Five Americans earn UWW World seeds

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Updated: July 12, 2017

Five American wrestlers — Logan Stieber, James Green, Kyle Snyder, Helen Maroulis and Alli Ragan — have earned one of Top-4 seeds in their weight classes for the 2017 UWW World Championships, which will be held in Paris, France, Aug. 21-26.

According to a July 12 release by United World Wrestling, the following are the seeding for those five wrestlers, who won World/Olympic championships the past year or placed high in a Continental championship.

Men’s Freestyle: 61k – Logan Stieber, No. 2; 70k – James Green, No. 1; 97k – Kyle Snyder, No. 1

Women’s Freestyle: 53k – Helen Maroulis, No. 2; 60k – Alli Ragan, No. 1

No American wrestlers will be seeded in the Greco-Roman tournament of this year’s World Championships.

This is the first year that UWW has tried to create a Top-4 seeding process for either the Worlds or Olympics and are based on an objective, not subjective, points system that was created this past April.

The top seeds were based on a series of points awarded to wrestlers who competed at the 2016 Olympic Games, 2016 Senior World Championships (in non-Olympic weights) and the 2017 Senior Continental championships.

The 2017 seeds are an attempt to separate the best wrestlers in the world and guarantee premier semifinal and finals matchups. However, in 2017 many of the best wrestlers from 2016 have either moved up a weight class, or had limited competition time, leaving some ties in the seeding system.

With that in mind several former World/Olympic champions like Jordan Burroughs (74 kilograms) of the United States, Hassan Yazdani (86k) and Abdulrashid Sadulaev (97k) of Russia were not seeded at their weight classes.

The United World Wrestling Technical Commission established the following criteria to establishing seeding and ties between wrestlers:

  • Highest rank in the Olympic Games;
  • Participation in the Continental Championships in the same weight category;
  • Participation in the Continental Championships in another weight category (if needed, highest rank in this event);
  • The most classification points in the competition where they are tied;
  • The most victories by “Fall” in the competition where they are tied;
  • The most matches won by superiority in the competition where they are tied;
  • The most technical points scored in all the competition where they are tied.

Overall, the United States is tied for fourth with Hungary among nations with the most seedings; trailing only Russia (11), Japan and Turkey with eight seeded wrestlers.

CLICK HERE FOR UWW RELEASE ON WORLDS SEEDINGS

Click here for men’s freestyle seedings

Click here for women’s freestyle seedings

Click here for Greco-Roman seedings

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