Haines, Hidlay advance to men’s freestyle semifinals at 2025 World Championships

ZAGREB, Croatia – The U.S. men’s freestyle team put forth another remarkable session at the 2025 World Championships with all four athletes making the quarterfinal round, two of which—Levi Haines and Trent Hidlay—punched through to the Sunday evening semis.

Haines got better as the day went on, punctuating a 3-0 session at 79 kg with a buzzer-beating 3-2 victory against 2023 World champion and current European champion Akhmed Usmanov of UWW. Although he was the clear aggressor throughout the match, Haines was put on the shot clock in both periods. He overcame a 2-0 deficit by landing a single leg on the edge of the mat with two seconds remaining.

Up next for Haines, the current U23 Pan American champion and 2024 NCAA champion for Penn State, is 2025 Asian bronze medalist Suldkhuu Olonbayar of Mongolia.

As anticipated, Hidlay leveraged his underhook attacks to great success on Sunday morning at Arena Zagreb. He scored decisive technical falls against Redjep Hajdari of North Macedonia and Samuel Scherrer of Switzerland before controlling two-time World medalist Miriani Maisuradze of Georgia, 6-1.

Three-time World medalist Osman Nurmagomedov of Azerbaijan stands in the way of Hidlay and the 92 kg final.

The surprise result of the day came in the 57 kg quarters with 2024 Olympic silver medalist Spencer Lee being teched by three-time World medalist Arsen Harutyunyan of Armenia, 14-3. It was an uncharacteristic performance for Lee, who now needs Harutyunyan to win in tonight’s semifinals for a chance at a bronze medal.

Also coming up short in the quarterfinals was two-time age-group World medalist David Carr at 74 kg. He held a 5-1, second period lead on 2024 Olympic bronze medalist and European champion Cherman Valiev of Albania but gave it up late in a 7-5 defeat. It’ll be a roll of the dice for Carr to get pulled back in. Valiev is paired against 2020 Olympic champion and three-time World champion Zaurbek Sidakov of UWW in the semis, needing a win to pull Carr into the repechage.

For a complete match-by-match breakdown of the morning session for Team USA in Zagreb, browse our day two match notes.

The tournament resumes at 4:30 p.m. local time on Sunday with the men’s freestyle group two (57-74-79-92 kg) semifinals, followed by the men’s freestyle group one (61-70-86-125 kg) medal matches at 6 p.m. Zagreb, Croatia, is in the GMT +2 time zone, which is six hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Time.

The Senior World Championships are streaming live on FloWrestling.com to the U.S. market. Brackets and updated results are available on UWW Arena.

USA Wrestling will provide regular updates on TheMat.com and its social media platforms throughout the event.