Multiple Iranian news sources are reporting that Iran’s U23 National Team has not been granted visas by the Albanian government for the upcoming U23 World Championships. Because of this, Iran’s national team in both freestyle and greco-roman will not compete at U23 Worlds. 

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According to the IAWF, United World Wrestling and the Iranian Wrestling Federation have known about this problem for about one month and have done everything possible to cooperate with the Albanian government. However, because of “political reasons” the Albanian government refused to grant the Visas.

Visa issues are a regular problem in international wrestling and UWW already changed the location of U23 Worlds one time this year from Tampere, Finland to Tirana, Albania. This change was done to ensure the admittance of athletes from Russia and Belarus because of the ongoing war in Ukraine. 

Iran was set to bring a strong team to the U23 World Championships highlighted by 5 wrestlers ranked in the top 20 in our international men’s freestyle rankings:

Iran’s Men’s Freestyle Roster:

57 kg: #8 Milad Valizadeh

61 kg: Shahdad Khosravi

65 kg: #16 Mohammadali Amouzad

70 kg: Mohammad Bakhshi

74 kg: #19 Mohamad Firouzpour

79 kg: Shoban Yari

86 kg: Ali Mansouri

92 kg: Mohammadmobin Azimi

97 kg: #5 (at 92) Amirali Azarpira

125 kg: #7 Amirreza Masoumi

Iran’s Men’s Greco-Roman Roster:

55 kg: Mahdi Ahadi

60 kg: Omid Arami

63 kg: Iman Mohammadi

67 kg: Danial Sohrabi

72 kg: Amir Ali Abdi

77 kg: Mohamad Naghousi

82 kg: Yasin Yazdi

87 kg: Alireza Mohammadipiani

97 kg: Vahid Dadkhah Ghasem

130 kg: Fardin Hedayati

Report from ISNA

Report from IAWF