It was split into two disciplines, Freestyle and Greco-Roman which were further divided into different weight categories.
[1] Wrestling events consisted of a series of matches and a system of points to decide elimination after each round, followed the format introduced for Greco-Roman wrestling at the 1928 Summer Olympics and now extended to freestyle competition as well.
Matches were scored as follows: the results of the bouts were counted on points, with those having the least becoming the winners.
Those competitors who accumulated 5 bad points were eliminated.
If candidates for the third place were eliminated with equal bad points in the same round, they were paired, if they have not yet met each other, for the third place.