. all of them are favorites for a medal , I expect 4 at least. and in Karate, again all 5 of them will have a chance for medal. but the level is higher here. all qualified athletes are pretty good. so I expect 2 here. and in weightlifting, our team doesn't look good but based on entries I think one medal is a a sure thing. I'm not sure if I can expect anything else from other sports. there is a chance in futsal but they are in the same group with Brazil and Russia ! I expect something like 10-11 medals. including at least 4 gold medals.

the award ceremony is really stupid. you already can see all award winners since they are in line to receive it ! we had the same for the VNL this year.

looks like a quick 3-0 for Poland. it seems USA was their real final but with Brazil you never can be 100% sure. they always can come back.

I don't think Italy played that bad. I think they did OK but Serbia was just flawless . one of the best performances I ever seen from any team in the world ! they don't even need a set tomorrow. with this points difference. Italy just has to pray Serbia takes the tomorrow match seriously

Serbia is serving unbelievably well. out of this world. not just one player but the whole team. if they win the 3rd set they just need one set tomorrow. I wonder if they give Poland another gift. they have no reason not to.

Does it mean we will have TV coverage for that ? not that I'm "very interested" in Asian Para Games but still impressive job from the organizers. I have to admit despite all other problems the TV coverage was pretty good during the Asian Games comparing to Incheon and Guangzhou (except no TV coverage for Rowing and Canoeing) I'm quite sure we won't see any of this YOG in Iranian sport channels. they are now very busy with European football (and also our stupid football league) but if there is TV coverage for Asian Para Games which will be at the morning (and no conflict with European Football Leagues) , that's more possible.

I had no hope for medal today since Mahjoub had Japan in his way but now I see he lost to Tajikistan ! and the Tajik guy also beat Japan and then he lost to Uzbekistan ! weird results interesting to see both Ulziibayar and Oltiboev in semifinal, Mahjoub lost to both of them in Asian Games while both matches could gone another way . and we thought he was underperforming very much

I highly doubt that happened on purpose. actually I'm quite sure about that. I watched the entire game, nothing suspicious. if they wanted that they could easily miss those free throws at the end. but they made both. of course that was stupid to let Belgium to score in only 1 second to go but that was just a stupid defensive mistake. they were down by more than 10pts most of the 2nd half if they wanted to lose by +8 intentionally that was no problem for them, they didn't need that last basket from Belgium.

This week was perfect for Iran 's Judo winning two medals in the World Championship. I made a list of all Iran's medals in a World Judo Championships. unfortunately not a very long list ! 2001: Gold Medal - Arash Miresmaeili 2001: Bronze Medal - Mahmoud Miran 2003: Gold Medal - Arash Miresmaeili 2005: Bronze Medal - Arash Miresmaeili 2007: Bronze Medal - Arash Miresmaeili 2017: Bronze Medal - Saeid Mollaei 2018: Bronze Medal - Mohammad Mohammadi-Barimanloo 2018: Gold Medal - Saeid Mollaei beside those medals we had some 5th place finishes in the World Championship. Miran (1997), Fallah (2005), Sarlak (2009), Roudaki (2011) and regarding to the Olympics, we never won a medal but we had been in bronze medal match several times losing all of them ! Miresmaeili (2000), Haji-Akhondzadeh (2004), Miran (2004), Maloumat (2008) and Roudaki (2008) We had our "golden period" in judo from 2000 to 2008 even though we didn't win an Olympic medal in that period, we had been in bronze medal match 5 times ! and our best chance Arash Miresmaeili in 2004 (when he was the defending World Champion) got Israel draw in the first round. but since 2008 IJF changed the rules and made touching the leg forbidden which had huge huge affect on Iran's judo. beside that we had some bad management for several years and also a plane crash killed the entire Iran junior team it took 10 years for Iran to win another World medal which happened last year with Mollaei.

