Undefeated

I’m not from the U.S., so maybe I’m missing some context - but from the outside, it still seems like the church has a strong influence in American society. I don’t mean politically, I mean more in terms of shaping people’s everyday values.

“Women should run the home”? That kind of thinking mostly sticks around in places where religion still runs the show - like the church, the mosque, whatever.

Google won't save your searches if you're using Incognito mode either - but DuckDuckGo takes it a step further. It doesn’t save anything - no searches, no cookies, nothing. Personally, I kinda like when apps save my searches. Makes them work better for me. The only one that’s ever annoyed the hell outta me was Instagram. Like, God forbid you click on one random pic - it’ll never let it go. One time I looked at a photo of a bodybuilder and after that, it was like nonstop - not just bodybuilders but every jacked-up, sketchy-looking dude on the planet.

Here’s a more complete version of the match. George Hackenschmidt and Joe Rogers went two rounds. The bout in between (according to a comment) features Joe Carroll vs. Peter Gotz. And at the end, there's the trophy presentation.

Those pots are actually made of clay.

People have been trying to find the maker of that pot for like 10 years now - both to thank them for embarrassing these clowns and to buy a few pots from them!

Failed attempt by Islamic Republic Navy commandos to break a pot - right in front of their army commanders. (Clip’s from like 10 years ago)

I don’t think there’s a single sports outlet in Iran that would dare to criticize the performance of our national wrestling teams - or the federation under Dabir’s leadership. If they do, he just boycotts their reporters and shuts them out from getting anywhere near the national team. The only dissenting voices you’ll hear are either on Instagram or from independent individuals outside the mainstream media.

Great news. Now the Iranian wrestling federation can’t hide behind some shaky team title padded with silvers and bronzes. Silver and bronze shouldn’t even exist. If you’re not the champion, you didn’t win.

Given the amount of participants and everything you just mentioned, what really surprises me is how little support American wrestlers seem to get from their own fans online. I remember UWW’s Instagram once posted about Sarah Hildebrandt - only ten people commented, and eight of them were Iranians!

Hamas isn’t the heart of the issue. They’re a terrorist group, sure, but even if you wiped them out completely, another one just like them - maybe worse - would pop up in the same place. When the U.S. hit Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iranians were posting online, saying things like "cut off the snake’s head". They meant Khamenei. But honestly, I think Khamenei’s just a small snake - the real one is Putin. I don’t have hard evidence for this, but I’ve always been convinced that even the hostage crisis that kicked off the U.S.–Iran feud was actually orchestrated by the Soviets. Back then, the Tudeh Party - which had been fighting for Soviet interests in Iran for years - was on the verge of being wiped out after the Islamists took power. Khomeini came in with the slogan "Neither East nor West", and when he said "no to the East", he meant no to the Soviets. But the Soviets weren’t stupid - they knew Iran couldn’t stay neutral forever. Eventually, it would have to side with one of the two superpowers to survive. So they encouraged a group of fired-up students to storm the U.S. embassy. Khomeini didn’t even know it was happening. When he was told the embassy had been taken and hostages were inside, it had already happened - he was stuck. And with all the anti-West rhetoric he’d already pushed, backing down would’ve looked weak, so he went along with it. The only slightly satisfying part in all of this mess is picturing the look on Carter’s dumb face when he found out the Islamists had taken Americans hostage. He got exactly what he deserved.

I don’t think Taghavi really acts as a weight class coach for the lightweights in the national team. You can kinda tell from what Ehsan Lashgari said after leaving the coaching staff - he said not only were they completely left out of the decision-making process, but they weren’t even informed about the head coach’s plans, let alone being consulted. Sure, Lashgari was brought in by Kaveh, but I don’t see any difference between Kaveh and Dorostkar in that regard. A real weight class coach should analyze the main rivals and focus entirely on them and his own guy. Taghavi, to me, seems more like a training coach than a tactical one. That said, I do agree with a lot of your points overall. Actually, just today I was thinking - it might not be a bad idea for the federation to start a college-style league in Iran and organize dual meets between Iran and the U.S. Like, have Tehran’s team wrestle a team from one of the U.S. states. They could invite American college teams to come to Iran. It’d be exciting for fans, and it might have some positive side effects beyond wrestling too...

I think the way Americans train in folkstyle gives them an edge that carries over into freestyle. Folkstyle just has way more constant engagement - there’s way less downtime where you can just stand around and wait or handfight endlessly. So they grow up learning to wrestle non-stop, and that kind of pace wears our guys out. Also, this whole “one coach makes all the calls for every weight” approach is outdated - especially at the senior level. They’re spending millions, so clearly there’s money. Why not bring in specialized coaches for each weight?

At the Cadets, three of our guys faced Americans-and all three lost. Something’s seriously off. Considering how much money our federation spends (honestly, is there any wrestling federation in the world that spends more than Iran? I don’t know about the others, but I seriously doubt it), these results just aren’t acceptable. The federation always hides behind team results. But who even cares about team scores? Dabir sees those results as political PR for himself.

"On October 14, 2014, the lead story in the New York Times reported a study by the CIA reviewing major terrorist operations run by the White House around the world in an effort to determine the factors that led to their success or failure, with the very conclusion mentioned above. The article went on to quote President Obama as saying that he had asked the CIA to carry out such an inquiry in order to find cases of“financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in a country that actually worked out well. And they couldn’t come up with much.” So he did indeed have some reluctance about continuing such efforts. here were no cries of outrage, no indignation, nothing. The conclusion seems quite clear. In Western political culture, it is taken to be entirely natural and appropriate that the Leader of the Free World should be a terrorist rogue state and should openly proclaim its eminence in such crimes. And it is only natural and appropriate that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and liberal constitutional lawyer who holds the reins of power should be concerned only with how to carry out such actions more efficaciously." Noam Chomsky

"For a century, the Zionist colonization of Palestine has proceeded primarily on the pragmatic principle of the quiet establishment of facts on the ground, which the world was to ultimately come to accept. It has been a highly successful policy. There is every reason to expect it to persist as long as the United States provides the necessary military, economic, diplomatic, and ideological support. For those concerned with the rights of the brutalized Palestinians, there can be no higher priority than working to change U.S. policies—not an idle dream by any means." Noam Chomsky

The federation hasn’t officially announced it yet - and they usually post updates really fast (honestly, gotta give Dabir credit for that, most other federations update their websites like once a month). I do think Nokhodi will go to Worlds eventually, but they said he has to wrestle in a tournament first.

No, it was over when the Native Americans massacred the white folks.

You’ve only seen those things in the movies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Navid_Afkari