Middleweight, Freestyle (≤74 kg), Men

The story of the middleweight tournament in the freestyle competition started almost four months before the Olympic Games. During the European qualifiers for the Olympic tournament in Baku, Azerbaijan, in April, Italian competitor Frank Chamizo claimed he was offered a bribe of $300,000 to lose his fight against Azerbaijani wrestler Turan Bayramov. After Chamizo refused the bribe, Bayramov was narrowly declared the winner by a controversial referee decision. Chamizo then accused the referee of manipulation. Two weeks later, the jury that had ruled the fight was suspended by the international federation. Two independent panels had ruled that the fight had been wrongly scored. According to the guidelines, however, the result could not be changed. Chamizo subsequently qualified anyway, because athletes from Russia and Belarus had not been allowed to compete.

As fate would have it, neither #2 seed Bayramov, the 2018 Youth Olympic Games gold medalist, nor unseeded Chamizo were lucky in Paris. Both lost their first bout and were eliminated. As in the welterweight class, an unseeded athlete took gold, Razambek Zhamalov from Uzbekistan. Because he had to go through an extra qualification bout and had to go over the maximum time of six minutes in all matches except the final, he was not only the participant with the most bouts, but also with the longest accumulated wrestling time of more than 26 minutes. In the final, he beat the #4 seed Daichi Takatani from Japan with a fall. Zhamalov had competed for Uzbekistan since the beginning of 2024. He was born in the Russian republic of Dagestan and represented Russia successfully in international events. Zhamalov became European and World U-23 champion and won the world cup in 2020. In Paris, on the way to the final, he defeated four other Russian-born competitors: Mahamedkhabib Kadzimahamedau (Independent athlete from Belarus), Tajmuraz Salkazanov (Slovakia since 2018), Chermen Valiev (Albania since 2024), and Viktor Rassadin (Tajikistan since 2023). All four met in the lower half of the repêchage, with Valiev prevailing and winning Albania’s first ever medal at the Olympic Games.

The other repêchage saw Kyle Dake (USA) claiming the medal. Dake was the top seed, after winning four gold medals each at World Championships and Pan American Games, and bronze in Tokyo. In the semi-final, he lost on points 20-12 to Takatani. The Japanese competitor could not point to as many achievements as most of his competitors. He did, however, take bronze in the 74 kg class at the 2023 World Championship, and silver in the 65 kg class at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta.