U23 Wrestling World Championships:
Iran’s Rahmani, Mohammadnejad into freestyle finals
Iranian wrestlers Abolfazl Rahmani and Abolfazl Mohammadnejad advanced to the finals of their respective events on Day 1 of the freestyle competition at the U23 World Championships in Las Vegas, United States, on Friday.
Looking to secure a second team title in three editions, Iran will also chase three bronze medals through Ebrahim Khari, Ali Karampour, and Reza Afshar across five weight classes.
An 86kg bronze medalist at last year’s competition, Rahmani, who settled for silver at the U20 World Championships in August, began his 92kg campaign with an 11-1 victory by technical superiority over Jamaica’s Steven Burrell Jr., before outmuscling Georgia’s Sandro Kurashvili 11-6 in the quarterfinals.
A 6-3 win over Turkey’s Fatih Altunbas saw the Iranian advance to the final, where he will take on 2024 champion Arslan Bagaev of Russia.
Defending superheavyweight champion Mohammadnejad, meanwhile, picked up where he had left off at the U20 Worlds, marching into the final without conceding a single point across three bouts.
The Iranian prodigy crushed Ukraine’s Volodymyr Kochanov 10-0 in his opening bout and then hammered Russia’s Andrei Bestaev 11-0 before defeating Azerbaijan’s Khetag Karsanov 5-0 in a rematch of last year’s final in Novi Sad, Serbia.
Standing between Mohammadnejad and the gold medal is Georgia’s Aleksandre Abramishvili, a two-time European U20 bronze medalist.
Elsewhere, Khari – a silver medalist at the Zagreb Open in February – suffered a 7-1 loss to American Benjamin Davino in his opening 61kg bout but was given a second chance to add to his 2024 bronze after the American reached the final. Khari will resume action in the repechage against Japan’s Akito Mukaida, who was beaten 11-0 by Davino in the quarterfinals.
In the 74kg class, Karampour enjoyed an emphatic run to the semifinals, claiming three victories by technical superiority, but came up short against American Jayden James, who pinned the Iranian while leading 10-2 to reach the final.
Karampour kept trying to score exposure points using a whizzer, but James countered with his own whizzers. On his third attempt, James wrapped his arms around Karampour’s chest and drove him to the mat for the fall.
Afshar, a world U17 champion in 2024, got off to a losing start in the 86kg class, falling 7-1 to Turkey’s Ahmet Yagan. He will begin his bid for bronze with a repechage clash against Mexico’s Kevin De Leon.
Iran aims to complete a team-title double in Las Vegas after the country’s Greco-Roman squad secured a third successive crown at the competition on Wednesday.
Erfan Jarkani (63kg), Abolfazl Mohmedi (82kg), and Yasin Yazdi (87kg) won gold in their respective classes, while Mohammad Kamali (67kg) and Mohammad-Hadi Seydi (97kg) added two bronze medals. Iran finished atop the team standings with 119 points, five ahead of runner-up Kazakhstan, while Russia – eligible to score team points for the first time since 2021 – finished third with 105.