Super-Heavyweight, Freestyle (≤125 kg), Men

The heaviest weight class in the freestyle wrestling competition saw the two pre-Olympic favorites reach the final, where the Iranian Amir Hossein Zare met the Georgian Geno Petriashvili. Zare earned his #1 seed by winning almost all major tournaments he contested since 2019, including the 2021 and 2023 World Championships and the 2022 Asian Games. He suffered one of his major defeats in 2021 at the Tokyo Olympics, where he met Petriashvili in the semi-final and lost 6-3 on points.

Petriashvili had an equally long number of medals under his belt: three World championships and two Europeans, as well as Olympic bronze in Rio and silver in Tokyo. He had not won the World championship since 2019, and lost to Zare in the 2023 final. Moreover, his opponent was seven years younger, and Petriashvili was only the #2 seed.

In the first rounds, Petriashvili had no problems winning his fights either by superiority or clearly on points. Also, Zare had no problems in the first two rounds, where he did not concede a single point. In the semi-final, however, #4 seeded Taha Akgül (TUR), another three-time World champion and Rio gold medalist, proved to be a tough nut to crack at his fifth Olympics. Finally, Zare won the fierce bout by a narrow 2-1 on points.

While the Turkish was leading his semi-final with just 30 seconds to go, the Algerian referee gave Akgül a controversial warning. Accordingly, he lost the match 2-1 and had to settle for bronze. By taking his shoes off and leaving them on the mat, Akgül symbolically announced his retirement after winning the bronze medal match. The second bronze went to the semi-final loser, Giorgi Meşvildişvili. Born in Georgia and representing his home country until 2022, he decided to join the Azerbaijani team in order to avoid his dominant fellow countryman Petriashvili.

In the final, Petriashvili quickly built up a big lead of 12-1, which would have given him the victory by superiority. But Zare challenged the last move, and the score was reversed to 10-1, still a comfortable lead. In the second period, only the Iranian continued to score, but Petriashvili survived an incredible late attack by Zare to finally win gold with a dramatic 10-9 victory. With this gold, he completed his set of Olympic medals. “It was really tough, emotionally and physically. Every moment was really tough for me because this is the Olympics. I lost at the last two Olympics. I wanted to win this fight today,” stated Petriashvili.