The men's freestyle bantamweight competition at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne took place from 28 November to 1 December at the Royal Exhibition Building. Nations were limited to one competitor.[1]Bantamweight was the second-lightest category, including wrestlers weighing 52 to 57 kilograms (114.6 to 125.7 lb).[2]
Competition format
This freestyle wrestling competition continued to use the "bad points" elimination system introduced at the 1928 Summer Olympics for Greco-Roman and at the 1932 Summer Olympics for freestyle wrestling, as modified in 1952 (adding medal rounds and making all losses worth 3 points—from 1936 to 1948 losses by split decision only cost 2). Each round featured all wrestlers pairing off and wrestling one bout (with one wrestler having a bye if there were an odd number). The loser received 3 points. The winner received 1 point if the win was by decision and 0 points if the win was by fall. At the end of each round, any wrestler with at least 5 points was eliminated. This elimination continued until the medal rounds, which began when 3 wrestlers remained. These 3 wrestlers each faced each other in a round-robin medal round (with earlier results counting, if any had wrestled another before); record within the medal round determined medals, with bad points breaking ties.[2][1]
All three of the medalists had already faced each both of the others already, so no additional bouts were used. The results consisted of Dağıstanlı's victories over Yaghoubi in round 4 and Shakhov in round 5 and Yaghoubi's victory over Shakhov in round 1. This gave Dağıstanlı a 2–0 record against the other medalists and therefore the gold medal; Yaghoubi a 1–1 record and the silver medal, and Shakhov a 0–2 record and the bronze medal.
