Editor’s Note: Wrestler Navid Afkari was executed by the Iranian government on September 12, 2020. On that fateful morning, he learned that another Iranian wrestler, Navid Afkari, had been executed, hanged for a crime that his family and friends say he didn’t commit. The spirit of wrestling is deeply engrained in Iranian culture, where it has transcended the arena of sport. The executionAccording to the Afkari family, his final days were brutal, but there wasn’t necessarily any reason to think that the end was near. Iranians in Canada on Mel Lastman Square demonstrate against the execution of wrestler Navid Afkari by the Iranian regime, in Toronto, Ontario in September 2020.

---