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.