Mirian TSALKALAMANIDZE

Mirian Tsalkalamanidze was another great Soviet wrestler of the 1950s from Georgia. Tsalkalamanidze took up chidaoba, the Georgian traditional style of wrestling, as a youth, but was not introduced to a classical wrestling style until 1951, when he took up freestyle wrestling at 24-years-old. Tsalkalamanidze won his first Soviet freestyle flyweight title in 1954 and, the same year, was selected to the Soviet 1954 World Freestyle Championships team. At the World Championships, Tsalkalamanidze lost to Yushu Kitano and Hüseyin Akbaş, earning a bronze medal. Three years later, Tsalkalamanidze bettered his 1954 World Championships bronze to silver, when he lost to Mehmet Kartal of Turkey in the final of the 1957 World Freestyle Championships flyweight class. The best international tournament for Tsalkalamanidze, however, was the 1956 Olympics, where he lost to Akbaş again but, due to the bad points system, was able to win a gold medal. Domestically, in addition to his 1954 Soviet title, Tsalkalamanidze won a Soviet freestyle flyweight title in 1956 and freestyle flyweight bronze in 1955.