WILL AZERI GRECO-ROMAN WRESTLING TEAM PARTICIPATE IN WORLD CUP DUE IN YEREVAN?

PanARMENIAN.Net
15.01.2010 19:07 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ On February 12-14, Yerevan will host Greco-Roman
Wrestling World Cup.

As RA Greco-Roman Wrestling Federation Secretary General Bazmaser
Arakelyan told PanARMENIAN.Net reporter, the federation has already
launched preparations for the event.

8 top teams will rival in Greco-Roman Wrestling World Cup. These
include teams from Armenia, Russia, Cuba, Georgia, Iran, Hungary,
Turkey and Azerbaijan.

According to Federation Secretary General, next week Azeri team will
inform as to their arrival to participate in the championship. "The
reply will decide whether Armenian team will participate in European
Championship due in Azerbaijan in April," he noted.

In 2009, Armenian Greco-Roman Wrestling team won the 3rd place at
World Cup. Teams from Russia, France, Armenia, Cuba, Kazakhstan,
Hungary, China and Azerbaijan participated, with Russia winning gold
at the championship.

Greco-Roman wrestling is a style of wrestling that is practiced
worldwide. It was contested at the first modern Olympic Games in 1896
and has been included in every edition of the summer Olympics held
since 1908. Two wrestlers are scored for their performance in three
two-minute periods, which can be terminated early by a pinfall. This
style of wrestling forbids holds below the waist which is the major
difference between it and Freestyle wrestling, the other form of
wrestling at the Olympics. This restriction results in an emphasis
on throws, since a wrestler cannot use trips to take an opponent to
the ground or avoid throws by hooking or grabbing their opponent’s leg.

Arm drags, bear hugs, and headlocks found in Freestyle have greater
prominence in Greco-Roman and throws especially known as a suplex
are used, in which the offensive wrestler lifts his opponent in
a high arch while falling backward on his own neck to a bridge in
order to bring his opponent’s shoulders down to the mat. Even on the
mat, a Greco-Roman wrestler must still find several ways to turn his
opponent’s shoulders to the mat for a fall without legs, including (but
not limited to) techniques known as the bodylock and the gut-wrench.

According to the International Federation of Associated Wrestling
Styles (FILA), Greco-Roman wrestling is one of the six main forms of
amateur competitive wrestling practiced internationally today.