8.10.2008

Your Bare-Bones Olympic Wrestling Preview

This is just a short post because I wanted to make a point about something. The 2008 Olympics in Beijing are happening right now and this blog cares not at all about swimming, gymnastics, or (Sorry TSF Nation), basketball. Instead here we care about the Greco-Roman and Freestyle Olympic Wrestling Tournament. And this will be a fun thing to watch, if you can somehow find it.

While the Americans are the defending World Team Champions in Freestyle the Russian unit is, without question, the current colossus of the freestyle branch of the sport now. Having won five Olympic gold medals in 2004 and seven titles at the Azerbaijan world championships last year, including a near-sweep of the freestyle fights, the Russians are trying their best to put a blanket around the freestyle side of the tournament. But this will not be easy as Cuba, Turkey, the United States, and Uzbekistan lead a crop of hungry teams looking to stop the tide.

This is what Russia does best.

However, in the Greco-Roman discipline, things are far more up for grabs with wrestlers from 41 countries having qualified. Nonetheless the Iranians, Georgians, and others look to dominate the upper-body only wrestling technique.

Watch the wrestling. Get into it. For here are the true toughest men in the Olympics, the men with more self-discipline and toughness than anyone on the US Olympic unit.

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