Iran wrestling news

[Lucho]

5 hours ago, Irani said:

Khuzestan wins the GR Iran cadet championship.

It's remarkable how Mazandaran dominates freestyle, and Khuzestan dominates GR.

https://khanehkoshti.ir/خوزستان-قهرمان-کشتی-فرنگی-نوجوانان-کش/

Its good in a way as our two styles have two different provinces with the majority of the talent. Obviously more competition would be better for the sport overall but having a look Fars and Tehran province didn't do bad at all. IIRC Fars ended up having some guys win senior nationals and Tehran had some junior champions here as well. I just think Mazandaran and Khuzestan have too many high level coaches and clubs compared to everywhere else. Even if one or two provinces have standout guys its nothing compared to those provinces who have like 20 different guys in each weight class. Hopefully the Geraei's get into coaching after their careers are done and we have Shiraz producing more olympic and world medalists. I am silently hoping Kermanshah, Kurdistan and Lorestan start to consistently produce guys as well. Then I think we would match Russia with both quantity and quality of guys.

[Lucho]

Also on the more frustrating news Aref Mohammadi (Iman Mohammadi's brother) and Shahin Badaghi will be competing for Qatar going forward in Greco. As much as I understand that this is a job for them its ridiculous that countries can buy talent instead of develop it themselves. I know I've already talked about this but a simple alternative can be to just have 2 reps per weight class per country at the world champs. This way the level of the competition is better as we truly have the best guys on the planet competing. No disrespect to any of the athletes of the smaller nations but "international" wrestling is just Russia, Iran and US guys competing for other countries with a sprinkle of the Caucaus and Japan. Regardless Asian champs is going to be interesting...

[GrandOlm]

1 hour ago, Lucho said:

Also on the more frustrating news Aref Mohammadi (Iman Mohammadi's brother) and Shahin Badaghi will be competing for Qatar going forward in Greco. As much as I understand that this is a job for them its ridiculous that countries can buy talent instead of develop it themselves. I know I've already talked about this but a simple alternative can be to just have 2 reps per weight class per country at the world champs. This way the level of the competition is better as we truly have the best guys on the planet competing. No disrespect to any of the athletes of the smaller nations but "international" wrestling is just Russia, Iran and US guys competing for other countries with a sprinkle of the Caucaus and Japan. Regardless Asian champs is going to be interesting...

Some of it is just blatant buying, but a lot of it is athlete driven I think. They will immigrate and try out for a team. If your options are might never get a chance in Dagestan or go to a middling wrestling nation (like a Poland or Hungary) where you can wrestle in all the big tournaments and win medals, it's not hard to understand why they do it. Some of these mediocre wrestling countries are fairly generous about rewarding athletes who contribute to their total olympic medal counts. That this attracts foreign wrestlers is an unintended consequence and not something these nations were thinking about when making these structures.  

Now, I think these foreign wrestlers do absolutely nothing for the transfer nation's growth in wrestling, but I'm not convinced that they're super detrimental. Maybe if they chain migrate a lot of their friends from home and completely shut out native wrestlers, but has that happened yet? Freestyle is a bad investment if you're trying to up your Olympic medal anyways. Greco is much less optimized and the far better choice if you want to go the wrestling route. 

[Lucho]

16 minutes ago, GrandOlm said:

Some of it is just blatant buying, but a lot of it is athlete driven I think. They will immigrate and try out for a team. If your options are might never get a chance in Dagestan or go to a middling wrestling nation (like a Poland or Hungary) where you can wrestle in all the big tournaments and win medals, it's not hard to understand why they do it. Some of these mediocre wrestling countries are fairly generous about rewarding athletes who contribute to their total olympic medal counts. That this attracts foreign wrestlers is an unintended consequence and not something these nations were thinking about when making these structures.  

Now, I think these foreign wrestlers do absolutely nothing for the transfer nation's growth in wrestling, but I'm not convinced that they're super detrimental. Maybe if they chain migrate a lot of their friends from home and completely shut out native wrestlers, but has that happened yet? Freestyle is a bad investment if you're trying to up your Olympic medal anyways. Greco is much less optimized and the far better choice if you want to go the wrestling route. 

Oh no I fully understand that the majority of the time it is the athletes wanting to be able to compete at worlds and olympics. These guys are phenomenal competitors and will do anything to get an opportunity at a world/olympic medal. My main frustration comes from the fact that the system in place makes the whole process feel like countries are just buying athletes. If for example these guys genuinely wanted to be qatari, polish or whatever that's fine but after the tournaments are over they come back to their home countries so its not actually like they are contributing to their new country's sport aside from the medals. For example Ali Arsalan who is an Iranian who won a world championship for Serbia trains in Iran during the off-season. I'm fine with coaches from other countries developing the sport but buying athletes devalues the achievement and national pride associated. When the Iranian guys win gold in worlds/olympics their home towns erupt in celebration. I doubt anyone in Poland would care that much if a Dagestani guy wins them a world gold, probably an Olympic gold yes but even then they probably won't be too receptive of that either. given the optics of the situation.

[Irani]

Qatar also hired an Iranian Coach for their national team.

