MHSN

There is a big big gap between Azerbaijan / Turkey and the rest, I wonder if they are this good ? or they just took this even more serious ?! or maybe because they set the event for their benefit, because for example there are some Paralympics event here, only events with possibility of gold medals for Azerbaijan ! today was a better day for Iran with 5 gold medals, I think Iran will most probably finish 3rd place. some results so far were a bit disappointing specially in Karate and Shooting. they won 4 gold medals in shooting but there were few more events that Iranians topped the qualifiers by a margin but were terrible in the final ! and in Karate our men's kumittee team was disastrous with only 2 medals and 1 gold ! looking forward for the wrestling competition, Azerbaijan didn't send A team to Euro and saved them for here. this will be an interesting battle between Iran and Azerbaijan and they are not alone, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are also sending some of their A wrestlers.

Iran's squad for the World Championship in Korea (only the men's team) 54kg: Armin Hadipour 58kg: Farzan Ashourzadeh 63kg: Mirhashem Hosseini 68kg: Abolfazl Yaghoubi 74kg: Masoud Hajji-Zavvareh 80kg: Pouria Erfanian 87kg: Saeid Rajabi +87kg: Sajjad Mardani world champion Mehdi Khodabakhshi had to fight in the trials to make the world team but he didn't show up and lost his chance therefore.

After a very bad 1st day, Iran qualified 3 wrestlers to the final today to secure the team freestyle title one more time. I believe all 3 of them will be strong favorites for the gold later today. and if Rashidi wins the bronze it means none of our freestyle wrestlers will return home without a medal. except one wrestler this is completely our B team while almost all other countries send their top wrestlers here, I guess our results were OK in general. but I was expecting more from some of them. Atri and Nassiri were disappointing.

I was looking at the start lists, it seems there is a good chance for Iran to dominate most of the shooting events ! never thought one day we will be favorite in this sport anywhere Karate competitions will start tomorrow and the level is quite good as expected. I expect few gold medals tomorrow in Karate and Shooting. btw the official website is really bad !

َApparently they want that venue for another sport (table tennis) for the 2nd week of the Games. btw we are having the draw for Boxing and the entry list for weightlifting, the level is higher than what I was expecting. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are also here after missing the 2013 event in Indonesia

After a disastrous 1st day, Japan just dominated the 2nd day. perfect for them, they are in all 5 finals. 3 Greco and 2 women Iran also qualified 2 more to the finals and with Abdevali in bronze medal match, they already secured the team title. both Korea and Kazakhstan didn't shine today. Asian Champs is not usually a high level tournament (comparing to Asian Games) but I see this year most countries take it serious, so many Olympians are wrestling here. I'm glad with our results here, this is not our complete A team, because of the Islamic Solidarity Games they are sending half of the A team to Baku. half of them are here and for example our 75kg guy is #4 in Iran . from what I see the officiating was also very good (at least not biased) even the host nation India didn't benefit from the calls.

Iran finished the 1st day of Asian Greco-Roman Championships with 3 golds and a bronze in 5 weights. not a bad start considering the fact some of these wrestlers are pretty new to international competition and we are in rebuilding phase. our whole team in the Olympics just retired (or at least took a year off) interesting fact that out of 10 finalists in 1st day, they were all from 3 countries, Iran, Korea and Kazakhstan ! great for Korea since most of their wrestlers are new. while Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and China are bringing almost their A team here. I was more impressed by our 98kg guy Salehizadeh, he beat 3 "good wrestlers" before the final.

Good point, but his ban started from April 2017, out of competition test. So I assume this is a new case, they denied rumors about his 2012 samples last year

this is the list of UWW sanctioned athletes https://unitedworldwrestling.org/sites/default/files/media/document/170428_list_of_antidoping_rules_violations_website.pdf there is a very familiar name at the end of the list ! 2012 Olympic champion and 2016 Olympic bronze medalist Toghrul Asgarov ! he is banned for a year until April 2018.

Apparently I was wrong about the 2nd round, they will merge Group A and C together for both Asia and Americas. if that's true we will get Australia, Philippines, Japan or Chinese Taipei in 2nd round, much much different than that all west Asian groups.

Draw for 2019 World Cup qualification looks like they separated Asia into West and East zones and the west zone is much easier. this is a bit disapponiting, with 7+1 slots available for Asia/Pacific, we would qualify anyway but I would like to see teams like Australia, New Zealand, China or Korea playing in Tehran . right now we got Qatar, Kazakhstan and Iraq in 1st round not interesting at all.

