Team USA Men’s Freestyle Updates At The 2022 World Championships

It’s all about the team race: USA vs Iran! It’s party time in Belgrade, let’s go!

We’ll recap the sessions in reverse chronological order, so the most recent session is the first thing you’ll see, with older sessions appearing subsequently.

Day 1 Session 2

JB, DT & Zain Power Into Finals

Team USA in three semifinal bouts and is looking for help in the fourth as we wrap up the first day of men’s freestyle wrestling in Belgrade.

The good news is that all three American semifinalists took care of business and made the finals. That’s actually better than good news. That’s kick ass news. Those rules.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get any help from Geno Petriashvili, who looked uncharacteristically sluggish in his 4-2 loss to Mongolia. Perhaps Zillmer tired him out? That has been suspected of happening in previous world championships, like when Metcalf lost to Taghavi in ​​2013. But I digress.

More importantly, the Zain Train rolled over the 2017 World Champ, Iakobishvili, 7-0. Retherford is unscored upon for the tournament. He’ll take on Japan’s Narikuni, who took out Kyrgyzstan’s Akhmataliev in the semis in an 11-10 barnburner.

Burroughs had to beat both Umarpashaev and the mat official. Umarpashaev didn’t seem to want to wrestle and preferred to just complain to the ref, who was happy to indulge him with several ridiculous cautions and one penalty point calls. Thankfully, only one of them was upheld by the mat judge and chairperson, and JB steamrolled the Bulgarian 9-2. Burroughs gets a second consecutive world finals match with Nokhodi of Iran, who Jordan beat 5-1 last year in Oslo.

David Taylor obliterated his opponent from Kazakhstan 12-0. He’s got Yazdani in the finals, and you all know the story with those two. Here’s how both wrestlers got to the finals.

No one even comes close.

David Taylor 🇺🇸
Points Scored: 33
Points Allowed: 0

Hassan Yazdani 🇮🇷
Points Scored: 31
Points Allowed: 0

— FloWrestling (@FloWrestling) September 15, 2022

Not bad.

Finally, Zillmer is out, as mentioned, although he’ll score 8 or 6 points as he’s guaranteed 7th or 8th place (according to people who are crunching these numbers).

Thankfully, Zare lost to Akgul in the semis, so Iran will score ‘only’ between 10 and 15 at 125kg.

Gold is worth 25 team points and silver is worth 20, so 5 points will be traded at 79 and 86 when USA and Iran face off. At 70, Zain will score at least 20 more points than Iran, who gets zero from Amir Yazdani aka Baby Yaz.

Tomorrow, Gilman, Dake, & J’den take the mat at 57, 74 & 92kg hit the mat.

Day 1 Session 1

America Starts Hot, Goes 10-1

We start the men’s freestyle tournament with some big guns, including one of USA Wrestling’s most decorated competitors of all-time, Jordan Ernest Burroughs. Additionally, two of Penn State’s most decorated student-athletes, David Taylor and Zain Retherford, took the mat. Finally, we can’t forget the Jack Pine Savage, Hayden Zillmer, who has bulked up to heavyweight and made his first senior world team.

We all knew this tournament’s team race was going to be a sprint to the finish between the USA and Iran, and that’s already evident after one session. Each team put three wrestlers in the quarterfinals. The big difference at the moment is that Hayden Zillmer lost to Geno Petriashvili in the quarters but still has an extremely good chance of being brought back into the repechage and a very good chance of winning a bronze medal (imo). Whereas Iran will get zero points at 70kg.

The full story behind Amir Yazdani, who yesterday drew Israel’s Josh Finesilver in the first round and subsequently missed weight this morning, will take too long to explain in this recap, but this Wikipedia page may be useful to anyone interested in learning more.

But getting back to the action on the mat, it was utter destruction for the three American semifinalists. They combined to outscore their opponents 74-2 while racking up six techs and one pin along the way.

The semifinals will be battles for all of them. Zain has a 2017 world champ from Georgia, JB as the 2020 Yashar Dogu champ from Bulgaria, and DT has the 2022 Asian champ from Kazakhstan who just beat Myles Amine in the quarterfinals.

Results

57kg: Thomas Gilman

61kg: Seth Gross

65kg: Yianni Diakomihalis

70kg: Zain Retherford – Wrestling for GOLD

Round of 32: 10-0 Tech-fall over Kevin Henkel (GER)

Round of 16: FALL over Marc Dietsche (SUI)

Quarterfinals: 5-0 Win over Arman Andreasyan (ARM)

Semifinals: 7-0 Win over Zurabi Iakobishvili (GEO)

GOLD medal match: vs Taishi Narikuni (JPN)

74kg: Kyle Dake

79kg: Jordan Burroughs – Wrestling for GOLD

Round of 32: 11-1 Tech-fall over Sahergeldi Saparmyradov (TKM)

Round of 16: 12-1 Tech-fall over Dejan Mitrov (MKD)

Quarterfinals: 10-0 Tech-fall over Arsalan Budazhapov (KGZ)

Semifinals: 9-2 Win over Ali Umarpashaev (BUL)

GOLD medal match: vs Mohammad Nokhodi (IRI)

86kg: David Taylor – Wrestling for GOLD

Round of 16: 10-0 Tech-fall over Aron Caneva (ITA)

Quarterfinals: 11-0 Tech-fall over Ethan Ramos (PUR)

Semifinals: 10-0 Tech-fall over Azamat Dauletbekov (KAZ)

GOLD medal match: vs Hasan Yazdani (IRI)

92kg: J’den Cox

97kg: Kyle Snyder

125kg: Hayden Zillmer – 7th or 8th

Round of 32: 15-4 Tech-fall over Zyyamuhammet Saparov (TKM)

Round of 16: 3-2 Win over Robert Baran (POL)

Quarterfinals: 9-4 Loss to Geno Petriashvili (GEO)