MHSN

It was "fun" watching our World and Olympic Champion losing 8-0 to a random guy but that's OK. that happens because of his careless style. it's better to lose like this here rather than in a major event. Geraei is still the best in the world but just not unbeatable. anybody can beat him if he isn't careful. other two guys ended up with gold medal. Dalkhani did good, he broke his hand last year (and couldn't defend his 2021 World title) IMO he did great considering he was out of the competition for a year. we have two great wrestlers in this weight, what a pity it's a non-Olympic weight and even if they move up a weight they will run into our Olympic Champion. Saravi at 97kg won the gold but he was far from convincing. I hope it was just lack of preparation. he is/was probably our safest bet for medal in world events.

I don't think the players can watch the other game, both games will be held at the same time 7:30 am here, I'm sure after today nobody will wake up early to watch this, probably except me Australia can't lose to Kazakhstan, even if they want to this is just not possible. the gap is just too much. this is no secret that Australia gifted the qualification to Iran by forfeiting that game in Tehran. I would be very mad at them if I was from Kazakhstan. Iran simply didn't deserve to qualify but I will take it, going to the WC is better than not going after all. our basketball is reaching its low still the team is not this bad. today they simply stopped trying in the 2nd Q. they beat the same Japanese team twice recently. and I believe Japan will take the Asian quota for the Olympics.

I'm glad I didn't switch to watch something else (our volleyball league) that last scene when Beyrami crossed the line was "fun" mostly the reaction of her teammates. "yay you got Eight, EIIIGHHHT"

we will have the 2nd ranking Series event of the year starting from tomorrow Ibrahim Moustafa Ranking Series Entry List https://uww.org/article/ibrahim-moustafa-ranking-series-entry-list UWW wrote an article about a possibly Kayaalp/Mirzazadeh (2022 WCh Final) but MZZ is not going to wrestle tomorrow he will wrestle at the Asian Championship instead (UWW should double check the entries with NFs before writing an article about a possible matchup) still Iran sent 3 (former) World Champions in Greco-Roman. plus a young team in freestyle.

I don't know this guy, never heard of his name until he landed on Tommy's show list of "refugees". and I think the whole article wrote his name wrongly. unless he has a super weird and unique surname (very unlikely) he should be Iman Mahdavi. I know absolutely nothing about him, therefore I don't know what's his case but he wasn't probably even a tier 10 wrestler here. the article says he is from the "shores of the Caspian Sea" which means north of the country, almost everybody trains wrestling in that region, (something like 80% of our freestyle team come from there) so to me he is just someone who did train wrestling but not a serious wrestler. (at least not in our standards which is quite high in this specific sport) I can write two pages about the situation in Iran but I assume that will bore you and everybody else since 1979 lots of people left the country and never came back (including more than half of my relatives , friends and classmates) of course most of them simply legally moved to somewhere else but lots of people are not qualified enough to find a job in a western country, therefore becoming a refugee is always the shortcut. based on my own knowledge/experience only 5% of Iranian refugees are real. the rest just fakes something to get out. (mostly they claim they changed their religion or they are homosexual, imagine a guy with wife and children claiming to be gay!!) once again I don't know this specific guy but I assume he also faked a story. it's easy to fake a bad story about this regime. they just make it easy, they are brutal, corrupt and whatever bad word you use. this guy is probably just an amateur but lots of our top athletes (or at least decent athletes) also did the same, specially after the recent crisis. some of them like our chess players had a legit reason, I don't blame them. some of them are just opportunists. you may hear lots of stories but this is very simple, the main problem is the economical situation in Iran, inflation, unemployment etc. Iranian Rial lost almost half of its value only and only in last 6 months. life is getting harder and harder for ordinary people. (Yep US/western sanctions are working perfectly) and IOC is giving free pass to the Olympics to any random Iranian athlete who simply asks for this. so why not ? that actually motivated some guys to leave the country, they can go do the Olympics without qualification.

today and tomorrow Iran is hosting a tournament called "7th World Freestyle Clubs Cup" but that's not recognized or sanctioned by UWW in short they just made up a tournament to satisfy their main sponsor. it's funny/humiliating to see our top wrestlers against random kids from Georgia or Kazakhstan. almost all matches finish 10-0 in the first period. but what makes this tournament a bit interesting is a team from Russia ! (that's probably why UWW doesn't recognize the event) that Russian team is consisted of Yarygin medalists. (guys like Gamzatov, Mamedov, Bizhoev, Zherbaev, Kurbanov) not Russia A team but still a tough challenge. this team is leading by the great Khadzhimurat Gatsalov, who is now the head coach of Russia national freestyle team. their previous coach had a weird/interesting history, Dzhambulat Tedeyev was the cousin of Elbrus Tedeyev (Olympic Champion from Ukraine and if I'm not wrong still the president of Ukrainian wrestling federation) he had this position for something like 20 years but for whatever reason they replaced him with Gatsalov.

