WRESTLING – BAHRAIN’S Paris 2024 Olympic champion Akhmed Tazhudinov will be spearheading a six-member men’s wrestling national team that will be flying the kingdom’s flag in the Senior World Championships 2025, which gets underway next weekend.
The mega United World Wrestling (UWW) event is set to feature competition in men’s freestyle, Greco-Roman, and women’s wrestling. It will be held from Saturday to September 21 in Zagreb, Croatia.
Tazhudinov is set to be joined by countrymen and fellow-star grapplers Alibeg Alibegov, Magomedrasul Asluev, Khidir Saipudinov, Magomed Sharipov, and Shamil Sharipov. They will all be hitting the mat in their respective men’s freestyle divisions as they aim for gold.
Their participation has been confirmed by UWW, who have published a 326-wrestler entry list across 10 freestyle classes.
Tazhudinov will be wrestling in the men’s 97kg category, which features a stacked, star-studded field. He was crowned the class’ world champion in this competition’s 2023 edition, but it was not held as part of the programme at last year’s worlds, which included only weight categories that did not feature at the Olympics.
Twenty-two-year-old Tazhudinov is highly regarded as the best pound-for-pound freestyle wrestler in the world, and he is a heavy favourite to medal in the Croatian capital. He is the top seed in his class, which boasts a number of other big names, headlined by Abdulrashid Sadulaev, ‘The Russian Tank’, who is a two-time Olympic champion, six-time world champion, and four-time European champion.
The pair share a coach in the legendary Shamil Omarov, who guided Tazhudinov to his world and Olympic crowns, as well as Sadulaev to his back-to-back Olympic titles in Rio 2016 (men’s 86kg) and Tokyo 2021 (men’s 97kg).
The other top contenders who are seeded second through eighth, respectively, in their division are Paris 2024 silver-medallist and 2023 worlds bronze-medallist Givi Matcharashvili of Georgia, Rio 2016 gold-medallist and three-time world champion Kyle Snyder of the US, Paris 2024 joint bronze-medallist and 2023 worlds silver-medallist Magomedkhan Magomedov of Azerbaijan, Paris 2024’s other bronze-medallist Amirali Azarpira of Iran, world military champion Zbigniew Baranowski of Poland, Asian champion Arash Yoshida of Japan, and Richard Vegh of Hungary.
Leading up to this year’s Senior World Championships, Tazhudinov has so far made a successful comeback from an injury he suffered last year during the Olympics. He struck gold in both the Polyak Imre and Varga Janos Memorial, also known as the Budapest Ranking Series, held in Hungary, as well as in the Grand Prix of Spain 2025 in Madrid, both of which took place in July. Amongst Bahrain’s other wrestlers aiming for men’s freestyle gold in Zagreb, Alibegov will be competing in the 65kg division, Asluev in the 74kg, Saipudinov in the 79kg, Magomed Sharipov in the 92kg, and Shamil Sharipov in the 125kg.
Three of Bahrain’s entrants join Tazhudinov as seeds. Asluev is the seventh seed amongst 74kg competitors, who are spearheaded by top seed Chermen Valiev of Albania. Saipudinov is also the seventh seed in the 79kg class, topped by Akhsarbek Gulaev of Slovakia.
Shamil Sharipov is the sixth seed in the 125kg category, in which Giorgi Meshvildishvili is the number one seed. The freestyle competitions will get the worlds underway on Saturday and continue until September 16.
Tazhudinov’s gold in 2023 was the first-ever won by Bahrain at the Senior World Championships and second medal overall in the event’s history. Adam Batirov had earlier clinched a silver medal for the kingdom in the men’s freestyle 70kg division at the 2018 edition of the worlds.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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