MHSN

USA ended the freestyle competition with 9 gold medals. at least that Cuban 86kg saved the day for the whole continent (or I should say David Taylor did this by not participating and giving his spot to someone much weaker) Cuba is seriously getting weaker in this sport, yes they still can pull out a "Orta" to win the Olympic gold out of nowhere but they are not as good as before. 2 or 3 of their wrestlers were extremely weak here (I mean their new blood), you wouldn't expect Cuba to send weak wrestlers. (they are either good or absent) still Cuba is Cuba, you never can underestimate their wrestlers. you never know when the next "Orta" will show up. you have to be ready when you face a Cuban guy.

I don't follow Judo anymore, so what other countries joined Ukraine in its boycott ? I mean beside UK which is an obvious answer. you always can count on their loyalty. they would never betray Ukraine. in past few months I heard/read a million posts/comments/news about a handful of countries threatening to boycott the Olympics if Russian athletes participate (neutrals or not) you would expect them to boycott a simple non-direct Olympic qualifier for the start. btw I wish the best of luck for Ukrainian people and specially Ukrainian athletes. I hope nobody forces them to withdraw if they want to participate.

USA will not collect all 10 freestyle gold medals, their 86kg guy was terrible and lost badly to Cuba. I expect them to win the other 7 gold medals (2 are already in the bag from yesterday) Destribats was very close to another famous win against an American wrestler. Diakomihalis simply survived by a late pushout.

Tried to watch some matches but the level in Greco was low as expected and two HON wrestlers withdrawing from both 97kg and 130kg finals made it even worse, not a fan of cowards I think there are only 2 (maybe 3) worthy Greco wrestlers in the whole competition, two Cubans and that Cuban big guy wrestling for Chile. freestyle will be a bit better, but it will be very one sided in favor of USA. still it's good to see likes Burroughs, Dake, Snyder and Gilman in action. even though it will be walk in the park for them. just some easy ranking points to improve their rank for the 2023 World Championship seeding.

so IJF (aka Marus Vizer) all of a sudden realized this (which is 100% correct anyway) Marius Vizer didn't think like that back in 2019

Instead you can watch the mighty west Asian derby to decide who will finish 32nd

Brackets https://www.iba.sport/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/IBA_Mens_World_Boxing_Championships_2023__draw_records.pdf

How dare they even test Ukrainian weightlifters? they should be allowed to use whatever they want. time to dismantle IWF and create something new with Sarah Davies (cleanest and nicest weightlifter in history) as president.

China wasn't good during the Qualifiers, adding one NBA player will improve their quality but still I'm not sure if they can beat Japan and the Philippines in head to head matches. luckily for them they don't have to play Japan. Philippines is a bit hard to predict. they live and die on their 3pts shoots, they may even top their group 3-0 I think the Asian quota is between CHN, PHI and even JPN. absolutely no chance for IRN, JOR and LBN. I have to admit that Iran is probably the weakest team of the World Cup.

That's just a mistake it happened because they have two profiles for the same weightlifter https://iwf.sport/weightlifting_/athletes-bios/?athlete=sidiskis-arnas-1990-05-07&id=19215 https://iwf.sport/weightlifting_/athletes-bios/?athlete=sidiskis-arnas-1990-07-05&id=3358 in one of them he is born on 7 May and in the other one 5 July since he has two profiles. their software "thinks" they are two different weightlifters and therefore he is listed twice.

sometimes you just want to throw up after watching some officiatings in wrestling competitions. this Kakheslasvili-Kajaia bronze medal match was one of them . disgusting , just disgusting

move of the tournament by Amoyan

That was a good lesson for Hossein, hopefully he learns to speak less and work more. never do trash talking the world #1

nobody is going to beat Karlos in Paris or anywhere else. he can lose only if he bombs out. probably the best male weightlifter in the world at the moment considering Lasha's decline.

if I had to predict before the competition I would get 7 out of 10 gold medalists right. the guy I would pick for gold at 57, 92 and 97 ended up with the silver. but about the super heavyweight final, both Akgul and Geno are great, two of the best SHW wrestlers in the history and it's always great watching them. but it looks like Geno is fading, he is 29 but he is getting weaker, I'm not sure if he could make it to the final if he had to wrestle Meshvildishvili or Conyedo.

