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and now I missed the days when we couldn't watch this shit and just had the final result and I seriously mean it. even the commentator(s) were surprised by the verdict of Shahbakhsh's fight. I know I am biased but the English commentator said it so many times that how the hell the bout is not finished after the 2nd round. I seriously hate watching this sport , even when I watch Rhythmic Gymnastics or freestyle skiing (sports i know nothing about) I can guess who is getting the better score but in boxing, you can think guy A completely dominated the match but then guy B gets all the scores from the refs.

two more wins tonight, which means 5 out of our 6 boxers survived the non-live-stream era. and from now on if they lose at least we can watch it

Yeah, that's the problem. I understand and agree with 1 athlete per weight class rule. the current format says 2 (out of 4) per gender. you can have a full team only if all of them finish in top 5 (or in some cases 6) of the world ranking which is really hard. lots of athletes in top 10 of World ranking will miss the Olympic because their NOCs already qualified 2. Taekwondo entered the Olympics back in 2000, at the time it was all Korea, IOC made this rule to prevent Korea from winning easy 8 gold medals. but this is not the same anymore. Korea struggles to even qualify lots of athletes.

yes the field is weak because of the obvious reason of limiting countries I agree with your general idea , but I would drop the Grand Slam completely. it's a waste of time. also 4 Wild Cards are too much. no room for charity with only 16 athletes per weight. (it's not like Judo with millions of quotas) from what I head WT is going to change its ranking system, it will be 2 years period (which makes more sense than 4 years) and if my memory serves me well they are thinking about a new qualification system, something like Judo, awarding all quotas by the ranking. at least that's a proposal they are thinking about. btw if some people here are happy about the restrictions in this sport (which is already developed in all continents), what would they say about the same idea in athletics or swimming ? I mean you can enter just one swimmer in all freestyle events, that sounds terrible, right ?

didn't check the list of non-qualified nations, is Afghanistan still there ? they have two chances here, one of them more realistic at 58kg

Asian Qualifier Entry list https://worldtkd.simplycompete.com/eventDetails/11eebc5b-c0f8-558d-872c-06ec6d5493b5/5 it's possible to calculate the bracket , that will be based on the March ranking. from what I see our M+80 athlete has a clear path to the quota but W49kg looks tough, she will run into Asian Games Champion Su Po-ya in the semifinal. South Korea also decided to send someone at W57kg. it's the first time after so many years that they are forced to participate in the Asian OQT.

I expect them to release the list in a week or two. Asian Champs list should be published first though but with UWW there is no timeline for this, they publish the lists whenever they want for example African Champs and African/Oceania Qualifier will happen before the Euro Qualifiers but still no list which makes me wonder if there is a change yeah it makes sense to send two different teams, I expect most Asian top teams (Iran, Japan, Korea, India, China, KGZ, UZB, KAZ, MGL) to do the same.

it's hard to tell without having the brackets because even order of matches matter but I can make a short list of favorites for now , of course I will write in details after getting the draw in no order 60 67 77 87 97 130

Entry list for the European qualifier, the list is not final but will have only few changes https://arena.uww.org/weight-category/1eedaad3-a110-6ece-86c8-65c730caa373 the seeding is correct but most of better wrestlers are unseeded making it almost useless. no Armenia at all, for obvious reasons it seems participating here is necessary to compete in the last World Qualifier. but Armenia will be an exception and UWW will allow them to wrestle. Russia didn't register a freestyle team yet. and their 97kg Greco guy (and that's Sargsian and not the Oly Champs Evloev) is wrongly listed for 97kg FS. they will enter a freestyle team for sure. no Kurugliev for GRE at 86kg which means he still has paperwork to do.

well both Shahbakhsh and Gheshlaghi survived the first night to fight another day. I don't have much hopes (for obvious reasons, mostly the officiating) but let's see how far they can go in this tournament

ah, that sucks, being the first team below the qualification line only if they were lucky with one more result going in their favor in other matches.

