Greco News

Haavisto Cup Results: Bulgaria Steamrolls Behind 5 Gold Medalists

By 5PM Staff

Posted on November 30, 2025

Kiril Milov -- Photo: Kostadin Andonov/UWW

Bulgaria sending a majority of their top athletes — including Olympic champ Semen Novikov (87 kg) and two-time World silver Kiril Milov (97 kg) — translated to a tournament performance that yielded five golds and eight medalists overall.

The 2025 Arvo Haavisto Cup began at 10:00am local time on Saturday from Ilmajoki, Finland (4:00am ET) and streamed live on Videopalvelu VL Youtube.

Because the event lacked in terms of participants, three weight categories were subject to round-robin competition — 60, 87, and 97 kg. The nine other brackets in the Haavisto Cup observed the traditional Nordic System format which pools athletes into two groups before combining for medal rounds.

It was a show of strength on the part of the Bulgarians as maligned recent former National coach Soslan Farniev occupied the corner through much of the tournament. Novikov was seriously challenged only once, in his first round bout against Elias Lyyski (FIN). Novikov held a 3-1 lead in Period 2 but added two more when a step-out for Lyyski came attached to a caution. That made the score 5-1, and Novikov would eventually cruise past Andrey Atanasov (BUL) and Waltteri Latvala (FIN) before downing another countryman, Svetoslov Nikolov, 5-1.

Milov blasted Aapo Vitala (FIN), decisioned Robin Uspenski (FIN), and earned his second VSU over Pauli Perkio (FIN) to collect gold. Meanwhile, at 67, Abu Amaev was quite dominant through his four matches on the day and triumphed in each by way of technical superiority. In the final (67 was a full bracket), Amaev soundly defeated tough Finnish wrestler Nestori Mannila (FIN) 9-0.

Neyalko Petrov (60 kg) and Albert Doev (77 kg) gave Bulgaria two more golds. Alyosha Iliev (60 kg), Ivo Iliev (72 kg, BUL), Nikolov, and Alan Dzabiev (130 kg) also medaled for the Eastern Bloc program.

As reported previously, Bulgaria’s Greco-Roman team has been in a state of flux dating back to early ’25 — a mere five months after Novikov delivered the country’s first Olympic gold since the 2000 Sydney Games. Various members of the federation expressed dissatisfaction with the number of foreign-born athletes — which would include Amaev (native of Russia) and Novikov (defected from UKR) — representing the nation in major competition. This led to the disallowing of Russian being spoken in officially-sanctioned training sessions, a boycott at the national tournament, and Farniev being removed from the head coaching role. In April, Amaev and Novikov both earned silver at the highly-prioritized European Championships while Milov came away with gold. But, dissention was still brewing and, once the summer arrived, Amaev and Novikov (among others) were left off of the roster for the ’25 World Championships, which created a further divide within what had previously been a cohesive program.

Most of the Bulgarian wrestlers who performed at Haavisto — including Amaev, Novikov, and Milov — are scheduled to compete again next weekend at the Haparanda Cup in Finland.