{"id":96740,"date":"2022-07-13T17:00:19","date_gmt":"2022-07-13T15:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=96740"},"modified":"2022-07-13T16:29:03","modified_gmt":"2022-07-13T14:29:03","slug":"22-00-77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=96740","title":{"rendered":"Israeli Judoka Sagi Muki Loses Match Against Friend, Iranian Defector Saeid Mollaei"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Israeli Judoka Sagi Muki Loses Match Against Friend, Iranian Defector Saeid Mollaei<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

JNS.org<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Israeli judoka Sagi Muki. Photo: Naoki Nishimura \/ Aflo Sports \/ Reuters.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

JNS.org<\/span><\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u2013 Israeli judoka Sagi Muki and his counterpart, Saeid Mollaei, an Iranian defector who now competes for Azerbaijan, faced each other\u00a0for the first time this weekend after the latter was forced three years ago to forfeit a match with the athlete from Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

The judokas\u00a0battled it out<\/a>\u00a0in the quarterfinals of the Budapest Grand Slam on Saturday in Hungary with Mollaei coming out victorious. The competitors, who have become friends over the years, also hugged and shook hands after the bout.<\/span><\/p>\n

Muki said in an Instagram post that even though he didn\u2019t win, it was a \u201cvictory of sport over politics.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He added that \u201cthe great message that passed today is a message of friendship against all odds and thus the ability of sport and friendship to bridge all the gaps.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

At the 2019 World Championships, Mollaei, who was then competing for Iran, claimed he was pressured by Iranian officials to deliberately lose in the semi-finals to avoid a possible bout with Muki, who ended up winning the gold medal.<\/span><\/p>\n

The judoka then fled Iran, was granted\u00a0refugee status\u00a0in Germany\u00a0and competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics under the Olympic flag of athletes without nationality. He later received Mongolian citizenship and now competes under the Azerbaijani flag.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mollaei eventually\u00a0moved on\u00a0to the finals of the Budapest Grand Slam over the weekend, where he won the silver medal in the men\u2019s under-81-kilogram category. Israeli athletes took home a total of six medals in various categories of the competition.<\/span><\/p>\n

After Mollaei revealed the pressures he faced from\u00a0Iranian officials\u00a0at the 2019 World Championships, the International Judo Federation responded by issuing a\u00a0four-year ban\u00a0against the Iranian Judo Federation for trying to stop its athletes from facing Israeli<\/span><\/p>\n

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Israeli Judoka Sagi Muki Loses Match Against Friend, Iranian Defector Saeid Mollaei JNS.org Israeli judoka Sagi Muki. Photo: Naoki Nishimura \/ Aflo Sports \/ Reuters. JNS.org\u00a0\u2013 Israeli judoka Sagi Muki and his counterpart, Saeid Mollaei, an Iranian defector who now competes for Azerbaijan, faced each other\u00a0for the first time this weekend after the latter was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96740"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=96740"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96757,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96740\/revisions\/96757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=96740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=96740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=96740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}