Middleweight, Freestyle (≤74 kg), Men

One of the biggest favourites of any event coming into the Rio Games was American Jordan Burroughs, who had been a dominant force in the sport as he was almost unbeatable having had only lost twice in his previous 133 matches. The defending Olympic champion also won three of the last four World Championships (2011, 2013, 2015) and a bronze medal in 2014, and was considered by some to be the best freestyle wrestler in the world.

But in an unimaginable upset, Burroughs was beaten 3-2 in his match against world-ranked number two, Russia’s Aniuar Geduyev – a match worthy of a final, and then hours later lost an unthinkable 11-1 in his next match to Bekzod Abdurakhmonov of Uzbekistan. Burroughs had lost twice in one day after losing twice, period, in his international career, and was off the Olympic podium. He wept in his wife’s arms.

In the 74 kg final, which saw several medical timeouts, the World bronze medalist Geduyev dominated the first period to take a 6-0 lead over the 21-year-old Iranian Hassan Yazdani, who entered the 2016 Rio Olympics having already been crowned 2014 World Junior champion and 2015 World Championship 70 kg silver medalist. Yazdani was able to take advantage of the fact that Geduyev was bleeding profusely from his forehead and not able to make the moves he normally might have been able to. Coming through with three takedowns in the last period, the final one coming with eight seconds on the clock, Yazdani won the gold medal in dramatic fashion.

European champion Soner Demirtaş of Turkey blanked Galymzhan Userbayev from Kazakhstan 6-0 in the first bronze-medal match, earning his first world-level medal, while Azerbaijan’s Cəbrayıl Həsənov bounced back from his semi-final loss, beating Abdurakhmonov 9-7 for the other bronze.

Narsingh Pancham Yadav of India, the 2010 Commonwealth Games champion, was ruled ineligible due to a doping violation, following Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) CAS’s decision.