Iran wrestling news

[GrandOlm]

3 hours ago, Lucho said:

Overall a strong performance by our guys but what is a little concerning is our match ups with certain countries. We were 3-2 against both Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan which shows that we are definitely not that far ahead of the rest of the field. Also what is worrying is Ukraine sending 4 guys to the final like us. Abdiev, Yakushenko and MIrzoiev are all going to be very good in the future and definitely cause problems for us to medal when they grow into seniors. I'm just hoping our senior coaches realise this. In other news does Russia even wrestle greco anymore? They had I think like 2 medallists one at 55 and the other at 63 even Agaev didn't medal at 67. Their program is finished in the next 5-10 years at this rate.  

They never wrestled greco. Greco was originally popular in the Nordic areas and Germany back at the start of the modern Olympics. Russians[ had minimal achievements in Greco prior to the Soviet Union.  During the Soviet days, Greco was chosen as one of the sports to integrate into the soviet sport system. They funneled athletes into greco, while running a well funded and well coached program. It was enough to dominate the world in the 20th century, and once it came crashing down with the fall of the soviet union, Russia coasted on its fumes into the 90s. 

In the 2000s -2010s, Russia was the best by default. No country truly integrated greco into their culture. So they were left competing against amateurish/hobbyist scenes or mini versions of their own system. Cuba didn't have enough money, Bulgaria was even more stifled by the fall of communism, while Russia still had the bare bones skeleton of the Soviet system to fall back on. That corpse was good enough to win, while the rest of the world kept not taking Greco seriously.

Now that Iran actually has regions where a critical mass of young people train Greco from a young age, they passed the Russians up. Russian meanwhile is looking more and more like America, but with caucus wrestlers. 

[Irani]

Freestyle U23 brackets are out

Youssefi draws Haines from the US 

Khalili draws a Russian at 70

Other draws look ok

[Truzzcat]

what would you guys attribute the sheer dominance in greco recently to? I think khalili beats the Russian pretty handily, one of my Russian companions is of the belief that their guy is not that great.

[Irani]

2 minutes ago, Truzzcat said:

what would you guys attribute the sheer dominance in greco recently to? I think khalili beats the Russian pretty handily, one of my Russian companions is of the belief that their guy is not that great.

To answer your question, first some history.  Iran has always had a tradition of Freestyle wrestling,  Greco Roman wrestling is actually called "foreign wrestling"  in Persian.  I remember when Iran got it's first gold in Greco Roman by a street vendor in the late 1960's, early 1970s when I lived here, how shocked everyone was.

Fast forward to 1983 when another Iranian named Mohammad Bana won a silver in the world championship, and a gold in the Asian championship.

He later became the coach of the Iran team, and did a great job of building team.  That increased interest in GR wrestling, the traditional regions that were strong in FS wrestling, did not show much interest in wrestling, but regions that historically did not participate in wrestling became very interested in wrestling.  Places in the south such as Khuzestan and Fars now represent most of the GR wrestling talent from Iran,

Thanks for the info about Khalili's Russian opponent.  I guess we will soon find out.

Youssefi vs Haines should be a  good one

 

[Irani]

Iran finally lost in a final, so they end up with 3 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze, and first place

 

Edited Thursday at 05:35 PM by Irani

[Window12]

1 hour ago, Irani said:

To answer your question, first some history.  Iran has always had a tradition of Freestyle wrestling,  Greco Roman wrestling is actually called "foreign wrestling"  in Persian.  I remember when Iran got it's first gold in Greco Roman by a street vendor in the late 1960's, early 1970s when I lived here, how shocked everyone was.

Fast forward to 1983 when another Iranian named Mohammad Bana won a silver in the world championship, and a gold in the Asian championship.

He later became the coach of the Iran team, and did a great job of building team.  That increased interest in GR wrestling, the traditional regions that were strong in FS wrestling, did not show much interest in wrestling, but regions that historically did not participate in wrestling became very interested in wrestling.  Places in the south such as Khuzestan and Fars now represent most of the GR wrestling talent from Iran,

Thanks for the info about Khalili's Russian opponent.  I guess we will soon find out.

Youssefi vs Haines should be a  good one

 

I wonder if Iran winning 3 golds in 2012 London Olympics also acted as a bit of a catalyst for Iranian GR wrestling as well as Hamid Sourian becoming a bit of GR superstar and role model... 

[Irani]

2 hours ago, Window12 said:

I wonder if Iran winning 3 golds in 2012 London Olympics also acted as a bit of a catalyst for Iranian GR wrestling as well as Hamid Sourian becoming a bit of GR superstar and role model... 