I am OK with it, as long as they are not taking the top wrestlers.  I love the idea of having multiple Iranians in the world championship and Olympics.

To be fair, hiring a coach from Iran is an investment in their wrestling.

I agree a better way to invest in wrestling is to do what India did about 10-20 years ago.  They hired coaches from Iran, Georgia and elsewhere, and developed talent.

 

 

[bnwtwg]

On 2/20/2025 at 4:37 AM, shiraz321 said:

To my knowledge he has not. He wrestled in the league at 86 and at that Iran vs Russia event but both those had a weight allowance. Both are these are recent. Outside of that I do not recall him entering anything at 86 since 2021. 

 

86 has to be tempting for him going forward as he is basically guaranteed the spot domestically outside of a disastrous weight cut. At 92 he potentially has Yazdani who he has lost to many times and Firouzpour, who while he has beat comfortably in the past, seems like a miserable guy to wrestle against with his strength and endless forward pressure. 

 

He is registered at 92 in Tirana. Maybe he is not interested in making the cut until he has to, but one would think that he would want a feel for getting down and competing at 88.

[Irani]

Two golds by Momeni and Amouzad, Emami gets bronze.

Goleij and Snyder will meet in the first round 

 

[shiraz321]

Amouzad just isn't capable of getting much going against Japan, even against their lesser guys. 

[shiraz321]

Ghasempour techs Akturk and is into the final. He didn't rub Akturk's head this time after the match, thankfully. 

 

For what it's worth regarding Ghasempour's weight - Babak, the Iranian wrestling instagram star and UWW commentator, says Ghasempour weighs around 92kg and that he thinks it's unlikely that he could wrestle 86. 

[Lucho]

11 hours ago, shiraz321 said:

Amouzad just isn't capable of getting much going against Japan, even against their lesser guys. 

It really seems to be a clash of styles, he is way too one-dimensional and that's what makes it so difficult for him against them. In all fairness the Japanese guy wasn't really trying to wrestle so there wasn't much he could do. Each match of their 65kg trials is going to be an Olympic final. Having Otoguro, Kiyooka, Ogino, Tanabe and potentially Ono all in one weight class is actually stupid.

[Lucho]

11 hours ago, shiraz321 said:

Ghasempour techs Akturk and is into the final. He didn't rub Akturk's head this time after the match, thankfully. 

 

For what it's worth regarding Ghasempour's weight - Babak, the Iranian wrestling instagram star and UWW commentator, says Ghasempour weighs around 92kg and that he thinks it's unlikely that he could wrestle 86. 

If he doesn't compete at 86kg it will be a shame because he is truly one of the best in the world p4p and deserves an olympic gold. I don't think there is anyone on the planet right now at 86kg who can beat him he is way to strong and dynamic for the field. If he doesn't compete at 86kg, I imagine Kadiev will run through worlds Tazhudinov style which will also be fun to watch I guess.

[Irani]

Goleij manages to lose to Snyder in the last seconds again.

Arash Yoshida beats Snyder and then beats Alizadeh in the finals to win gold 

 

[shiraz321]

7 hours ago, Lucho said:

If he doesn't compete at 86kg it will be a shame because he is truly one of the best in the world p4p and deserves an olympic gold. I don't think there is anyone on the planet right now at 86kg who can beat him he is way to strong and dynamic for the field. If he doesn't compete at 86kg, I imagine Kadiev will run through worlds Tazhudinov style which will also be fun to watch I guess.

Well, if the weight cut is too big then maybe there are a lot of people at 86 who can beat him. 

[shiraz321]

3 hours ago, Irani said:

Goleij manages to lose to Snyder in the last seconds again.

Arash Yoshida beats Snyder and then beats Alizadeh in the finals to win gold 

 

He lost to the weakest version of Snyder ever who just got off a plane from another wrestling event. I think that has to be it for Goleij. But I would like to see him wrestle Firouzpour in a battle of underhook, pushout and endless forward pressure specialists before he retires. What a matchup that would be.

[Window12]

Firouzpour won his junior world titles at 86. I wonder if he is considering a move to the lower weight…

 

[shiraz321]

8 hours ago, Window12 said:

Firouzpour won his junior world titles at 86. I wonder if he is considering a move to the lower weight…

 

He won at 86 in 2021 in that legendary junior worlds in russia where iran got 5 golds and won at 92 in 2022. I don't think he will go back down.

[Window12]

On 2/28/2025 at 1:38 AM, Lucho said:

It really seems to be a clash of styles, he is way too one-dimensional and that's what makes it so difficult for him against them. In all fairness the Japanese guy wasn't really trying to wrestle so there wasn't much he could do. Each match of their 65kg trials is going to be an Olympic final. Having Otoguro, Kiyooka, Ogino, Tanabe and potentially Ono all in one weight class is actually stupid.

Amouzad beat the Japanese guy 4-0 . Of the 4 points 2 were scored on shot clocks and one was due to the Japanese competition fleeing the mat. Goes to show how negatively the Japanese guy was wrestling. As the Iranian commentators sometimes say - he did not come to wrestle, he came to lose with a low score.

Edited Saturday at 03:03 AM by Window12
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