Rio 2016: Olympic Wrestling Preview Day 1 – Greco-Roman 59kg & 75kg

We’ll begin this preview of Day 1 as we will all future previews, with a link back to our Olympics Wrestling primer which as a cheat sheet and live stream details.

Also a note about the wrestling brackets. As with most other head-to-head competitions at the Olympics, there are no seeds in wrestling. The entire pool of competitors in each weight class receive a random draw into a single elimination bracket.

Wrestling brackets are also uneven, so all the “pigtails” go on the bottom half of the bracket. For instance, in a 20 wrestler bracket, which we will see at the Olympics, 8 wrestlers will be on the top half of the bracket, and 12 on the bottom.

You can check out the brackets from the 2015 World Championship and the European Olympic Qualification Tournament to give you a better idea of what the Rio brackets will look like.

All to the point that picking place finishers before the weigh-ins are completed and brackets are released (which happens the day before the tournament) is a fool’s errand. Which is perhaps why I find it so much fun.

Greco-Roman 59kg

PICKS

GOLD: Hamid Soryan IRI

SILVER: Rovshan Bayramov AZE

BRONZE: Yun Won-chol PRK

BRONZE: Elmurat Tasmuradov UZB

CONTENDERS

The Rio Olympics kick things off with a great weight class. Iran’s 7X world champ and reigning Olympic Champ, Hamid Soryan, will be looking to cement his status as an all time great. Bayramov also has hardware from …

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