Yianni Diakomihalis Knows There Is Still Room For Improvement

Yianni Diakomihalis celebrates after winning his 65 kg. preliminary bout at the United World Wrestling Championships on Sept. 10, 2022 in Belgrade, Serbia.

With his silver medal at the recently completed United World Wrestling Championships in Belgrade, Serbia, Yianni Diakomihalis became the first American freestyle wrestler at 65 kg. to stand on a podium at the event in 16 years.
The last U.S. wrestler to bring home hardware at that weight was Bill Zadick, who claimed the gold medal in 2006.
“I feel like it’s a great accomplishment and something you should be happy about,” said Diakomihalis, “but I don’t think you should be celebrating or things like that in the middle of your career.”
That’s because the medal color also indicates that Diakomihalis lost in the championship final. After winning his first four matches of the tournament without surrendering a single point, he dropped the final, 13-8, to Rahman Amouzadkhalili of Iran.
Diakomihalis led 8-6 after a 14-point flurry in the opening period, but Amouzadkhalili, the 2022 Asian champion, took control thereafter. The Iranian scored five points in the second period on a step out and a pair of takedowns.
“I think in the finals, I wrestled well. It was just, I didn’t make the adjustments that I needed to make,” Diakomihalis said. “He’s very good. He’s very skilled. And he took advantage of my lack of adjustment, and that was really the big difference-maker in that match.
“He was able to adjust to what I was doing because I scored early and then couldn’t really get back to it. I feel like that means I really need to diversify my offense a little bit. I need to break his positioning down in order to give myself a chance to score more than once. I usually win the shootouts, and I lost that shootout.”
Diakomihalis pointed to his opening round match against Vazgen Tevanyan of Armenia as a high point of his world championships performance. He claimed a 4-0 win over Tevanyan.
“What that says to me is my positioning, my hand fighting, my wrestling IQ has improved,” Diakomihalis said. “A guy like Tevanyan, he’s looking to capitalize on mistakes. Every time I make a mistake, he’s on it. In that match, theoretically, I made very few mistakes.
“What was really positive about that Tevanyan match was that I was able to really limit my mistakes, make smart decisions and then execute my game plan really well, which was putting a lot of pressure on him, a lot of fakes, and then one or two quality attacks.”

Yianni Diakomihalis after winning his 65 kg. semifinals bout against Sebastian Rivera (Puerto Rico) at the United World Wrestling Championships on Sept. 11, 2022 in Belgrade, Serbia.

Overall, Diakomihalis was pleased with his performance at the event.
“I think I wrestled really well,” he said. “Obviously, there were things that needed to be improved on, but I was happy with it.”
Already a three-time NCAA champion, the 23-year-old Diakomihalis of Rochester, New York, is back for his senior year at Cornell University, where he’s an interdisciplinary studies major with a focus on sports administration. He took an Olympic redshirt year in 2019-2020 and then COVID-19 erased the 2020-2021 season.
“I’m doing my last college season this year, so there’s no question, really, what I’m hoping for there,” said Diakomihalis, who will be hunting for another NCAA title. “I’m really excited for the college season coming up.”
Then Diakomihalis will return to the world freestyle stage, where he is confident that he can continue to grow as a wrestler.
“I would argue I can make a lot of changes, still. I’m young,” he said. “I’ve been wrestling for a while, but I feel like my style has been constantly changing. It’s changed as my wrestling career’s gone along.
“My tactics have changed. My skills have changed. The way I’m approaching it has changed. And I think because of that, there is a lot of opportunity for me to grow. I think it’s harder to make a change when you’ve been doing it the same way with no critical thought for years and years and years.”
Diakomihalis said he and those around him think he’s got a ways to go before reaching his ceiling as a wrestler.
“If I continue to work and continue to improve and just stay true to the path and stay very dedicated to what I’m doing, I think there’s a lot of upside for me, which is very exciting,” he said. “I think I made a lot of diet changes, training changes. Just trying to be more professional with my wrestling, and that really helped a lot.
“While it is important to be a very skilled and technically proficient wrestler, it’s not all that there is. You need to take care of yourself. You need to train the right way. And not just train hard, train intelligently.”