What would the men's freestyle world championship team race look like if it was based on our international rankings? Let's dig into the world-wide landscape and find out. 

2019 Men's Freestyle International Rankings

The above link will take you to our top 20 rankings. From there, we removed all but the highest-ranked wrestlers from each country. This was because each federation is only allowed to enter one wrestler per weight class at world championship events. This meant we chucked a bunch of Russians, some Americans, a couple Azeris and Georgians, and a few Iranians out of consideration. 

We then assigned points based on the UWW tournament scoring system. 25 points for the top-ranked wrestler, 20 for second, 15 for third, 10 for fifth, then 8, 6, 4, & 2 for seventh through tenth. 

That gave us the following scoreboard. 

Russia looking not too shabby, as expected, with the USA starting to separate itself as the closest, though still distant, competitor. Iran, Georgia, and Azerbaijan are all bunched together as fellow trophy contenders, with Turkey not too far behind. There's a large drop off after that, though an improving India may join that group shortly.

And if we were to plop those numbers in a heat map? Why, that would like a little something like this:

Wonderful. Who doesn't love a good heat map? 

Of course, that was all based on the last set of rankings. Now that we are officially on the road to Tokyo 2020, everything will change as wrestlers evacuate the non-Olympic weights and head to the six divisions that will be contested next summer at the Games. How will that change the men's freestyle world-wide landscape? We shall soon find out!