maligned

We've been talking about it this week that Kudiev probably wouldn't seem extremely scary as an opponent for either guy if they were equally spent--but Kudiev's had two easy matches and it makes it way more concerning.

If he wins later in the semi-final, he's in. If he loses, he needs to win TWO tomorrow--a traditional bronze and the bronze vs. bronze True 3rd match.

They're taking 3 from each weight. Reaching the final is automatic. But if the Mongolian reaches the final, he'll be brought back in. But he would need to win 4 in a row tomorrow--two regular repechage, a traditional bronze match (usually they award two bronzes), then the bronze vs bronze special True 3rd wrestle-off.

I think he's explosive enough. But I'm not sure he's got the freestyle-specific athletic defense or the insane hand-fighting necessary to defend the light-speed attacks he'll keep seeing. Micic does it with scrambling and stickiness. Gilman does it with killer, killer hand-fighting. Lee needs to spend all of his time on these skills before the Olympics.

Seriously, who made this schedule? Afternoon round was supposed to start 5 minutes ago and the evening round in a little over an hour. This "morning" session won't be done for another hour and a half. I've never seen an international event day estimated so badly.

I said this a minute ago too...I think we struggle to provide the ultra-elite athleticism at this weight class to pull off both the brutal hand-fighting and the stuntman thrills necessary to win globally when all the best guys are there (and not up at 70 in non-olympic years).

Once again...we struggle to provide the ultra-elite athleticism at this weight class to pull off both the brutal hand-fighting and the stuntman thrills necessary to win globally.

probably not this late in a tie match

China's usually been dangerous at 57 and 65, but don't always get elite wins.

Yeah, it's comical that they have the traditional bronze matches scheduled for 4:45 local time (in less than 2 hours). They won't be wrestling the 65kg round of 16 till around then and quarters will go way beyond that unless they bring in some additional mats.

You're right. I had the men's matches starting right at 10am local time when actually it was women's repechage first round matches first. Everything has been running about 30-40 minutes later than my estimates in the initial post.

How will the cut affect him coming back in 2 hours from a match with those high-leverage situations? He'll probably have Egorov, who won't have had to work as hard his first two matches as Lee just did. Sometimes a match that takes a guy into deep waters like that derails him completely going forward. The gas tank just doesn't refill. I hope he's able to recover well!

Check out the chart IU alum put up on the schedule thread I started

Match numbers are on the brackets at arena.uww.org. You can follow along based on those.

As someone else said, Kamal owns a Ranking series win over the Hungarian Levai last year--but Levai is very, very tough. He was World silver as recently as 2022.

I made a mistake above..the Chinese didn't tech the favored 1-seed yesterday. That was the German, who the Chinese then beat.

Yes, if the True 3rd ends up being Leval of Hungary, Kamal's beaten him relatively recently. But he's got great credentials and was the 1-seed at Worlds just last year because of it. The Chinese was a monster yesterday, though, so it could just as easily be him. He only fell 1-1 in criteria to the Bulgarian that won the bracket and looked amazing otherwise.

The Georgian gave the Russian a war yesterday, so Kamal will probably need his best match yet to keep things going this afternoon. Then the Olympic qualifying True 3rd match will also be a war. He could have the Chinese, who teched the 1-seed that beat Kamal recently. Or it could be the 4-seed Hungarian that is also very, very tough.

Bey came to play today. He'll have the Georgian at 4:45pm local time (9:45 ET) for the traditional bronze. Then if he wins, he'll have a True 3rd place match after the women's evening semi-finals at maybe 8pm local time (1pm ET).

Bey with a good start this morning. He techs the 2-time World 5th place Belarusian. Sweden next

I see they changed the bout numbers for the repechage rounds tomorrow. Bey will be the 3rd match on Mat 1 against the Belarusian; then, if he wins, he'd get about 2 hours of rest before wrestling the Swede, who will have had a bye. Glad this component was done right after all.

Bey brought back in. He needs to beat Belarus and Sweden in quick succession tomorrow morning, beat Georgia in the regular bronze in the afternoon, and then beat the upper half bronze in the special True 3rd Olympic qualifying bout at night.

So discouraging to see these international Greco results for us. We're so often just not even in the same stratosphere as the contenders. Roberts loses to Ukraine who loses to Sweden who loses to Korea who loses to Russia.

Oof...I just saw the match numbers for the repechage matches tomorrow. I have no idea why they do this, but they put the first, second, and third round repechage matches with only 4 matches of separation between each (about a half hour)--even though they're happening during the lengthy morning/afternoon session of the next style. It would be easy to give first round and then second round winners 90 minutes or 2 hours of rest. That, along with not necessarily wrestling the R64 pigtails before the R32 matches for some of the weights, is just so bizarre and blind to what should be obvious "fairness" protocols (Zain has to wait until match 11 for his R64 match on his mat on Saturday, and almost all of the first 10 matches are R32 matches at weights that don't have any R64). Makes no sense.

Kutuzov of Russia did end up winning his quarter and will wrestle for Paris in a few minutes with the potential impact for us of Bey being brought back in tomorrow.