Rio 2016: Olympic Wrestling Preview Day 7: Men’s Freestyle 86kg & 125kg

We’ll begin this preview of Day 7 as we will all future previews, with a link back to our Olympics Wrestling primer, which has a cheat sheet and live stream details. Also a link to NBC’s wrestling webpage where you can find video streams. And here is a link to CBC’s streams for all you Canadians (or global citizens with computers that are pretending to be Canadian for now).

Also a note that wrestling brackets are random draw and uneven. 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 each tournament) is a fool’s errand. Which is perhaps why I find it so much fun.

Men’s Freestyle 86kg

PICKS

GOLD: Abdulrashid Sadulaev RUS

SILVER: Selim Yasar TUR

BRONZE: Sharif Sharifov AZE

BRONZE: J’Den Cox MIZZOU

CONTENDERS

No one has so thoroughly dominated a weight class in men’s freestyle over the last 3 years than the Russian Tank, Abdulrashid Sadulaev. The native of Dagestan has not lost since 2013 and there is no bigger favorite in any weight class then Saddycakes. If anyone even scores a point on him in this tournament, I will be genuinely shocked.

Yashar of Turkey (by way of Ingushetia, a southern Russian republic neighboring Dagestan) is the only wrestler to last a full 6 minutes on the with Sadulaev on multiple occasions. He will also be placed on the opposite side of the bracket as the Mad Bad Sadulaev by dint of his 2nd place finish at last year’s World Championship.

Sharifov of Azerbaijan (also by way of Dagestan) is a bit of a wild card. He won gold in London and then decided he’d had enough weight cutting and has been competing (ineffectively) up a 97kg for the last 3+ years. He decided to drop back down for the big quadrennial, and if the cut’s not too bad and he is in form, he will be tough to beat.

College senior and Renaissance Man, J’Den Cox, is a dark horse on the international level, but anyone following US wrestling should be very familiar with the 2X NCAA champion.

OTHERS OF NOTE

Reineris Salas of Cuba has three world medals but has never ascended the top of the podium. His best finish was losing to Sadulaev in 2014, in a match where he was so frustrated by the indomitable …

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