Davoudi, Yousefi locked in battle for Iran’s superheavyweight spot
Iranian superheavyweight lifters Ali Davoudi and Alireza Yousefi are engaged in an intriguing battle at the national team camp as they look to improve their records ahead of a busy international schedule.
After several years of struggles in the superheavyweight category, coupled with Georgian great Lasha Talakhadze’s global dominance, Iran’s prospects appear brighter, with both weightlifters continuing to raise their performances.
September’s Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games and the World Weightlifting Championships, which begin Oct. 27 in Ningbo, China, are both on the horizon, with the presence of the two strong contenders at the national camp making the competition for a place on the team increasingly intense.
An Olympic silver medalist at Tokyo 2020, Davoudi is eager to bounce back from a quiet couple of years in his career, which have yielded just a snatch bronze at the 2025 World Championships. Yousefi, meanwhile, is looking to build on his statement comeback from injury at May’s Asian Championships, where he collected three medals.
Making his first international appearance in 18 months after recovering from knee surgery, the 22-year-old prodigy, who impressed on his senior debut at the 2024 World Championships by winning clean and jerk gold, claimed the Asian snatch bronze and total silver. But the pinnacle of his campaign came in the clean and jerk, where he set a new world record of 261 kilograms to win gold ahead of high-profile Bahraini Gor Minasyan.
Davoudi has produced better snatch numbers than Yousefi in recent testing sessions and appears to have the edge in the race to represent Iran at the Asian Games. With only the combined total counting for medals at the continental multi-sport event, Davoudi’s stronger snatch gives him an advantage in the selection battle.
Yousefi, meanwhile, has been lifting around the 260-kilogram mark in the clean and jerk and is working with head coach and former Olympic superheavyweight champion Behdad Salimi to improve his snatch as he targets a place on the podium in all three disciplines at the World Championships.
The two in-form weightlifters have been pushing each other at the national camp, with their rivalry serving as a positive force as both seek to establish themselves as Iran’s leading contender in the category.
Whoever comes out on top in the battle will be among the favorites, along with Minasyan, reigning Armenian world champion Varazdat Lalayan and South Korea’s Song Yeong-hwan, to reach the podium at the upcoming events as the race for heavyweight supremacy in the post-Talakhadze era continues.