Lucho

This has been my complaint for a while. It's ruining the sport entirely how else can other countries develop their guys if Russian imports are being brought in. Even some Iranians are now wrestling for countries like Spain and Germany too.

These rules are ridiculous. Why should anyone at 61, 65 and 92kg compete if they can't make the team if they win Takhti??? The guy that makes the team should be the guy that wins the tournament. It doesn't matter if the person is injured and can't compete. This is literally why guys like Arsalan leave and wrestle for other countries.

I know he was the heavy favourite but he still lost. Whether Yazdani was unlucky due to being injured doesn't really matter once all things are said and done. At the end of the day the guy who won was Ramazanov. Do I think Ramazonov wins that match up 9 times out of 10? Absolutely not, the only way he would have won is if Yazdani was injured which was unfortunately the case. In fact I would argue he won't even place this year at the worlds. He had a lot of fortune on his side for the Olympics. If he doesn't get found out in the European championships he will get found out in the world championships.

I honestly think as crazy as it sounds that Masoumi wont ever be able to beat Zare but could be the one to beat Gable if they ever step on a mat in freestyle. Zare seems to be a bad match up for Masoumi. Kind of like Dake-Taylor and Taylor-Yazdani. But it will be an exciting wrestle off between them regardless.

Yeah I meant cadets. I get the two mixed up. I saw he moved up to 61kg but hasn't looked that good which is a shame. I really like Valizadeh and Javan though at 57 and 61kg they look really solid. Those guys alongside Yousefi at 79kg and Rahmani at 86kg have impressed me quite a bit. We just need a proper 74kg which I think we need to give Amir Mohammad Yazdani another shot at, he got bronze at Yarygin this year so I think he is good enough to potentially be a medal threat (at least over Emami).

Iran hasn't won a FS olympic gold since Rio which was 2016. I think its a valid concern given how much more competitive it has become to win an olympic medal with Russian transfers. LA 2028 is probably the last chance for Yazdani to win his second olympic gold and Ghasempour to win an olympic gold. The rest of the guys I had seen were not too impressive so I didn't have too much hope in the future class but after Asians some have impressed me.

Anyone in that line up looking like a future world/olympic champ calibre? Khateri seems to have peaked at juniors and hasn't been able to develop the skillset necessary for older age groups. In saying that he is what 18 or 19 years old? I think for our light weights we need a revamp of the coaching all together we are clearly doing something wrong from the grass roots.

Our team overall did quite well just disappointing that our guys at 55 and 60 weren't that impressive. The North Korean has Dad Marz's number by the looks of things but the match was much closer than last time. At 60kg I think we need to try someone else, honestly Ahmadi Vafa is not a bad investment at 60kg sure he wasn't too good but he just went up from 55kg and Asian's would have been a very good learning curve for him. I'm surprised our lightweights aren't performing too well given Rangraz was a lightweight wrestler himself.

Would he even be as good at 74? I think the main reason he is so good at 65kg is that he is physically so big. At heavier weight classes he just doesn't have that advantage and he will be against far more technical wrestlers (Sidakov, Zhamalov, Tsabalov, etc) that I just don't think he has the necessary tools to beat. However, I think he could definitely be a contender at 70 but 74 has way too much parity and talent for his style to work. I would love to be proven wrong but I think most people would agree with me on this.

My prediction is that Kiyooka ends up on the other side of the bracket with Mammedov with Mammedov beating him in the semis. But I also want to think that Rahman has learnt his lesson from last time and hopefully can avenge his loss.

This is fantastic news. This will probably mean that we have a very good shot of winning gold at 86, 92 and 125kg this year. Potentially also 65 and 79kg as well but that will depend on the form of Amouzad and Nokhodi and whether they can overcome Mamedov and Usmanov respectively.

Yeah ok that makes sense, I knew our guys made the final but I misremembered by the looks of things. I'm interested to see Shamsipour and Hosseini wrestle in the near future considering how highly you rate them, hoping they both end up very successful. Its frustrating we can't find light weights in freestyle considering we do have some in greco. Is it a coaching problem? Hopefully the joint practice with Japan will steer us in the right direction.

