MHSN

he is the worst wrestler we ever sent to Olympics. Bajrang was a terrible matchup even for our better wrestlers, let alone this guy I think Bajrang has a very good chance to make it to the semifinal. even though that Kyrgyz guy is somehow dangerous. you have to be careful against him.

I didn't notice Sanayev is also from Kazakhstan, same as Tanatarov when I was writing that. yes indeed that was a revenge

9 years ago in London Sushil Kumar ate half of Akzhurek Tanatarov's ear and nothing happened to him despite all the blood . Sanayev will be fine

Congrats , he was always in my list as one of the favorites (and I believe I said that couple times before the Games) even though his recent performance wasn't great so I downgraded his chance in my own calculation. this is kind of funny, I remember few months or maybe a year ago we had a conversation and I told you something like " don't worry this is our weakest weight, our guy has no chance for medal and he may not even qualify"

I just read one expert's opinion about that specific match and it seems they called it a foul for something else. I usually watch 3 mats at the same time and probably miss lots of things. I can't find that match online to watch it again but it seems it was a leg foul. apparently Aslanyan used his opponent's leg to perform his technique. this is what I heard from an expert in officiating Greco-Roman.

It was a good day for our wrestlers, 4th ever gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling and Yazdani making it to the final. it would be perfect if Atri could stick to his plan to beat Uguev but to be honest nobody was really counting on him. it will be great if he wins the bronze. but he will be underdog against anybody who comes from repechage. Yazdani gave us a scare, Naifonov was really close to score on him in the last 20 seconds. I can say his match vs Taylor is the most anticipated Olympic event people in my country was looking for. until yesterday I was considering Yazdani as the favorite but now I think Taylor is slightly favorite (who beat Yazdani twice already) Yazdani is a great wrestler, one of the bests in our history but he gasses in the 2nd period, we rarely see that because he finishes 95% of his matches very early. mostly in 2 minutes. but his weakness was exposed against someone like Naifonov. hopefully he has a better gameplan against Taylor because if he wrestles like today, Taylor will hit him hard in the 2nd period. and congrats to Reza Geraei for winning the Olympic gold. until few months ago our coach wasn't even sure to try him in this weight. (he is a 72kg wrestler) when it comes to Geraei family people mostly knew his brother, but I assume that changes from today.

it seems he enjoys to improve his record by 1 kg each time (2kg in total if he improves both CJ and Snatch records) we have to wait 6 more competitions for that

I wonder if Talakhadze will ever miss something ?! he lifts whatever is in front of him. 488 total WR he is getting closer to that 500kg magic number. silver for Davoudi and bronze for Asaad was also easily expected. easier than any other event in this Olympics probably

Do we know when they are going to make the draw ? I assume all categories will be done today

in wrestling it's not about "falling on the mat" the offensive wrestler gets points when the defensive wrestler's back is exposed past 90 degrees. in that action Starvevic claimed he was initiating the action and therefore he should get the points (which was obviously not correct) personally I didn't get why they shaved 2pts of it . to me it was a 4. but they probably thought it wasn't directly from "feet to danger"

You can't challenge the fall itself. but you can challenge if there was a foul before it. that was kind of a dangerous move. I don't know what they call that technique in English (headlock or something) but here we call it "Fito" and that's really a dangerous technique. that pressure the Aslanyan put on El-Sayed's back and neck could injure him seriously. (from the jury's point of view) that's why they annulled the whole action. personally I'm not 100% sure if it was a correct call, I saw lots of "Fito" much worse than this one, even making the opponent unconscious by putting extra pressure on the throat but this is wrestling, officiating is/was never consistent here.

today could be perfect but someone found a way to ruin it a bit. before the Olympics everyone was counting on Ali Geraei but he was terrible here and his younger brother managed to advance to the final. by my count he was our second weakest Greco wrestler here but now he is in the final. meanwhile his brother did the same stupid mistake 3 times, against Starcevic, Lorinz and Yabiku instead of just sticking to the mat while defending parterre he tried to do something stupid and gave up big points instead. this Japanese is not even good enough for an Asian bronze medal but now he has an Olympic medal thanks to Geraei. instead of focusing on his own job he was out cheering for his brother few minutes before his own match. he will regret today later, Olympic bronze is very prestigious, he came here for the gold but when you lost that just focus on what you can do which is winning the bronze. Saravi deserved more than bronze here. but that caution against Aleksanyan ... still good to see him having an Olympic medal.

