Rio 2016: Olympic Wrestling Preview, Cheat Sheet, and Live Streams

The world’s oldest and greatest sport will soon begin competition at the Rio Olympics. 68 nations will send 350 of their toughest athletes to the Olympic Training Center’s Hall 3, to compete in the 2016 Summer Games. Bookmark this page and use it as your guide to the tournaments.

WHO IS WRESTLING

The 350 wrestlers will be divided into 3 styles: Greco-Roman (Men’s only) and Men’s & Women’s Freestyle. Each style is broken into six weight divisions. A maximum of 1 wrestler per country per weight division is allowed, and there are between 18-21 wrestlers per division.

Wrestlers are randomly drawn into brackets for a single elimination tournament. Wrestlers who lose to finalists can wrestler back for the bronze, of which there are two, one for each side of the bracket (and set of finalist-losers).

Here’s everything you need to know about Team USA, and a whole lot more about the Games.

And here is a link to a listing every wrestler that will be competing (baring any last minute scratches).

The easily navigable Wikipedia page regarding the Olympic qualification process can be found here.

And a nifty global heat map by total number of qualifier can be seen below:

Russia leads the world with 17 wrestlers at Rio. Azerbaijan, Turkey, and the US of A are tied for 2nd with 14 competitors a piece.

WHAT ABOUT THE RUSSIANS AND PEDS?

We will skip the sordid details, of which there are innumerable, and just let you know that it doesn’t look like the PED scandal will have any affect on the wrestling competitions. Any wrestling related PED issues will have to be resolved at some other time (or, y’know, maybe never).

WHEN IT IS ON

Greco-Roman

Sunday, Aug 14: 59kg, 75kg; Monday Aug 15: 85kg, 130kg; Tuesday Aug 16: 66kg, 98kg

All days: 9:00 am EST tournament start; 4:00 pm EST for start of medal matches

Women’s Freestyle

Wednesday, Aug 17: 48kg, 58kg, 69kg; Thursday Aug 18: 53kg, 63kg, 75kg

All days: 9:00 am EST tournament start; 3:45 pm EST for start of medal matches

Men’s Freestyle

Friday Aug 19: 57kg 74kg; Saturday Aug 20: 86kg, 125kg

9:00 am EST tournament start; 4:00 pm EST for start of medal matches

Sunday Aug 21: 66kg, 97kg

7:30 am EST tournament start; 11:45 am EST for start of medal matches

HOW TO WATCH

CNBC will be showing the prelims and NBCSN will be showing the medal rounds. To make sure you are able to catch all the action, NBC will be streaming everything on their website (nbcsports.com/olympic-sports) and NBC Sports app.

Unfortunately for cord cutters, you must have a cable subscription to watch online, so if you want to see more than a few ‘in-studio’ highlights, you’re going to have to either become reacquainted with your cable company, or, if you have high speed internet and a Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, XBox One et al, you can give Sling TV a try. I’ve used it before, and it’s not great, but it’s (probably) better than dealing with the cable company.

I’ve also heard PSP Vue has similar functionality.

United World Wrestling will be hosting results and replays (but full replays will probably not be available for at least little while, until NBC grants their release).

If you live in countries other than the USA, please share in the comments what you plan on doing, because I have no idea (although I’m told this UWW link may help).

PREVIEWS

We’ll have previews for each day of competition here on the Bloody Elbow, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, we’ve compiled a few from other sources. If you know of previews we’ve omitted, let us know in the comments!

The Open Mat has a plethora of articles in their international section

Flo Wrestling has a special section devoted to the Olympic Games chock full of goodness

If mainstream media is your thing, there’s also Sports Illustrated

What did we miss?

RANKINGS

UWW releases Top 20 rankings for each weight class. Many of the ranked wrestlers will be battling on the mats in Rio. The rankings are far from perfect, but in any event, I matched up all the entrants to their corresponding ranking and listed them below, in order.

GRECO-ROMAN

59 KG/130 LBS

CUB Ismael BORRERO 1

AZE Rovshan BAYRAMOV 2

KAZ Almat KEBISPAYEV 3

PRK Won-Chol YUN 5

BLR Soslan DAUROV 6

KGZ Arsen ERALIEV 7

NOR Stig-Andre BERGE 8

UZB Elmurat TASMURADOV 9

EGY Haithem MAHMOUD 10

JPN Shinobu OTA 12

IRI Hamid SORYAN 14

RUS Stepan MARYANYAN 15

ECU Andres MONTANO 16

SRB Kristian FRIS 18

USA Jesse THIELKE 19

CHN Lumin WANG

KOR Jungbaik LEE

MAR El-Mahadi MESSAOUDI

VEN Raiber RODRIGUEZ

66 KG/146 LBS

GER Frank STAEBLER 1

HUN Tamas LORINCZ 2

KOR Hansu RYU 3

RUS Islam-Beka ALBIEV 4

SRB Davor STEFANEK 6

ARM Migran ARUTYUNYAN 8

CUB Miguel MARTINEZ 9

GEO Shmagi BOLKVADZE 10

…

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