MHSN

it was really heartbreaking to see our champion crying like that. he was always calm but today he was completely broken after the defeat, he had lost twice to Taylor before with exactly the same scenario. this time he tried a different gameplan which was working will until that moment. now it's like a national mourning day here. and I put the blame on media, TV commentators etc. even before the Olympic they were only talking about this day and this match against Taylor. like nobody else matters. Yazdani is a great wrestler but he is human after all. that was too much pressure to handle. he is still 26, I just hope he doesn't think about retirement, he still has a long career ahead of him. PS: no Iranian wrestler had even won the Olympic gold twice. there were extra pressure on Yazdani to become the first one doing that.

the weight-in is being held 2 hours before the start of the morning session. those who advance to the 2nd day (repechage or main draw) will have another weight-in the next day. most of these wrestlers walk around 4-5 kg above their competition weight, some of them even more. they usually cut weight "brutally" just to make the weight and gain the weight back again after couple hours. UWW is trying to force wreslters to NOT cut weight with these rules. UWW wants them to move up weight instead of cutting for the lower weight. but that's the culture in this sport and they can't change it easily. which means the first day morning session is usually VERY tough for those who cut weight. specially the first match, we always say here that the first match is always the toughest. Uguev was probably 60kg or more when he wrestled Atri in the semifinal. (Atri himself cuts weight too) he had to participate in weight-in once again today morning. which means he needs another recovery. but this time he has much more time to recover since there was no morning session for him.

so the great refugee athlete Hamoon Derafshipour is eliminated now. I guess having his wife as coach didn't help much. always good to see cheaters and liars loosing. he would make the Iranian team if he was good enough anyway.

I think it will 50/50. highly depends on Uguev's physical situation. not sure if people watched him yesterday but he won both of his qualification matches in the last 10 seconds. he was dead tired and 2pts down against Abdullaev (UZB) but still somehow worked his magic for a 4pts throw. (mostly Abdullaev's mistake) he was better in afternoon when he wrestled out guy Atri in the semifinal. so I assume he will be better today against Ravi (still he had to cut weight again for today's weight-in) if they had to wrestle yesterday morning I would give 80% chance to Ravi to win the match but now he had his rest and recovery and will be more prepared. still Ravi can make everybody gas. but he just has to stop giving up cheap points like he did against Sanayev. Uguev is not going to get pinned like that.

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.