Wrestling at the 2012 London Summer Games:

A successful college-level wrestler, American Jordan Burroughs had exploded onto the international scene by winning the Pan American and World Championship titles in the men’s middleweight freestyle wrestling division in 2011 and was the favorite to win Olympic Gold at the 2012 Summer Olympics. His greatest rival was Russia’s Denis Tsargush, two-time World (2009 and 2010) and three-time European Champion (2010-2012) in the category. Another strong challenger was Sadegh Goudarzi of Iran, the Asian Champion in 2009 and 2012 and World Championship runner-up the past two years.

Burroughs and Tsargush were drawn in the same half, where the American edged out the Russian in the semifinals, while Goudarzi was the winner of his bracket and advanced to challenge the World Champion in the gold medal match. Both wrestlers were extremely agile fighters, but Borroughs was quicker in each round, ably dodging all of the Iranians attacks and scoring in the final seconds of both rounds to win the United States’ first wrestling gold medal of the Games.

Of the two wrestlers who met in the first bronze medal match, Soslan Tigiyev of Uzbekistan was the more heralded, having won a silver medal at the 2008 Games and bronze at the 2006 Asian Games. His opponent, Gábor Hatos of Hungary, had finished 15th at the 2004 edition and had bronze medals from the 2006 European Championships and the 2010 World Championships. Tigiyev won the first round with a takedown and drew the advantaged position in a second round par terre, which he was able to convert not only to a point, but a bronze medal as well. In November 2012, however, Tigiyev was stripped of his medal by the International Olympic Committee after testing positive for methylhexaneamine and Hatos was awarded the bronze.

For the final podium spot Tsargush faced Matt Gentry of Canada, a Pan American bronze medalist in 2007 and 2011 who finished 18th at the 2008 Olympics. As expected, the Russian had little trouble scoring against the Canadian, winning the match, and the bronze medal, 1-0 and 2-0 in the first and second rounds respectively.