Good points!

[Lucho]

19 hours ago, Irani said:

To be fair, most superstars like Zare and Yazdani are already medaling at seniors by the time they are 21-22, and do not need U23 to validate themselves.  I am not convinced U23 medals are necessarily a predictable of future performance.  I think U17 may be more relevant

I agree to a certain extent when the competition was first established. However in the last 2-3 years other countries have started to respect the competition a lot more so there are higher level wrestlers competing here. I think the results we see now at U23s are far more predictive than before. But yes for certain wrestlers they don't need U23 to show themselves as you mentioned but not everyone is a super star at those age levels especially not the American guys historically. I personally think U20s is the most important junior level competition as that genuinely has the best U20 guys in the world competing. IMO U17s is great but some guys that do really well at that level fizzle out by the time U20s come. Its a far more unpredictable age group so I don't think the results should be that important. 

[Lucho]

The part I find funny about our greco is that we actually do a lot better at the lighter weights than freestyle. Our greco GOAT is a guy that competed between 55-59 kg which is a weight class that I doubt we will ever have a guy that good in freestyle. Even watching the U23s our 55 and 60kg guys were really good. It makes me wonder why we don't have the same for our freestyle group. Maybe the Bakhtiaris are smaller on average compared to Mazanis. But then we have guys like Mirzazadeh, Mohmedi etc who are Bakhtiaris and compete at heavier weight classes. Maybe we need guys from other provinces to up their game and coach better lightweights.

[Lucho]

Also Sobhan Yari who is a junior level world champ has had his suspension removed after fighting with Gholamreza Mohammadi. It will be interesting to see what weight class he ends up at. Kermanshah deserves to have a high level wrestler competing in the national team. I think he competed at 86kg at the Kermanshah championships.

[Truzzcat]

8 hours ago, Irani said:

To answer your question, first some history.  Iran has always had a tradition of Freestyle wrestling,  Greco Roman wrestling is actually called "foreign wrestling"  in Persian.  I remember when Iran got it's first gold in Greco Roman by a street vendor in the late 1960's, early 1970s when I lived here, how shocked everyone was.

Fast forward to 1983 when another Iranian named Mohammad Bana won a silver in the world championship, and a gold in the Asian championship.

He later became the coach of the Iran team, and did a great job of building team.  That increased interest in GR wrestling, the traditional regions that were strong in FS wrestling, did not show much interest in wrestling, but regions that historically did not participate in wrestling became very interested in wrestling.  Places in the south such as Khuzestan and Fars now represent most of the GR wrestling talent from Iran,

Thanks for the info about Khalili's Russian opponent.  I guess we will soon find out.

Youssefi vs Haines should be a  good one

 

Youseffi vs haines is a tragic r1 match I think they are the best two guys. I was very surprised that Henckel was about to weaponize his pace against Youseffi and I think Levi is just a more physically mature and seasoned version of Henckel so I am expecting a win for Haines, however I do not think that was the best version of Youseffi I have seen either so should be super intriguing.

[Lucho]

33 minutes ago, Truzzcat said:

Youseffi vs haines is a tragic r1 match I think they are the best two guys. I was very surprised that Henckel was about to weaponize his pace against Youseffi and I think Levi is just a more physically mature and seasoned version of Henckel so I am expecting a win for Haines, however I do not think that was the best version of Youseffi I have seen either so should be super intriguing.

I think this tournament will be a completely different Yousefi and Rahmani compared to U20s. I think they will be coming in far more prepared and experienced. In saying that Haines is very very good but having him as the first match for Yousefi might actually be a good thing tbh.

[Truzzcat]

23 minutes ago, Lucho said:

I think this tournament will be a completely different Yousefi and Rahmani compared to U20s. I think they will be coming in far more prepared and experienced. In saying that Haines is very very good but having him as the first match for Yousefi might actually be a good thing tbh.

I hope so I think both are extremely talented, Rahmani is my pick at 86. I would agree Youseffi not having to go through the field before Haines is probably best case scenario for him. I think he has to get to his offense early. Hand fighting with Haines and letting it stay close likely does not go well for him as the match goes on but that is much easier said than done Haines does not really break position and has crazy hips. Not sure how Youseffis underhook series to a throw by is if he has that in his arsenal like Amouzad, but that could be a good path for him.

[Window12]

Azimi vs the Barr was unusual.. Barr waving in the middle of the sequence ... I think more folks should try that when they are being leg laced not just  only when being gut wrenched. 