It is not as far as I know per UWW's weird rules NOCs have to participate in continental Champs to be eligible for the continental qualifiers (with the same number of wrestlers) and there is an African Champs (for all age groups including seniors) listed in UWW website for few days later. I just checked their website and the event is still there. so unless they changed something which I doubt, African Games has nothing to do with the Olympics

because it's not. anything king Tommy touches is worse than anything he doesn't touch

that was disappointing to compete with the best of the World we need a good 3rd guy which we don't (and won't) have after Abedini's retirement. but it was/is a good tournament in term of Olympic Qualification. by my count only a silver/gold medal for Japan or Gold for China in the last WC can take the quota away from Iran. that's unlikely but far from impossible.

yeah that was a tense match, Iran was leading by 9 or 10 pts at some point but they found a way to fall behind and won it more dramatically they lost to Egypt in the previous World Cup though they are getting close to the finish line, but they also need Japan to lose and not win a medal.

I can also name Suriano, Spencer Lee, Daton Fix etc. USA has 4 or 5 wrestlers better than this guy at 57kg. but he won the trials last year and per their rules he had the right to wrestle here, the other could challenge him but didn't want to, they probably thought that's useless to tire themselves, let him winning the quota. we will beat him at the trials. US usually underestimates the Pan-Am qualifiers. I mean they should had their trials before this event but they want their trials to be something special, calling it "Final X" in all 6 Olympic weights. it will be hard for anybody who wins the trials to cut weight again in 3 weeks and go to the last chance qualifier in Turkey. btw most of wrestling nations won't send the same guy twice. I mean if any of our guys fail to qualify in Asia, his chance is gone and the next guy in line will take his place.

If they send the same guys, yes I agree but they have some better wrestlers. I don't know how these guys managed to win their trials last year. they will have their Olympic trials in April and whoever wins the trials in these 2 weights has to win the quota himself in May. for example guys like Diakomihalis or Arujau are well capable of winning the quota.

looks like today is the day for Mexico, they had two huge surprise wins already Austin Gomez beat Nick Lee of USA 22-12 despite being down by something like 6 or 8 pts at some point and at 86kg, Valencia pinned the Cuban guy while he was down big points

European Qualification tournament entry list https://worldtkd.simplycompete.com/eventDetails/11eec0f0-5a3f-0ed9-8152-0644ce79712b/5

so, I got what I asked for. lots of surprises and Cuba will not have a full Greco team in Paris after all, of course Gregorich is good and has a chance to qualify from the last World Qualifier (not a big chance but still realistic) I hope I can see the match later, Woods had hard time against the Honduras wrestler in QF, this is a big big result for him specially after US team lost two SFs where they were supposed to be the favorite.

no, absolutely no chance in Greco-Roman

finally we had a big surprise Alejandro Sancho got pinned by Almanza and won a real quota by a Chilean wrestler (not a Cuban mercenary) no stream for this session for me, I'm just following the results ! no surprise at 60kg, and qualified

we had no upset in the first session. even not a single real surprise! but there were two close/important matches and both of them didn't went the way I was expecting. CUB beating USA at 60kg and Julfalakyan losing to K. Bey. there were supposed to be 50/50 matches, so no real surprise here too. hope to see some in the afternoon session

no Olympics for Arsen Julfalakyan, at least not here (and I highly doubt he can qualify from the last qualifier) he had his chances twice, he had Kemal Bey lifted on to the air for a 4pts throw but for some reasons didn't throw him. I think some injury happened to his leg.

yes. more than a couple of years. Cuba already qualified the weight at the 2023 Worlds Oscar Pino won the bronze and qualified the weight. Lopez still plans to go to Paris. but the last thing I heard from him, his preparation didn't go as planned and he had to skip the Pan-Am Games I don't think they send Lopez right away anyway. he has to beat Pino (who is very good too) to earn his place in Paris.