Three-way battle to headline Wrestling World Championships
All eyes will be on the freestyle 92kg contests when the Wrestling World Championships – featuring non-Olympic weight categories – get underway in Tirana, Albania, on October 28.
Having been absent at the Paris Olympics earlier in the summer for different reasons, three of the sport’s greatest in Russian sensation Abdulrashid Sadulaev, American David Taylor, and Iranian Kamran Qassempour will make their long-awaited return to the global stage in the Tirana Olympic Park.
Sadulaev and Taylor, who have won a remarkable 11 world and Olympic golds between them in the 97kg and 86kg contests, will be looking to add further glory to their already-impressive medal haul, though Qassempour will be out to prove the weight class remains his territory.
World champion in 2021 and 2022, Qassempour dominated the 92kg event for two years before a groin injury ruled him out of last year’s World Championships in Belgrade.
Qassempour then switched his weight class in a bid to compete in the Paris Games, but he eventually stood behind Amir-Ali Azarpira, who went on to win the Olympic bronze, in the pecking order of the Iranian 97kg berth.
The 27-year-old appeared to be a shadow of himself in January’s Ranking Series event in Zagreb, where he was outmuscled by American Kyle Snyder, but seemed to have regained his form in the Iranian national team trials in September, comfortably beating Amirhossein Firouzpour – a winner of four world age-group titles – to secure a place in Tirana.
Two-time Olympic champion Sadulaev missed out on defending his 97kg title in Paris after he was ruled ineligible to compete in the European OG qualifiers in April for what was deemed by the international governing body of the sport as “his support of the Ukraine-Russia war.”
Nicknamed ‘the Russian Tank’, Sadulaev was given the go-ahead by the UWW to participate as a neutral athlete in the upcoming event and he has wasted no time in pursuing a sixth world title.
former Russian head coach Dzhambolat Tedeyev, however, maintained last week that Sadulaev will return to the 97kg class for the future competitions.
New rivalry?
Wrestling fans may have already seen the last chapter of the rivalry between Taylor and Hassan Yazdani, with the American holding a 3-1 head-to-head advantage against the Iranian in four major finals, including the 86kg showdown at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago.
Iranians are now eager to see another one of their countrymen lock horns with Taylor, who also failed to make it to the Games in Paris after a shock defeat against Aaron Brooks in the US Olympic trials.
In a press conference that introduced him as the new head coach at Oklahoma State University back in May, the 33-year-old said his “competition career” was over, but made a U-turn on his decision to compete in September’s trials for the World Championships, where he cemented his Team USA spot thanks to a victory over Zahid Valencia in a best-of-three series.