2018 Asian Wrestling Championships 27 feb – 4 March

[Ata]

It seems that Iran is sending a good team but not the best, also there is no news about our women participating...



Schedule


http://kabar.kg/eng/news/asian-wrest...18-in-bishkek/

[Irannn]

It seems that Iran is sending a good team but not the best, also there is no news about our women participating...

Did you expect them to send a women's team ? this sport doesn't exist in iran for women. yeah they invented a new style. "wrestling with Hejab" but that's just for internal competitions. they are not suppose to go anywhere with that.

btw Asian Championship is not a priority for Iran wrestling, they usually send a mixture of veterans and young wrestlers, they want to win the team title, that's why there are always 3-4 very good wrestlers in the team but this is far from our "A team" . even our top guys wrestle here only when it fits with their preparing programs.

we have Asian Games and World Championships later this year. this is just a preparation for them.

[Ata]

I think you can see the matches live here

[Ata]

Day 1 greco-roman

Hossein Nouri and Behnam Mehdizadeh GOLD
Mohammad Ali Geraei SILVER


Good results for the first 5 weight

[Ab-Gosht]

bad 2nd day for iran

[Ata]

SALEHIZADEH GOLD

he was so much better than the Uzbek in the final, he totally crushed him =)

Zende bad Iranzamin!!!

[Ab-Gosht]

iran finished 5th in rank extremely dissapointing and now entire fed seems to be stepping down. shaky times for wrestling

[Persian-Pride87]

Wow 5th in team ranking in freaken ASIA? in Asia? Its not like they got a compete with Russia or Azerbaijan or even Turkey in this tournament. Sure we didn't send our absolute best team but 5th place in an Asian tournament is a shameful showing in my opinion.

Khadem just resigned along with other officials in both Greco and Freestyle. Very tumultuous time right now for our wrestling. This is all quite upsetting.

[Ata]

Friends take it easy, Asia is good, Iran didnt enter with great team unfortunetly. It seems that they use asian competitions as training campås more than competition, still we got 3 gold and 1 silver and we won the medal table



Medal table
Rank Nation Gold Silver Bronze Total
1 Iran 3 1 0 4
2 Japan 2 2 1 5
3 Kazakhstan 2 1 4 7
4 Kyrgyzstan 1 3 4 8
5 Uzbekistan 1 2 3 6
6 China 1 0 3 4
7 North Korea 0 1 0 1
8 India 0 0 2 2
8 South Korea 0 0 2 2
10 Turkmenistan 0 0 1 1

[Ata]

Freestyle first day wasn’t so good. Only two finalists so far

[Irannn]

Very disappointing so far but I have to say this is a very high level tournament, Asian countries usually don't send their best teams to the Asian Champs but this time almost all Asian top wrestlers are here. still our results were very poor.

this Uzbek guy (Naturalized Russian) who beat Goleij today has a very good record agains Iranian wrestlers, he beat Yazdani in Rio for bronze, he beat Shahbazi in 2017 Asian Champs final and Amir Mohammadi in the 2017 Worlds later . and now Goleij. he is no Sadulaev nor Burroughs he is not even that great. I just hope someone beats him soon.

[Ata]

Gold
Ezzatollah Akbari
Hassan Yazdani
Mohammad Javad Ebrahimi

Silver
Mojtaba Goleij

Bronze
Mostafa Hosseinkhani
Amin Taheri

[Irannn]

Iran failed to win a medal in 4 lighter weights, very disappointing, Yazdani's gold medal was a sure thing, and both Ebrahimi and Akbari won the gold in non-Olympic weights with a weaker field, even though Akbari beat Kurbanov quite convincingly

here are my anaylises about each one of them

57kg Hajiaghania, he had two surprising close high-scoring wins before losing in semifinal , I'm more disappointed in his 3rd place match. this guy despite being not so good is probably the best we have in this weight if Rahimi doesn't want to cut weight as he claimed.
61kg Sadeghi, Very disappointing as usual, he is a two time World Junior Champion but he never improved after that. he had a close match with the eventual gold medalist in semifinal but then he was terrible in bronze medal match against a nobody from Kyrgyzstan ! even Hajaghania could beat that Kyrgyz guy few months ago at 57kg. !
65kg Emami, he is a bit new into international wrestling, he lost to two good wreslters including a former world medalist from India, still not a good performance, we are in trouble in this weight.
70kg Mohammadi, I was expecting a medal or even the gold from him, but he lost in the 1st round and the Japanese guy got injured later and eliminated him. he is a great wrestler, that was his 1st serious competition after 2 years of injury. I still think we can count on him. he needs more time.
74kg Hosseinkhani, he beat a very good wrestler Abdurakhmanov but then lost to the Russian guy representing Kyrgyzstan. that guy Evloev is pretty good but still not a world medal contender IMO. Hosseinkhani is not a young wrestler to improve later, he has to get better results right now. we are weak in this weight , so they probably have no other option.
79kg Akbari, he had a very easy path to the final but the way he beat Kurbanov in the final, I believe he has a very good chance to win a world medal, this is a new weight and the field is probably not that strong in the world yet.
86kg Yazdani, that was too easy for him, he teched everybody in around 3 minutes quite easily, he still the best in the world without any doubt.
92kg Ebrahimi, despite winning the gold medal he didn't convince me, he was relying in his counter attacks in the final. he is also a former world junior champion but he never got good results in senior level. that was his first chance so I think we can expect more from him later.
97kg Goleij, while he sucks usually aganist Iranian wrestlers he had some good results abroad, here he met a qualify foreign wrestler for the first time in Ibragimov and lost to him 4-3. he could win if he had 4-5 more seconds. but he only has himself to blame, he waited 5 minutes to attack. even though I don't like his style, he is good and I believe he has a chance for world medal.
125kg Taheri, he had an easy draw and lost to the only serious opponent he had . hard to judge based on this but in general I don't expect much from him, Mohebbi is also very bad these days, if Komeil Ghasemi doesn't recover well we are in trouble here.

[_Navid_]

Yazdani apart I don't see promise for the future of our free-style. We still have to rely on oldies like Rahimi, A. Mohammadi, Esmaeil Pour, R. Yazdani and Ghasemi for world and Asian games medals. Iman Sadeghi has screwed up every tournament in his senior career, I had high hopes for him.

On the other hand our Greco future seems bright from what I saw in youth champs last year. But with the current mess with Khadem leaving and Israel fiasco things in general look bad.