MHSN

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.

I'm 99% sure they will play with reserves tomorrow since this is a long tournament. only if we could beat Canada today I think Iran was very lucky with the draw and also the order of the matches. but they played really bad in last 4-5 matches despite having several chances. it turned out sending the A team to the Asian Games was a costly decision. Iran missed the chance of playing decent friendlies. even in those 3 friendlies coach played mostly with reserves resting some main players. still not necessarily a wrong decision. at least they won a medal this summer.

well if Russia beat Italy tonight, you can't finish higher than 3rd place (assuming Russia will beat Finland) and even beating Italy won't be enough for you.

that was the story of the day for Iran. this is the 4th defeat in last 20 seconds. and the most painful one. obviously there is something wrong. they just can't focus in last 30 seconds. well we will have one wrestler in the final tomorrow and he already beat Russia. so maybe one gold. still a very bad tournament.

Finally after 4 matches we are playing against a non-host team (Poland and Finland were like hosts in Varna )

we had 3 matches vs Russia and none of them even went to the 2nd period ! I think this pretty much says everything about how pathetic our wrestlers are in this tournament in freestyle. Foroutan is a bit better than those guys but still I don't think there is a chance for him. ( didn't see the Russian wrestler though, don't know about his level)

That was quite an unexpected medal. I knew he is good but a world medal ? nah

the freestyle team is not just bad. this team is terrible. they lost so many matches in last 20 seconds. this is becoming the trademark of Iranian freestyle wrestlers. obviously there is something wrong with the whole freestyle program. because they keep losing like this. they can defend OK for 5:30 minutes but when it comes to the last attack they just collapse. it can't be just luck or one wrestler's mistake.

knowing there is a possible Israel draw for Barimanloo and considering his level I didn't even follow the competition today but I just got home checking the results and wow ! he is in semifinal ! a medal for him will be a big big surprise. now he has two chances for a medal this will be a the replay of Asian Games semifinal with him and An where he lost with exactly one second on the board !

both teams played great today . Italy only needs two sets to qualify , I have a feeling Russia is going to win 3-2. both will be happy at the end even though I think maybe Italy try to eliminate Russia (pre tournament huge favorite) when they have the chance. so maybe they try their best for the win. and not just for 2 sets.

I knew I can't expect the same results from our freestyle team but they were really bad today and I'm not talking about their results but mostly the way they wrestled. we had two matches with Russia today and both of them finished in 1st period our 70kg wrestler lost in a VERY stupid way. (he could be in the final because of his good draw) and our 57kg wrestler lost to someone much much weaker than himself. as expected Russia dominated the freestyle and only USA can challenge them for the team title. but interestingly the only defeat of the day for Russia was against Japan !! and not in a light weight ! but the biggest surprise of the day was in 57kg semifinal. that American kid Daton Fix was the defending World Junior Champion and in USA they consider him a great talent. didn't expect him anything less than gold. that was a great result for this kid Naveen from India !

Argentina I can swear I forgot our defeat after this match. . that was disgusting but at the end that was a well deserved win. never saw Velasco like this but I think he had every right for that. how come when Poland is serving they give the point to them in dubious situation but while Argentina is serving they call it a replay ?!

I think Skrimov had more aces today than his entire career including two lucky aces (thanks to net) in crucial points of 3rd set. this match was a nightmare , losing 24-22 lead in 2nd set thanks to Ebadipour for his stupid spike on set point and then coming back from 24-20 down in 3rd set to lose it 26-24 ! and of course Kolakovic failed big time today. he HAD to make some changes in crucial points of 2nd set. at least calling for a challenge (even if you know it's wrong , just to give more time ) when I look at our results. we actually did nothing special in this tournament so far. the only half-decent result we had was beating Bulgaria and now we lost to the same team. beating Puerto Rico, Cuba and Finland isn't a huge achievement.

Good bye third round. (OK I'm trying to do what Serbian users do and they usually end up winning so let's give it a try ) but seriously I never thought our libero Marani is such an important player. he got sick for two matches and our reception turned from average to terrible ! I know it's not done yet but it's hard to give the host team the momentum and expect them to make mistakes for you. we were down 11-2 at the start of the match !

And you jinxed France with this who would expect them to miss back to back spikes at the end of the set. btw France is a GREAT team but they are very unpredictable.

well another disappointing GP for Iran. the last time Iran won a gold medal in GP was 2016 ! our veteran athletes are losing to almost everybody ! even though out of our 4 AG medalists only 1 of them was here and he won our only medal after losing to Korean legend Lee DH. Bakhshi and Rajabi are not in good place in World Ranking to be eligible for the GP yet. and they gave rest to Ashourzadeh.

for whatever reason UWW/FILA uses the father name of Iranian wrestlers as well. I know in most Arab countries they use only the father name (alongside with the givenname) but in Iran the naming system is similar to western countries. plus no middle name here. it's only given name + surname. some names are more than one part though. but father name is nowhere mentioned in the passport as part of their own name that's just a UWW thing. by saying that. 60kg guy is just Ali Reza (or Alireza) Nejati, 67kg guy is Yousef Hosseinvand (you can drop that Fathi part as well) and 72kg gold medalist is Amin Kavianinejad.

looks like we only have to bring our wrestlers in to the medal round. they know how to win the last match we had 6 wrestlers in medal matches, 4 in the final and 2 in bronze medal match. and all 6 of them won their matches . all of them convincingly. which means Iran finished the Greco competition with 4 gold and 2 bronze and most importantly with the team title (for the 2nd consecutive year) we could have two more in the finals. feel sorry for Foruzandeh, he could win the gold but instead he went home empty handed. Nejati also was great but just made a dumb mistake against our friend Vijay and got pinned. (not a sure thing winning the gold, the Turkish guy Kamal who manhandled Vijay in the final was pretty good) The Greco team did great, same as last year. looks like our future in Greco looks good. Iran also won the team title in World Youth Champs couple months ago but unfortunately I don't have the same confidence about the freestyle. let's see what they can do here. last year was disastrous. but they claim this year we have a better team.