[1] This freestyle wrestling competition consisted of a single-elimination tournament, with a repechage used to determine the winners of two bronze medals.

China's Liang Lei was on the start list but did not compete due to injury.

In January 2019, Georgia's Davit Modzmanashvili, who originally won the silver medal, was disqualified after testing positive for banned substances.

[2] On 23 July 2019, it was announced that as a result of retesting samples, original gold medalist Artur Taymazov was also disqualified.

[3][4][5] Consequently, the original bronze medalists, Komeil Ghasemi of Iran and Bilyal Makhov of Russia, were declared joint Olympic champions, while Tervel Dlagnev of the United States and Daulet Shabanbay of Kazakhstan, who Ghasemi and Makhov had defeated in the repechage, were awarded the bronze medals.