I watched his QF against one of our guys (the weakest member of our Sabre team) and when he lost , my reaction was, ah this guy was terrible, you threw your best ever chance away (for a breakthrough in his career) really surprised to see the Polish guy won the whole thing at the end he looked amateur to my untrained eyes.

Today is the 44th anniversary of so-called "Islamic Revolution". I'm not old enough to witness those days myself, but the more I read and learn about those days, specially last 10 days, it's clear to me that things could easily go another way, but some small mistakes led us to the current disaster. putting the whole power in the hands of just one person is very dangerous. how the hell he could trick everybody into believing him. he didn't even try to be likeable. now 44 years later, we are at a dead end. no light at the end of the tunnel. they are not giving up an inch (because they think if they do, they will lose everything) and people are getting more angry and hopeless. not sure what will happen when this vengeful oldman dies, and we can't even count on that because it seems he is going to outlive everybody on the planet. but we are running out of time, I'm not even sure if the country exists few years from now.

I wish the best of luck for you, your family, your friends and your country. that's all I can say this is an unbelievable disaster , watching the news (which we do closely here) is really heartbreaking.

just a little bit ? I couldn't recognize half of them immediately . even wrestling

Albania now has a hired mercenary Russian wrestler who won the World Championship gold medal last year in Zelimkhan Abakarov and will be a favorite for medal in Paris. still he is not a clear top 3 in the world, nothing is guaranteed for him, he can easily lose to another solid wrestler in the first round but I believe he has a good chance to at least win a medal, even gold is within his reach. what a proud moment for Albania if he wins a medal. years of hard work will finally be rewarded.

Thanks OK thanks we had some teenagers in our senior team at the World Championship, this guy for example, you can see his senior results are counted since few months ago but no sign of his junior results (he won World and Asian gold) I was confused because some other junior medalists (for example one of our girls) already had those 70+20 points https://worldtkd.simplycompete.com/playerProfileV2?month=0&year=2023&subCategory1=11ea9376-4530-2b19-aefb-0af9674366aa&rankingTypeId=11ea9376-1b54-af01-aefb-0af9674366aa&countryId=null&searchQuery=null&userId=11ecf5e9-0033-2695-88a4-023cb924a069 I think I know the answer now, those points will be counted from February ranking.

yeah almost it should be Dadmarz and Mohsennejad (the 2nd part is just a suffix, not a separate word) but it's their own fault to write there names this way about the competition, winning 4G, 4S and 5 B out of 18 wrestlers sounds good but only 1 or 2 wrestlers really satisfied me. except 4 more wrestlers (our biggest names) who didn't wrestle here and I think will wrestle in Egypt later this month, this is all we got. some performances here were really worrisome. it was part of our trial system this year and they had to be in a good shape, this is just beginning of the season excuse doesn't apply here. I also wanted to write something about Oscar Pino. he is probably the 2nd best wrestler in the world in this weight, I have no idea why he didn't wrestle at 2021 and 2022 Worlds but from what I saw today he will be clear favorite for the gold in Belgrade, even in front of Kayaalp. he ate everybody alive here. from what I heard Mijain Lopez is preparing for the 2024 Olympics, it will be a shame if one of these 2 guys have to sit out. actually I'm surprised nobody tried to "buy" him yet. he is 99% guaranteed medal

Yeah I know there is no clear formula to follow. this is just how we know these guys. Iranian naming system is completely similar to yours, givenname + surname. that's it. but the problem is some names are consisted of more than just one part which confuses non-Iranian readers. there is no clear formula. some people use just one part, some use the whole thing. when it comes to the surname, 99% people only use the first part but there are lots of exceptions for example the current dictator who is in a mission to burn the country to the ground is known by the 2nd part of his surname) UWW makes it worse and more confusing by adding the father name right after the givenname. (probably to avoid confusion when two wrestlers share exactly the same name)

I know it's almost impossible for non-Iranians to find the "correct" name of Iranian wrestlers, since UWW messes all names by adding father names. it's probably impossible to know which part is "his" name and which part should be dropped. but the 79kg guy is just Ali (the other part is his father's name) and 125kg is the opposite! his name is Amir Hossein (not just Amir) for whatever reason UWW commentators enjoy to call him simply "Amir Zare" it's quite normal for people with a two-part name to use just one of them but Zare doesn't. as for the competition, all 6 Iranians made it to the final and Iran finished with 4 golds and 2 silvers, but before getting too excited those results were expected because of the level of competition, Yazdani and Zare can beat these guys 100 out of 100 matches. this tournament was too easy for them. Atri is still Atri, watching him is not good for people with heart issues. I know he is a nice guy but I just hate watching him on the mat. Savadkouhi had some great wins over big names like Kadimagomedov, Sidakov and Burroughs recently but then his final was disappointing, winning only 2-1 by a caution. Azarpira lost to Snyder in the final, I wasn't expecting more, he is still far behind the best of the world in this weight, his 10-0 win over Tsakulov in World Cup couple months ago was a fluke IMO. but Emami losing the final to Nolf was the biggest disappointment here, he dominated Salkazanov earlier and it looked finally he is becoming World Champion material but then nope, not yet. still he is our best chance at 74kg. we have great wrestlers at 65kg, 86kg, 97kg and 125kg. I think 57kg is already lost and we can't find a solid wrestler for Paris. which leaves 74kg as the only question mark. Emami lost only 2-2 to Kyle Dake in Belgrade which made lots of people think he can beat Dake next time but I still don't think so.

