Welterweight, Freestyle (≤65 kg), Men

The welterweight class showed a different picture than the lightweight. Two of the four top-seeded athletes claimed silver and bronze. However, the number-one-seeded Armenian Vazgen Tevanyan placed a disappointing seventh, after losing to the Mongolian Tömör-Ochiryn Tulga on points. Gold went to the unseeded Japanese Kotaro Kiyooka. He qualified for the Paris Olympics by defeating the Tokyo gold medalist and 2018 World Champion Takuto Otoguro in the All-Japan Championships, in December 2023. It was Kiyooka’s first title, both nationally and internationally. After an easy win in the first round by superiority, he had to struggle to win on points in the next two rounds, against Sebastián Rivera from Puerto Rico, and Tulga.

In the final, he met Iranian Rahman Amouzad, the experienced #2 seed and 2022 World champion. Amouzad had defeated American wrestler Zain Retherford, the Albanian Islam Dudaev, and Hungarian Iszmail Muszukajev (the reigning World champion), without conceding a point in all three encounters. This certainly made him a heavy favorite for gold. But Kiyooka had produced a 10-1 lead at the break, and Amouzad only made up two points by a takedown in the second half.

Muszukajev then failed to win bronze, losing by a narrow margin of 13-12 points to Dudaev. Rivera claimed the other bronze, after an equally tight battle by 9-8 points. Both defeated semi-finalists went home without a medal. For the island of Puerto Rico, it was only the second medal in wrestling, after Jaime Espinal in 2012. Dudaev won Albania’s second in any sport, the day after his countryman Chermen Valiev won the first, in the freestyle wrestling 74 kg class.