TEHRAN - Iranian wrestling expert Alireza Rezaei believes that freestyle wrestling’s weak results at the recent continental competitions should be scrutinized by the pundits and the technical staff of the team.

Iran's freestyle wrestling team finished in third place in the 36th edition of the Asian Wrestling Championships, where Kazakhstan easily secured the team title.

The results were disappointing for the wrestling fans and experts, as Iran only got one gold medal by Rahman Amouzad at 65kg.

The team that won the Asian Wrestling Championships in 29 editions of the tournament and claimed six gold medals in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia last year, get some weak and indefensible records.

“It’s undeniable that the results were awful,” said Alireza Rezaei in his exclusive interview with Tehran Times.

“We must find a solution to avoid the same results in upcoming competitions. The national team's technical staff must also find the causes of the failure. In the meetings with the experts and technical staff, the wrestling federation should analyze why such results happened,” Rezaei added.

Iran also snatched one silver and three bronze medals in the event.

Rezaei is a former wrestler, who won Iran's first heavyweight medal in the 2004 Olympics in the Men's Freestyle 120kg. He won the silver medal.

When asked about the reasons for the Iran team’s failure, he said “As I watched as a viewer, the lack of freshness of the wrestlers was clear in all of our team members. I think the Iranian wrestlers had problems regarding the way and time of recovery. Hopefully, these issues should be resolved for the more important matches ahead of us.

“They must accept responsibility for this failure and also tolerate the criticisms so that they can fix the problems in the future.

“In my opinion, this failure is not a disaster. Some of our wrestlers were overconfident in the tournament, and this defeat was a timely reminder for them,” he concluded.