since you asked me once about the Iranian names Sayed (or Seyed) is a title not a part of the name, even though officially part of the name but not in a daily life. something like "Sir" in English. this guy's name is Seyed Abolfazl (or simply Abolfazl) the word Seyed alone is never a given name. (there is a name Saeid different than this word Seyed) and for the other guy. Ali is his father name. he is just Abbas Foroutan (as you dropped the 2nd part of his surname correctly)

so we finish the freestyle competition with 3 medals (with 3 different colors) and 3rd place in team ranking. 3rd place is OK as I knew USA and Russia are much stronger but winning 3 medals is indeed a bad result. but at least they are not going home without a gold medal. at least better than last year. Russia dominated the FS competition with 5 gold medals ! USA, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey and Japan won one gold medal each

just because they were absent for just "one serious tournament" doesn't mean the are done, all 3 of them wrestled for Turkey in other International tournaments this year. poor guy Kortoev won an Olympic medal for you only 2 years ago. and you are treating him like a piece of trash.

so you think these wrestlers Open Sat (Cengiz Erdogan), Merey Kortoev (Selim Yasar) and Shamil Akhmedov (Shamil Erdogan) are not in the medal winning level ? because I don't think so

wow . this is rare to see an Iranian not being afraid of Japan. he was obviously the better Judoka and took his chance at the end. he became only the 2nd Iranian to win a World title in Judo . and 3rd gold medal for Iran overall. when he started his early celebration (after that first waza-ari) it was all over the Asian Games tragedy again but only this time thing finished in a different way.

couple weeks ago in Jakarta, Mollaei's defeat (by 3rd shido in very last second which was really really heart breaking specially because he even started his celebration for the gold medal) was the saddest moment of the Games for me. but today he made up for that already. even a silver medal is a great result. of course I hope for more but I'm already very glad with what he won so far. before the tournament I would be happy with a bronze from our small 3-man team but now they already have two medals in the bag.

Iran's flagbearer will be a wrestler "Mohammad Nosrati" unfortunately our NOC is a bit lazy to make a list of qualified Iranian athletes but it looks like we will have a bigger delegation this time. here is the list (which is probably incomplete) Archery 1+1 Athletics 3+0 Basketball 0+4 Canoeing 1+1 Equestrian 1+0 Fencing 1+0 Futsal 10+0 Gymnastics 1+0 Judo 1+1 Karate 2+3 Rowing 0+1 Shooting 2+0 Swimming 1+0 Table Tennis 1+0 Taekwondo 3+3 Weightlifting 2+0 Wrestling 4+0 so far 34 boys and 14 girls

Great job my Mollaei so far , this Belgian kid was very good. I hope he makes it to the final. the last time we had a finalist that was 15 years ago with notorious Arash Miresmaeili.

Mollaei looks great so far , after 3 matches he wasn't on Tatami even for 2 minutes in total so far . but now this is quarterfinal. and the Israeli guy European Champion Muki is also out, I was worried about him more.

we always had up and down in wrestling but we started to get thing steady since 2012 and even though still the same coach and the same federation is still in office we just started to get weak after Rio Olympics. maybe because the others studied our "pushing pushing and underhook" style and we didn't upgrade it. as for Greco, we owe that to one person our legendary coach Banna. he spent few years of his life trained a new generation, (Sourian and co) they started to get results since 2006 and of course 2012 was the peak for him winning 3 Olympic gold medals which will be never repeated. we got a bit weaker since our stars starting to retire but since our junior teams are getting good results we can be positive about the future.

as we always knew. they will consider all results , all 8 matches

so it seems we will have ITA, BRA, USA, SRB, POL and RUS for the final six. I can't see any reason for Serbia to play 100% tomorrow. (but I hope they do) France deserves it more. Poland was in easy group collecting 5 wins in the first round. I still think Russia is going to win the title. they survived those first round defeats. but all those teams are super strong. all of them capable of beating each other.

in this case I also would like Iran to be as bad as Italy in Water Polo, Fencing and volleyball (just named these sports since they are my favorite sports) but seriously our freestyle is not in good situation. I compared them with Greco team and comparing to winning 4 gold medals this is already a very bad result. which is a bit weird because freestyle is 10 times more popular in Iran. in Persian we call Greco wrestling as "Western wrestling" the meaning is this is not ours ! the thing is I don't know what's the reason behind this. we got very weak in freestyle all of a sudden after 2016. while I'm quite sure they have better coaches in freestyle. better preparation, a bigger pool of wrestlers to pick from. even our senior team is very weak at the moment. we won one medal last year in Paris and this is very possible to repeat the same result in Hungary this year.