I didn't know he beat Soleimanian but if thats the case then I'm fine with that tbh. Soheili is 22 and got sent to Yarygin so I don't think its fair to say he flopped the vast majority of our guys would struggle there. I hope you are right about Hosseini and Shamsipour, I'm excited to see some more talented guys come through at 86kg in the next couple of years. However, I think Mahdi Yousefi is my bet to be our next guy at 86kg he looks really impressive and I think with a couple more years he can really cement the spot for his own. Do you know of any talented future lightweights for me to keep an eye on? I can only think of the two u17 guys that won cadet worlds in 2024 at 45 and 48kg IIRC and Ahora Khateri.

What about Soleimanian, Noruzian and Soheili? It just feels like to me they are being quite stubborn about sending this guy without giving anyone else a chance. I don't think Ghasempour is making 86kg anytime before 2027 so I would rather see these 3 others get a shot. Especially since Noruzian and Soheili were the top 2 at nationals this year. But if this guy is our best prospect at 86 I'm honestly not too thrilled tbh. I'm pretty sure all3 of these guys are 23 and under so they also fit the quota as well.

I'm interested to see how our guys go at the Asians especially for our younger freestyle guys. Nice to see Mohammadreza Shakeri being given a shot at 74kg he seemed to be an exciting prospect but I think was injured for a while after winning u20 worlds. I'm also very excited to watch Alireza Abdevali he looks really really good. My only problem is with our 86kg rep Rahmani surely we have someone better than him??

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

I've heard that Ghasempour will be competing at 86kg for worlds as he has been called up to the camp as an 86kg rep but he won't be cutting a significant amount of weight until the worlds so he wrestles at 92kg in the ranking tournaments. I really want him to compete at 86kg and Firzoupour at 92kg as they would be clear favourites for gold. I don't think Ramazanov or Valencia are capable of beating him, he is a tier above them. The question is moreso can he even make 86kg or will be weight cut be too much like Azarpira going down to 92kg.

Ahh I think I mixed him up with Yousefi. Regardless I think we should see a wrestle off between Khalili and Elahi for the spot imo. Also the list for Muhamet Malo came out and the team we have sent for both free and greco looks good most of the big names are there (Amouzad, Ghasempour, Zare, Esmaeili, Ali Geraei and Mirzazadeh).

That's a really stupid decision imo. 70kg should be a wrestle off between Elahi and Khalili, Elahi at least deserves a chance given he won Iran nationals and neither of them looked particularly impressive in Zagreb. In fact I would argue Karampour should also be given a chance to compete as well I'm pretty sure he ended up winning U23 worlds last year considering the other two didn't win gold. For 97kg I would like to see Hajiloueian wrestle between Azimi and Babaloo as well. I don't know how Azimi is going to look wrestle well at 97kg when he looked lifeless at 92kg... Dorostkar proving again he has no idea what he is doing and that Reza Yazdani should take over as HC.

I completely agree with you, Greco especially at 130kg is not very competitive internationally. But also look at the last 10 olympics. 8 of them have been won by 2 people. Even in the worlds Riza Kayaalp until fairly recently was winning world champs relatively comfortably in Lopez's absence. Its just very difficult to find guys athletic enough to be not only able to be 130kg but also willing to do Greco over Freestyle. I think Europe isn't where top level Greco is anymore I think it would be fair to say Asia has the most competitive Greco (Iran, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Japan etc). I think Hedayati however can shape up to be a generational talent if he can beat Yousefi and Mirzazadeh in the next 2/3 years he is only 20 years old and I could see him dominate for a decade. But yeah the future of Greco isn't looking very good unfortunately unless other countries start investing more in the sport it could be at risk of getting scrapped in the Olympics.

Greco hasn't had a dominant country since the Soviets because the talent pool was equally distributed amongst the eastern bloc during Soviet era. We can see that now with it being split between Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria etc in terms of top tier wrestlers. In saying that though I would argue Khuzestan which is the province most of Iran's Greco talent is from would be the closest equivalent to a Dagestan or Mazandaran for Greco. I think in the next 5-10 years Iran will pull away and be the best with Azerbaijan and some other countries having contenders in some weight classes. But still I didn't expect one country to have 3 of the top 5 guys in a weight class in the modern era that's just ridiculous.