Congrats a lot. I hope that huge win made up for wrestling's heartbreaking defeats.

that was a very heart breaking day for Egypt. two "almost wins" going away have to say there were lots of controversial calls.

nobody talks about Egypt's performance today ? @thepharoah where was this 87kg guy before?! Egypt did great so far. even in the first day they were close beating the Russian. even though Mohamed Ibrahim was a bit lucky they decided to annul that pin, I'm not sure if that was the right call.

couple days ago at the same time as 96kg competition. S. Moradi lifted 230kg in training just to tell himself that was his gold medal on Fares's neck. some media here are claiming that our WL federation made a deal with Qatar, not registering Moradi intentionally to sell that gold to Qatar which is nonsense, at the time our WL federation was registering Moradi was outside of the qualification zone and we registered someone else at 109kg. but after the deadline some other athletes withdrew and other weightlifters below Moradi got the chance to compete.

nah I said before that I'm not in a great mood and also I'm very busy with doing multiple things. but my opinion about Indian wrestlers is that both got lucky with the draw. Ravi Kumar is already in the semifinal. against probably Takahashi. (or Sanayev) pretty good chance for him to win a medal. Deepak also got lucky. I'm not sure about his Chinese opponent in the 2nd round, he is not that bad . but still I expect to see Deepak in the SF where he most probably will lose to David Taylor. still a good shot for the bronze.

I really think if he wants he can win gold in Paris 2024 . here he looked better than Rio

This Cuban wrestler Luis Orta came out of nowhere and won the Olympic gold. before COVID he was a nobody. I dont know what happened to him but he came out of quarantine a completely different wrestler. Cuba has a pretty good chance to win 3 gold medals in Greco-Roman.

oh man this Olympic is a nightmare, losing two semifinals like that .both very winnable, both with doable cautions, Saravi was actually better than Aleksanyan the entire match, that 3rd caution was nonsense but still Saravi could defend this one as well , I didn't see him touching the leg but this is Greco there is always a finger touching a leg and if they want to give pts to someone they can justify it. for Geraei it was his real final. Makhmudov (KGZ) is the kind of wrestler he usually beats easily but then he acted stupid on defense and gave up big points he almost came back but lost it because of that stupid failed challenge.

Cuban wrestlers are notorious for doing that. people in wrestling community are aware of few of them (Garzon, Lopez. Romero, Ortiz) and god knows how many times they lost without anybody noticing. it happened against Russia, Turkey, Bulgaria and unfortunately I have to say once against Iran. of course it's hard/impossible to prove these claims but almost everybody in wrestling community knows this. Lopez is from another planet, those guys he beat weren't easy. I mean Kayaalp is one of the best wrestlers in the world, one of the best in history, he would be multiple Olympic Champion if he wasn't wrestling in Lopez's era.

this is Greco-Roman, and it will be a close match, I'm almost sure at least one of us will be angry about the officiating and how they awarded the cautions , I just don't want to be that one

there are some unwritten rules about how award passivity cautions. in first period they give it to the passive wrestler, that's simple. but things get complicated in 2nd period. the unwritten rule is in case of 50/50 situation you have to penalize the other wrestler to create some kind of parity . but again when a match is one-sided they can penalize one wrestler twice. but it's up to those non-smart (and sometimes corrupt) referees to decide if it's 50/50 (or even 60/40) or it's one-sided. I was watcing 2 or 3 mats at the same time. I didn't miss actions but for judging cautions you have to watch the entire period. I watched Lorincz/Japan match but since I was watching another match at the same I can't judge here. but when you are up against the host wrestler you have to be "very active" otherwise you are going to get cautions. unfortunately the main thing is there is no consistency in awarding cautions. it's just up to the refs. which is terrible

Michalik can't beat Evloev in his wildest dreams, but Szoke has a tough job against Melia in the repechage which I believe is his real bronze medal match.

well you weren't the only one looking forward to this match, the refs were waiting for this one to use their magic once again. annulling Lopez's 2pts gut wrench was nothing short of magic. Lopez looked great today, probably even better than before. if he really wants I believe he may even win the gold in Paris. he is probably the best Greco wrestler of all time. even better than the great Karelin. Lopez won the gold in 3 Olympics with 3 different set of rules. I mean completely different rules. and he is going to win his 4th , no male wrestler could ever do that. the only bad thing in his career is his intentional defeats, people question 3 of his defeats against Kayaalp and Baroev, I'm almost sure in two of them he wanted to lose.