20 year old Iranian wrestler Amir Zare is now a World Champion! Why is this important you may ask. Now let’s look at this statistically right, Abdulrashid Sadulaev won his first title in 2014 when he was 18 years old, Kyle Snyder won his first title in 2015 when he was 19 years old, and Hasan Yazdani won his first title in 2016. What do all of these guys have in common? They will each go down as all time greats. Let’s look right now what each of these guys have done. Abdulrashid Sadulaev has 2 Olympic Gold Medals and 4 World Gold Medals. Kyle Snyder has an Olympic Gold and a Silver and 2 World Gold Medals. Hasan Yazdani has an Olympic Gold and a Silver and 3 World Gold Medals. Amir Zare right now has a Bronze medal from the Tokyo Olympics and a Gold Medal from the Oslo World Championships. Let’s look at the weight class. Taha Akgul and Geno Petriashvili have seemed to be the top 2 guys except for Zare. Zare did defeat Akgul 4-0 in a match where Akgul could not even get to a leg attack. Then he avenges his Olympic Semifinal loss to Geno Petriashvili by dominating the match 9-2.
Now the question has to arise, where is the ceiling for Amir Zare and this young rising Iranian wrestling team. I genuinely do not know. Hasan Yazdani has seemed to be around forever but he is only 26 years old, Mohammadian maybe the only guy on their freestyle roster to consider retirement soon at 29 years old. Meanwhile you look at the United States team with Kyle Dake, David Taylor, Jordan Burroughs. Those are 3 guys that probably will not be wrestling in Paris 2024. Those are also guys who have been a stable in the USA wrestling scene for a while. Burroughs since his first World Title win in 2011 being the face of USA Wrestling for a decade now, Dake and Taylor not even having the chance to make a World Team until 2018 and they have 6 Gold Medals between them. We could look at the guys who will be filling in those spots when the time comes, but even that being said can anyone really fill those shoes?
Now the question that everyone is asking is who is the king of 125kg. Amir Zare or Gable Steveson. We do not know until we see a match. The fact remains that they both have wins over both of the legends Akgul and Petriashvili. However Steveson has not been focused on wrestling full time which would lead everyone to believe that Zare would have the advantage. Even with this being said as we have seen Gable Steveson most likely will not even be making a return to the International wrestling scene. So who knows?
