Olympic greco-roman wrestling...what a joke!

Greco-roman wrestling is like you all know pretty much *the* most "original" Olympic event, trailing back to the first olympics thousands of years ago where you even put off wars just to compete in the Olympics...

Now, did anyone of you happen to see the greco-roman wrestling semis? Can anyone honestly say that Ara Abrahamian was rightfully disqualified?

I saw the match and the rerun and the my conclusion is that greco-roman wrestling is corrupt down to its core. It is *ridiculous* that the referees can get away with rigging matches at this level! It is so damn obvious!

Anyway, I think he did the right thing wrestling for bronze (reluctantly -he won easily) and then, at the price ceremony accepted the bronze medal, left the podium and put the medal down in the center of the mat, thanked the audience, and left the building.


H

I didn't see but I heard there was controversy....

What happened? Is it on the utube yet?

I was more pissed that I couldn't find any coverage of it. I searched forever to find the disputed matches and couldn't find anything except a clip on youtube of the ceremony. NBC sucks for not covering anything other than swimming and volleyball and BBC sucks for not letting people in the US watch their Olympic coverage. Please someone tell me where I can find a good site for this stuff.

wont be on utube as the ioc are issuing take downs on all things negative. if it is ever loaded it wont last long.

jcarson83 said:

I... NBC sucks for not covering anything other than swimming and volleyball .

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Did everybody got enough beach volleyball, the height of athletics..??

They must think we are just a bunch of drooling idiots.

Henrik said:

Greco-roman wrestling is like you all know pretty much *the* most "original" Olympic event, trailing back to the first olympics thousands of years ago where you even put off wars just to compete in the Olympics...

Now, did anyone of you happen to see the greco-roman wrestling semis? Can anyone honestly say that Ara Abrahamian was rightfully disqualified?

I saw the match and the rerun and the my conclusion is that greco-roman wrestling is corrupt down to its core. It is *ridiculous* that the referees can get away with rigging matches at this level! It is so damn obvious!

Anyway, I think he did the right thing wrestling for bronze (reluctantly -he won easily) and then, at the price ceremony accepted the bronze medal, left the podium and put the medal down in the center of the mat, thanked the audience, and left the building.


H

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I didn't see the original match, just the coverage of the medal ceremony, so I don't have a strong opinion. But as a former wrestler (freestyle rather than Greco-Roman) I have been stunned by the arbitrary and capricious nature of the scoring. I've never seen anything quite like it. I thought Abrahamian's protest was quiet and dignified, and if he truly believes he was unfairly disqualified then good for him for standing up for what he believes. It certainly was not the "tantrum" that is being portrayed in the US media.

Chad

he was dq'd after the protest. wasnt because of the match itself. i wasnt able to watch it either and wish they would show it but of course it will be a while. hrmm come to think of it anyone see if the nbc site has it?

i just checked and they dont have the match on nbc for the prelim for him. sad cause id like ot have seen it. and the guy from france in the metal round was a ****** wouldnt shake his hand.

OK, what happened was that Abrahamian was disqualified, first for suposedly "having blocked the possibility to be wrestled" -something so obviously wrong that uppon later video review of the "incident" the referees actually change it to "disqualification for mat flight", which is a possibly even more embarrasing ruling. I guess that's what you get for wrestling an Italian when the big whig of FILA is italian and related to the referee...

Here's the match (from Swedish TV since it's removed from Youtube):
http://svt.se/svt/road/Classic/shared/mediacenter/index.jsp?d=90728&a=1216786

And here is the price ceremony where Abrahamian accepts the bronze medal, walks out to the midle of the ring, places the medal in the center of the ring and walks away:

http://www.svt.se/svt/road/Classic/shared/mediacenter/index.jsp?&d=90728&a=1216786

Anyway, if you find the 10 minute match to booring to watch, just to put it in perspective, lets see how the Italian guy handles similar situations at for example 3 minutes in and at about 7 minutes in and compare that to Abrahamian at 9 minutes. The Italian has atleast half his body outside the mat. At the end of the seven minute segment you can see how Abrahamian stops wrestling for a while and just looks at the referee, thinking "WTF is up with this?".

At 8.20 the referee stops the match and orders Abrahamian to get a wound on his cheek looked after. Thing is that it is not bleeding and it has allready been treated earlier so it dosn't need looking after at all, but it gives the Italian wrestler valuble time to recope his strenghts. To prevent any further delays he basically tapes up his whole head (looks pretty funny) and goes back to wrestle. The following minute and a half he is struggling but in the end he is granted a point for winning the round.

H

It says you can only watch it if you within Sweden. Man what a bunch of BS. What is this a media cartel running the Olympics?

seriously, why the hell is sweden enforcing our laws?

Brandon O said:

seriously, why the hell is sweden enforcing our laws?

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No kidding. Sweden used to be the Wild West of the Interweb!