Greco-Roman wrestling is one of those arcane pursuits that calls you in from the heat outside, asks you to sit down for a while and watch, then, after it is done, leaves you to wonder what on earth just happened.
There were some interesting sights in Carioca Arena 2 in the Olympic Park in Barra on a hot, sweat-filled Monday afternoon. It is an air-conditioned aircraft hangar like all the others but peopled by the true hardcore, those who know their stuff, who cheer at the right time, like the audiences at La Scala, never missing a beat – or clapping on the wrong one. This, I thought, could be interesting.
So to the mat. Well, mats. You get good value at the G-R, a pair of simultaneous bouts, to wrestle, so to speak, with the complexities and oddness of it all in those what-am-I-doing-here moments.
These were the 130kg showdowns, where the big boys clash. Proper quality, too, after some of the chaff had been shredded in the preliminaries – although it would not be prudent to refer to them thus in person. There were 19 of them when it started, bringing a combined beef presence of 2,420kg. Which is probably a truck or small shed with a couple of fridges. None came from the UK, by the way, one from Australia, the rest from Estonia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan (indeed, most of the Stans) and other places that might struggle to work their way into Boris Johnson’s to-visit list.
On Mat B the 21-year-old Russian Sergey Semenov lies face down on Iakobi Kajaia from Georgia (no love lost there, then) and duly mounts him; they engage, stop, stand and reverse positions. I am now totally reliant on the scores on the screen. The clocks seems to have run down three minutes as both guys are towelled and water-sprayed and get to grips again, this time standing up and pushing.
While I am reading his CV in the helpful programme notes, the Russian has quite rudely and very cleverly thrown the Georgian off the stage – which no doubt President Putin was enjoying enormously on television back in the Kremlin, although we should maybe leave politics out of this.
Over on more neutral territory on Mat A the magnificent Cuban – no other words for it, the man is a monster and a legend – Mijaín López is wrestling the pants off (not literally) a bewildered Swede, Johan Magnus Euren. Out of the corner of my eye I could see they were locked like stags and then they stopped – and López got the nod. I would like to tell you he deserved it but I was so engrossed with Mat B, I spotted only the odd exchange. Russia had somehow got to 5-0, good enough to get through to the semi-finals. I’m guessing that shoulder throw swung it for Mr Semenov.
However, it also earned him the dubious pleasure of Mr López’s company for six minutes in the semi-final. That is the G-R equivalent of being invited to spar with Anthony Joshua in a blindfold. López won. Semenov was utterly knackered.
I am glad I came now. And it is good to stop and remember that being here is exactly what it is all about for these guys. They are the beasts of their sport and they do it for nothing but the medals and a couple of weeks in Rio – which might be a step up from a fortnight in Kyrgyzstan, although they say the Tian Shan mountains are beautiful, snow leopards and all.
Generally the sport brings the finest from a lot of these remote areas, where there might or might not be a plaque outside the home where Riza Kayaalp, the Turkish wrestler, was born. And from Pinar del Río in Cuba, the home of López, five-times world champion, two-times Olympic champion, the Teófilo Stevenson of his calling. Rumours spread six years ago that López was defecting but there he still is, in his distinctive violet tights, adored by the cognoscenti, loved for his beguiling, debilitating mix of chilling strength and artful subtlety.
Anyway he made mincemeat of Semenov, 3-0 after six minutes – and went where all aficionados knew he was going: into the final on Monday night for a hugely anticipated match with Kayaalp.
As we leave, a more seasoned expert observes, “López doesn’t do silvers.” You feared for young Kayaalp, unless you’re Armenian or Greek.
Kayaalp got bronze in London – and a six-month ban a year later for saying nasty things about the immigrant citizens of those countries who staged a sit-in protest in Istanbul against restrictions on the freedom of the press, among other grievances.
So he is a no-nonsense sort of a guy as, in an entirely different way, is López. He has been doing this since 1993. He freestyled well enough as a junior to win a Pan-American title before switching to Greco-Roman. This is a rarity. The last Olympian to get a medal in both disciplines was the Swede Jan Karlsson in 1972.
Enough of Guardianista down-your-nose smart-aleckery.
If you watch for any length of time, you come to appreciate the wickedly smart shifts in weight and pressure as they slither across a rubbery surface, looking for openings much the way judo fighters do, planting their feet cleverly for the slightest advantage, pulling their adversary on to another grip, much the same as boxers do when feinting.
But it is not judo or boxing. It is Greco-Roman wrestling and it has been around, in one form or another, for as long as the Olympics themselves.