Russian coaches are great in finding solutions like this. I mean Jordan Burroughs was unbeatable for years until they solved the puzzle in Rio. we usually blame our coaches for not being good enough in term of finding the best tactics. Salkazanov is physically tough, Chamizo simply couldnt get through his hands. he usually relies on his big throws but big throws happen when your opponent makes a mistake and Salkazanov doesn't. he wrestled Frank so many times. but Chamizo is Chamizo, he is unique in his own way, I don't think you can adjust any tactic on him. it's also about matchups. for example I think our 74kg guy (assuming Emami wins our 74kg trial) will do better against Salkazanov, I really don't want him in Chamizo's side of draw during the Worlds/Olympics. Italian coaches didn't look experienced to me, Piroddu could win the bronze (or even going to the final) with a better plan. Conyedo also could do better against the Georgian/Azeri.

Chamizo simply can't score against Salkazanov even if they wrestle 10 more times, he just needs one big mistake from the Russian to throw him . that's the only way he can score and Salkazanov is well aware of that.

got injured yesterday, didn't show up today.

Kurugliev easily cruised into the final in his international debut for Greece. I highly doubt he loses to Amine in the final but we will see. as I said earlier he is easily #3 in the world behind Yazdani and Taylor (and #4 if his nightmare Naifonov participates someday) Chamizo and Salkazanov will be interesting in 74kg final. they both looked in a better shape. Chamizo had a great comeback against Demirtas earlier today

well that was fun session of wrestling. very impressive comeback by our Greek friend with a long name Kougioumtsidis, right ? he was down 10-2 with less than 2 minutes to go but he beat the Armenian 12-10. Azerbaijan sent 3 to the final and will be huge favourite for the team title. I was mostly impressed by Mikhaylov (79kg UKR) and Magomedov (97kg AZE) they both won bronze at the worlds last year but looked much improved this year.

this Piroddu guy is good , he lost here mostly because Azerbaijan has MUCH better coaches and they made the necessary adjustment in Rzazade's strategy to win the match. not sure if Piroddu can beat Lehr for bronze but considering his age I won't be surprised to see him in podium in bigger stages. he surely has the potential.

Hossein didn't waste any time to say some dumb things about O'Sullivan once again. I mean O'Sullivan is probably a jerk but you won't say things like that about the best player in the world, it just makes the life harder for yourself. he was great today, if the plays like this (which is a big big if) he can beat anybody but he just puts a lot of pressure on himself. still it was great to win his first ever Crucible match. even if he loses 13-0 the next round.

Freestyle Brackets are out. the competition starts tomorrow. even though the best of the best is absent, still I see lots of high quality wrestlers, unlike Asia, people take the European Champs very seriously.

hi Donald, I thought you left this world since Tokyo Olympics didn't get cancelled what else you can see or can't see in the future. tell us more. you are the only one capable of seeing what's ahead of us

Kazakhstan already secured the team title for the first time ever. this is only the 7th time in history that Iran doesn't win the freestyle team title. This is a tournament to forget for our freestyle team. or maybe not, a tournament to learn from. the same team with these wrestlers can win 5-6 gold medals in any other day but here in Astana we lost lots of matches in an unbelievable way. Masoumi losing to the Mongolian in the last 2 seconds was the last nail. youngster Masoumi did great (despite the defeat) dominated the world silver medalist but just made a rookie mistake in the last seconds. I think he can be world #1 in a year or two. but the rest of the team was simply terrible. this is probably one of the worst tournaments I ever seen. nothing is working. two of our wrestlers lost by 10pts margin to Japan (I assume it never happened before) at least the Japanese 92kg guy has Iranian blood his father is Iranian and he looks very good.