[GrandOlm]

On 10/23/2025 at 11:30 AM, Truzzcat said:

what would you guys attribute the sheer dominance in greco recently to? I think khalili beats the Russian pretty handily, one of my Russian companions is of the belief that their guy is not that great.

It's a systemic change, it has to be. You don't go from being a greco non entity for most of your wrestling history, to having an occasional star, to now having: the 3 best 130 kg wrestlers in the world, the best 97 kg, the best 67 kg, world champions level reps at 87 kg, and running away with world championships and asian games team titles, just because you got lucky with some talented athletes.

Has the weakening of the international field contributed (from let's say the 2000s to pre Iran dominance)? Well Russia was already on a  downward trend and this war certainly hasn't helped. I think this version of Iran is better than what Russia was post soviet union. What truly great wrestlers has Russia produced? Vlasov and Evloev..... that's it. Cuba completely running out of money and so many defections, helped. But Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan have gotten a lot better. 

I think the problems Russia is having in Greco are not solvable in the short term. They probably will get a bit better after the war is over, but you wont match this Iran with a poorly funded soviet era skeleton system and C tier MFS wrestlers from the caucus region.

They also don't coach. What about that legendary Siberian trainer who produced Vlasov, Karelin, and Zubkov?  Kuznetsov, what does his coaching tree look like? How is Siberia doing in Greco. Well Karelin ran away to a cushy job in politics immediately after he was done competing, Vlasov who knows where he's at probably angling for Gogi's job, and Zubkov left Siberia to "coach" the austrian wrestling team. Kuznetsov worked with these champions since they were kids, the problem is that he's in his mid 80s now. A guy in his mid 80s can't raise the next Vlasov. And he has no successor among his successful student. It's one example, but illustrative of the some of the rot of the Russian system. 

Edited 18 hours ago by GrandOlm

[Truzzcat]

3 hours ago, GrandOlm said:

It's a systemic change, it has to be. You don't go from being a greco non entity for most of your wrestling history, to having an occasional star, to now having: the 3 best 130 kg wrestlers in the world, the best 97 kg, the best 67 kg, world champions level reps at 87 kg, and running away with world championships and asian games team titles, just because you got lucky with some talented athletes.

Has the weakening of the international field contributed (from let's say the 2000s to pre Iran dominance)? Well Russia was already on a  downward trend and this war certainly hasn't helped. I think this version of Iran is better than what Russia was post soviet union. What truly great wrestlers has Russia produced? Vlasov and Evloev..... that's it. Cuba completely running out of money and so many defections, helped. But Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan have gotten a lot better. 

I think the problems Russia is having in Greco are not solvable in the short term. They probably will get a bit better after the war is over, but you wont match this Iran with a poorly funded soviet era skeleton system and C tier MFS wrestlers from the caucus region.

They also don't coach. What about that legendary Siberian trainer who produced Vlasov, Karelin, and Zubkov?  Kuznetsov, what does his coaching tree look like? How is Siberia doing in Greco. Well Karelin ran away to a cushy job in politics immediately after he was done competing, Vlasov who knows where he's at probably angling for Gogi's job, and Zubkov left Siberia to "coach" the austrian wrestling team. Kuznetsov worked with these champions since they were kids, the problem is that he's in his mid 80s now. A guy in his mid 80s can't raise the next Vlasov. And he has no successor among his successful student. It's one example, but illustrative of the some of the rot of the Russian system. 

thank you for this response sir very well articulated.

[shiraz321]

It's a shame low class Iranian coaches never taught Azimi a leg attack when he was growing up. He has all the physical tools otherwise.

[Irani]

Looks like a run away battle between Iran and US.

looking at the remaining matches, I would say US is favored.

every final and bronze match will be crucial.

Edited 4 hours ago by Irani

[Lucho]

5 hours ago, shiraz321 said:

It's a shame low class Iranian coaches never taught Azimi a leg attack when he was growing up. He has all the physical tools otherwise.

Yeah its frustrating considering how easily Khaniev was getting to his legs as well. If he can't improve his leg attacks he will get exposed at seniors. But so far our results have been pretty even with the US. I think we have 3 finalists each with 2 potential bronze medal bouts. But the draws have been really tough for our guys I reckon someone like Yousefi if drawn on the other side could have gotten to the final but that's just how these tournaments are you have to beat who's in front of you.

[Irani]

I think Iran and US have 2 each in the finals and 2 each in the bronze matches.

They each already have 1 gold.

The two heads up matches that Iran lost today against the US may very well be the determining factor for the championship.

Very eager to see how Rahimi will do tomorrow, I expect him to dominate