Experts deservedly call the world wrestling community «brotherhood of broken ears». Olympic champions Alexander Karelin and Mikhail Mamiashvili spoke about this more than once. But sometimes the intensity of the battle is so high that it comes to fisticuffs. The correspondent recalls the most scandalous situations.
At the recent Greco-Roman wrestling youth world championship in Romania, the Armenian Karapet Manvelyan won the quarterfinal against the Azerbaijani Rakhim Hasanov. After the victory (7:1), he wanted to shake his opponent's hand, but the angry opponent suddenly responded with a blow to the face. The athletes were separated, Gasanov was disqualified, and Manvelyan eventually won the silver medal.
Leading figures of wrestling are well aware that fights between athletes from Armenia and Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey have been becoming high-risk fights for many years. This is caused by long-term and unquenchable political enmity between the countries. And athletes sometimes become hostages of the situation when they are furiously pumped up, driven into the head: «You have no right to lose to him (Armenian, Azerbaijani, Turk), you will disgrace yourself and our entire nation. Do whatever you want, but win»
And such blows sometimes allow the loser to save face in the eyes ardent pseudo-fans. But they do not understand that for a wrestler such behavior can be the end of a career.
Such meetings add gray hair to the judges, who are well aware that any more or less controversial decision will immediately cause an uproar from one of the parties. As at the 2020 Olympics, when Karapyat Chalyan (Armenia) and Rafik Huseynov (Azerbaijan) met in the fight for bronze. The Armenian, by the way, defeated the Russian Alexander Chekhirkin at the previous stage. And in this fight he inflicted an illegal headbutt on his opponent. This did not help, he was deducted three points, the subsequent protest was rejected, and the bronze award went to the Azerbaijani.
From a fight on the carpet to mayor
Dramatic episodes happened more than once in the career of freestyle wrestler Vladimir Khinchegashvili. At the 2012 Olympics, the Georgian lost to the Russian Jamal Otarsultanov in the final. And three years later, at the European Games in Baku, in the semifinals, he clashed with another native of Russia, Vladislav Andreev. With the score 2:1 in favor of the Yakutian, who played for the Belarusian national team, Khinchegashvili unexpectedly slapped his opponent. Andreev replied that the massacre was prevented, but both athletes were disqualified. -m won the Olympic Games. October 2021 brought a sharp turn in life: 30-year-old Khinchegashvili was elected mayor of his hometown of Gori.
The story of freestyle wrestler Daniel Cormier is also noteworthy. The American participated in the Olympic Games in 2004 and 2008, but was left without medals (the athlete became the fourth in Athens and 18th in Beijing). And after leaving the fight, he soon shone in the UFC, winning the championship belts in light heavyweight and heavyweight. But the Dagestanis remembered him for very unsightly actions. At one of the tournaments in memory of multiple world champion Ali Aliyev, Cormier hit Russian Shamil Gitinov twice in the face, breaking his opponent's lip. But this did not help him, the American lost that fight.
Demarche in Yakutsk
The freestyle wrestling championships of Russia, held in the year of the Olympics, stand apart. This is the main stage of the selection, where the rule is almost always behind the scenes — «who became the champion, he will go to the Games.» Serious passions boil — both on the carpet and outside it. In 2012, in St. Petersburg, a native of Abkhazia Denis Tsargush defeated Adam Saitiev, an Olympic champion and younger brother of three-time Olympic winner Buvaisar Saitiev, in the final.
br>On the carpet, everything ended quite peacefully, but Buvaisar, annoyed by the defeat of his brother, entered into a skirmish with the fans of Tsargush, who were vigorously celebrating the success of his fellow countryman. And it almost came to a fight, but the clash was prevented by security officers.
Saitiev Sr., by the way, got pretty bad at the 2004 Olympics. In the quarterfinals, the athlete met with a native of Dagestan, Murad Gaidarov, who represented the Belarusian national team. The Russian pulled out a victory at the end of the fight, and the heated opponent did not enter the procedure for declaring the winner. And then he started a fight on the sidelines with the opposing team. Saytiev, as reported by the media, had his jaw injured in a brawl, but he managed to win two more fights and become a champion.
And in 2016, the pre-Olympic national championship was held in Yakutsk. The only hope of the owners of the mat for a trip to Rio de Janeiro was lightweight, two-time world champion Viktor Lebedev. But there was a sensation: a clear favorite at one of the early stages with great difficulty defeated the then little-known Dagestani Ismail Musukaev. The southerners were extremely outraged by the «home», in their opinion, refereeing and decided to leave the competition.
They were not stopped by the persuasion of the leadership of the Russian Wrestling Federation, who proposed a compromise solution: to cancel the result and hold a new fight (which, by the way, was won by Lebedev). As well as the urgent request of the President of Dagestan to continue participating in competitions. The team went on principle and flew away from Yakutsk, depriving their athletes of the opportunity to fight for participation in the 2016 Olympics. Games, but ended the fight in the quarterfinals. And Musukaev after some time decided to play for the Hungarian national team. Now he is the winner of the European Championship 2022 and a two-time bronze medalist of the World Championships. At the Olympics in Tokyo, the ex-Dagestanian became the fifth.
More than once mass skirmishes occurred at tournaments of a more modest rank. In 2020, juniors from Ingushetia and North Ossetia at a competition in Smolensk first clashed heads hard, and then began to exchange punches in a rage. Supporters of the wrestlers jumped onto the mat and the situation was hardly extinguished.
Opponents from Dagestan and North Ossetia met at the tournament in memory of the tragically deceased Olympic medalist Besik Kudukhov. One of the coaches did not like the behavior of the opponent. He first entered into a squabble, and then hit the wrestler. The example of the specialist was followed by his student, who also hit the enemy in the face.
But the most egregious incident occurred at the youth tournament in Stary Oskol. The loser after the end of the fight rushed at the opponent and tried to hit him. He did not blunder and again laid the opponent on the carpet. But in the confusion, both support groups jumped onto the carpet, and one of the participants — with a gun in his hand. Fortunately, everything then ended without shooting.
Honored coach of the USSR Yuri Shakhmuradov believes that such cases arise due to excessive aggression of individual wrestlers and insufficient work of coaches.
>»Constant rivalry between the republics and between the nations in the Caucasus leads to this,» the expert believes. «Someone loses their nerve after a defeat, someone makes a careless movement, which leads to clashes. Sometimes the coaches run out, and the fans, which is ugly in relation to the organizers of tournaments. Now there are fewer such cases, they should be regulated first of all coaches, they are responsible for their wrestlers.