Olympic Champions Uguev and Sidakov won the gold. G. Rashidov lost the final to Mammedov. A. Magomedov also lost to someone called "Mekhtikhanov" and settled for bronze. ---------------- in another news, Brackets are out for the freestyle competition of Zagreb Open. not as good as the original entry list. some big names like G. Petriashvili, Ravi Kumar and J. Cox didn't travel to Croatia after all. we have a very big team in Greco, I will get to that later but in freestyle Iran sent a small team of 6 wrestlers but they are all our #1 or #2. I think 2 or 3 of them should win the gold easily. but there are two matches I'm mostly interested to see. Emami vs Salkazanov (which will happen in the 2nd round) and a possible Azarpira/Snyder final at 97kg. UWW is awarding some prize money for the first time but that's almost nothing, I think you can earn 10 times more by just one match in Russia PWL league.

I can assure you this is wrong, it was supposed to be on 19 December but FIVB postponed it. probably because they still didn't find the hosts (or maybe it has something to do with Russia's participation or non-participation)

that's the thing, the majority of the world doesn't support it. (blaming and condemning Russia for the unnecessary war is another thing)

This will be great for Asian sports in general if they stay in Asia (which I highly doubt) because that will help lots of sports in the continent to develop, same as Australia joining Asia in some other sports and with Russia we (in west Asia) don't have to travel half the world (which is the main problem with Australia) BUT this is most probably a temporary thing that's why I do not really like the idea. and if they participate at the Asian Games in full force they (alongside BLR) will steal lots of our medals they are very strong exactly in our strong sports. but I can't understand how this is supposed to work, they can't participate in World-wide Olympic qualifiers but can only participate in Asian qualifiers ? how the hell that's even possible?!

I wonder how I missed Uguev's name he was in top of the table and also made it to the final against Akhmed Idrisov. Russia tried to keep its top wrestlers in good shape by having several competitions, specially PWL league with good prize money (also invited some of our top wrestlers, some of them went, some didn't) but for whatever reason the great Sadulaev is still missing, probably not interested in minor competitions. he was on his way to break all records, nobody could beat him except Putin

Ivan Yarygin tournament will start in Russia tomorrow. this used to be the toughest international wrestling competition. you had to beat several top Russian wrestlers to win a medal. but now it's mostly a local competition between them. but I also see a limited number of non-Russian wrestlers in the list, mostly from Uzbekistan, Mongolia, Moldova, KGZ etc. Iran also sent a small team of 3rd-4th tier wrestlers. I was checking the brackets and it's still a very high level competition with likes of Rashidov, Sidakov, A. Magomedov. from their tier 1 wrestlers I can't see Olympic Champions Zaur Uguev and the great Sadulaev in the list. Uguev wrestled in a league competition in Iran few weeks ago and also wrestled in PWL League so we know he is OK but what about the Tank ? where is him exactly ? when was the last time he wrestled.

you also got a very good Ukrainian wrestler, Semen Novikov is listed for Bulgaria in Zagreb Open https://uww.org/article/zagreb-open-ranking-series-entry-list he is a two time World U23 Champion + European Senior Champion but had to sit out for main events because of the Olympic Champion Zhan Beleniuk I also see lots of Russian names representing other countries but they are all average or below average wrestlers, I still doubt Russian tier 1 wrestlers switch country.

if Egypt doesn't win the whole thing, Europe will be Continent 1, Africa will be Continent 2, Asia will be 3 and America will be 4 so it's 1) WCH 2, WCH 7, Asia 2, America 2 2) WCH 3, WCH 6, Africa 2, Europe 3 3) WCH 4, WCH 5, Europe 2, Africa 3

yeah exactly the same that's in the qualification criteria, I mean the PDF file Page 3 https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/Olympic-Games/Paris-2024/Paris2024-QS-Handball.pdf?_ga=2.259933514.1900549743.1674497797-2027373162.1619905599

1st and 6th WCH teams (I mean among non-qualified teams) will get Asia 2nd and America 2nd which is a very easy group for those 2 European teams, at least comparing to other 2 groups with 1 more European team