Day 4 of Olympic wrestling kicks off tonight at 10:00pm Eastern Time and we have 3 wrestlers going tomorrow 1 in women’s freestyle and 2 in the men’s freestyle.
We are coming off of a huge Day 3 though and even though Team USA failed to advance wrestlers into the finals or repechage, we have our first Gold Medalist of the tournament in Tamyra Mensah-Stock who took out Oborududu of Nigeria 4-1 in the 68 KG finals so congratulations to Tamyra you made Jordan Burroughs cry (check his twitter).
Now for today’s competitors.
Women’s Freestyle 57 KG
Returning Olympic Champion at another weight, Helen Maroulis will be on the mat and has a tough draw. Maroulis starts out with the 4 seeded Ningning Rong of China who is a 2018 World Champion and a 2019 World Runner-up. Yeah difficult. Plus she is on the same bracket as Risako Kawai of Japan who is the 2019 World Champion. It’s a tough road to reach the finals but Maroulis has done it before.
Men’s Freestyle 57 KG
Finally the start of Men’s Freestyle and even though I really enjoyed Greco-Roman, this is what I’ve been waiting for. We start out with Thomas Gilman and if you want to talk about a brutal draw, just look at what Gilman was thrown into. Gilman drew 2 seeded Zaur Uguev of Russia in the first round who is the 2019 World Champion. Then he is in the same bracket as the 2019 World Runner-up Suleyman Atli of Turkey so yeah, brutal.
Men’s Freestyle 86 KG
It’s our turn to throw out a World Champion and it is 2018 World Champ David Taylor. Taylor has the easiest of the 3 wrestlers we have going tomorrow. Taylor starts out with Ali Shavanau of Belarus who was the European Qualifier Champion. If Taylor advances he could be facing San Marino’s Myles Amine so a little Michigan vs Penn State action in the Olympic Quarters. Taylor is in the same bracket as the 2 seeded and my number 1 ranked at the weight Deepak Punia of India. Punia has been a rising star and is a World Runner-up which could be a potential Semi-Final match up tomorrow morning. Most likely if Taylor gets past Punia, he will meet Iran’s Hassan Yazdani in the finals which Taylor has two wins over so you like David Taylor’s chances.
I will be updating the Brackets before tomorrow morning’s Semi-Final round along with the new draws tomorrow.