Last week while representing Iran at a freestyle wrestling World Championship tournament in Poland, Alireza Karimi purposely lost his match against Russian Alikhan Zhabrailov. He did so to avoid an uncomfortable, and highly political, incident.
Karimi was winning his bout with Zhabrailov, before his coaches ordered him to lose. The young wrestler seemed to ignore the requests at first, but eventually decided to let his Russian opponent win.
Karimi’s coaches wanted him to lose because, during the contest, they found out that a victory would mean he would be matched-up against Uri Kalashnikov in the next round.