Bronze medal I think that was their best game in the whole tournament against a very strong team, our guys missed A LOT of chances in 3rd period, the gap could be bigger. this is only our 2nd medal in FIFA competitions (after Futsal bronze last year) btw that was also the first ever medal for the Asian teams. hard luck for Italy,

this is really shame, I always hate it when athletes switch countries to win medals for somewhere else than their homeland. that guy Haithem is talented too. remember him had a close match with our legendary Sourian in his prime days. with how things work in USA, they will surely give him chance to represent the USA in international competitions

the rules from 2005 to 2012 were much less dependent on the refs but unfortunately they were depended a lot on luck and ball draw. those rules were bad but fair at least. the current rules (with par-terre of course) are much better but only and only if the officiating is fair which is not nowadays. even with those rules we still had something like Minguzzi-Abrahamian match and much more. this is easy. they have to fight corruption but they don't. not sure if you watched the Olympic freestyle matches on the last day. the officiating was shameful, they had to act and banned some high degree referees just to calm everybody.

that's why Judo is more popular despite being more boring. mostly because rules are much clear in Judo. I'm no expert in Judo but I know the penalties very well, they are easy to understand. but in Greco-Roman I have hard time to understand the cuations despite following wrestling very closely for years. sometimes they give cautions to your opponent if you push more, sometimes they cautuon the wrestler with head down, there is no consistency. it mostly depends on the name of the countries. if you watch a whole tournament you rarely see they penalize the Russian in close matches, or the host nation. the system is corrupt and the rules are good for those corrupt refs to do whatever they want.

well, I wonder what people in Egypt feel about this ! Tarek Abdelsalam just won the gold medal for Bulgaria. he was already a good wrestler but apprently training in Bulgaria made him much better, he wrestled for Egypt less than 2 years ago in Worlds 2015 I wonder how come they let him switch the country this soon !!

They are going to change Greco rules once again in their next board meet during the world champs later this year and most probably bringing back the forced par terre again. the results of this change (removing forced par terre) were disastrous in 2016 Worlds (for non-Olympic weights) I understand what was their reason for such change but it doesn't work. with having the par-terre some wrestlers wouldn't attack much and waiting for their chance to score on top but this rule is more stupid. specially in close matches where none of the wrestlers can score in standing position. deciding the matches on par-terre is much more better than deciding them by just cautions ! Greco-Roman wrestling is boring , as simple as that, as boring as Judo. but why such extremely boring sport like Judo is much bigger in media ? that's because IJF is doing a great job presenting the sport. that's what UWW/FILA never did before. btw note that Azerbaijan didn't bring A team here, they are saving their bests for the Islamic Games in Baku.

Hosseini is great GK overall, not only in penalties , he is probably Iran's best player (alongside Ahmadzadeh) he saved few shots during the match as well. and had some magical saves in extra time against Switzerland. he is a bit injured here that's why they use the reserve GK (Behzadpour) for half of the match, even though today Hosseini played the whole match, still they used Behzadpour for taking the last penalty which he missed.

Iran missed 4 penalties in a row in shoot-out. the first one was enough to send them to the final but Akbari missed that, from then our GK Hosseini saved us twice but couldn't save the 6th penalty. he also saved a penalty during the match, making it 4 saves out of 7. considering the fact Iran was leading 1-0 for most of the match that was really heartbreaking. btw choosing the reserve GK (who didn't play a single minute) for taking the decisive penalty was a dumb mistake but that happens.

thanks, I hope Italy complete the semifinal I guess Iran deserved it overall but to be honest they were hopeless in 3rd period before that last goal came from nowhere. once again like Italy match Iran had a perfect start but fell apart somewhere in the match, except this time the falling happened in 2nd period and there was still time for a comeback. and actually that loss to Italy turned out to be a good thing now they can avoid Brazil in semifinal.

first ever semifinal for Iran Switzerland almost had it but Iran scored the equalizer in the very last minute before scoring the winner in extra time.

what a match 61kg final, Khinch once again proved himself and Chakaev lol, he always gasses in last 2 minutes, for beating him you have to keep the score close early in the match. no gold for Russia today I wonder if Khinch cuts for 57kg for the World Championship later this year or stays here, after all we are 3 year away from the Olympics and beside that UWW is going to change the whole weights for the 2018.

I wonder if Edisherashvili improved A LOT in past couple of months or the level wasn't high here ! he was weak/average back in World Cup in Iran in February. as for the Russian representative, Uguev didn't impress me.

You might not I'm 33 too

cave ? actually my choice of music from a live concert was intentional. I had two songs in my mind, I liked them both equally, I picked this one only because of the video. this is the other one btw this specific singer never makes proper video clips for his work , so a live concert is the next best thing.