Pusan, Korea – Without Jaber Saeed Salem (QAT) to push him, Hossein Rezazadeh (IRI) dominated the superheavyweight class in weightlifting at the Asian Games today.

Starting when everyone else was finished, Rezazdeh power snatched his opener, 190 kg, with blinding speed and followed by smoking 200 on his second attempt, before passing on his third.

All week, rumors had circulated that Rezazadeh was here to try to break the world record in the clean and jerk, so this all seemed according to plan.

As with the snatches, when everyone else was done, Rezazdeh stepped up to bat and made a very easy 240 kg opener.  He called for 255 on his second attempt and quickly changed it to 263 for a world record attempt.

Based on his past performances, the clean should be in the bag, with only the jerk being in question.  Sure enough, Rezazdeh launched the bar for a pretty routine clean, only to miss the jerk, and then he passed on his third attempt. 

The silver medal went to Igor Halilov (UZB) with a 405-kg total, and Munehiro Morita (JPN) got the bronze medal with a 375-kg total.