It's the dead of winter, and 19 of America's best senior level wrestlers, including 12 former world team members and seven world medalists, are in Siberia. What would possess these intrepid men and women to travel to one of the coldest, most remote places on Planet Earth? Because that's where the Yarguin is. 

So what is the Yariguin anyway? Good question, we will tell you. 

Watch 2019 Ivan Yariguin Grand Prix Live on Flo

Jan. 24-27 | 11 p.m. ET

A Tournament of Champions

To fully explain the 30th Ivan Yarigun Grand Prix, a brief historical diversion is in order. 

For most of the post-World War II Cold War era, the deepest, most challenging freestyle wrestling in the world was considered by many to be not the World Championships, but the Tbilisi Tournament, held annually in Tbilisi, Georgia, which was a part of the Soviet Union until 1992. 

Due to the "one competitor per federation per weight class rule," and because the USSR arguably contained more wrestling talent than the rest of the world combined, having an open tournament with multiple wrestlers entered from the many different republics and regions within the Soviet Union meant there was (arguably) more talent at the Tbilisi than at Worlds or the Olympic Games. 

The evidence for this argument comes from the astounding success at World Championships the ex-Soviet nations have had following the dissolution of the USSR. Since 1994, former Soviet federations have won 277 world medals in men's freestyle wrestling alone. The USA has won 37 over the same time period. 

Watch Dave Schultz win the 1987 Tbilisi below:

When the Soviet Union went kaput on Christmas Day, 1991, it took the Tbilisi tournament with it. However, many consider the Yariguin to be the spiritual successor to the Tbilisi. It has long been the most popular tournament for wrestlers within the Russian Federation and usually serves as the Russian trials tournament for picking the team that will compete at the European Championships.

When you add in the competitors from other countries to the best Russia has to offer, you end up with the toughest tournament outside of the current Senior World Championships. 

So Where is Krasnoyarsk, Anyway?

If you were to travel by train from Moscow to the Pacific Ocean, perhaps on the Trans-Siberian Railway, Krasnoyarsk would be close to the midpoint of your trip. It's one of the many cities founded by Muscovites as they expanded west from the 1600s on, colonizing and developing as they went.

Krasnoyarsk is also nowhere near America, or much of anything else for that matter. To illustrate that point, here is the United States:

And here is Krasnoyarsk:

Krasnoyarsk is as close to Beijing as it is to Moscow: four and a half hours by plane. It is even further from the Caucasus region of Russia, which contains the highest concentration of Russian wrestling talent by a wide margin. 

Traveling to Krasnoyarsk from the United States takes at least three flights, 24 hours, and $1,000. The climate (average January temperature is 4 degrees Fahrenheit) and exorbitant travel expenses may seem like an insurmountable deterrent to attracting enough talent to hold a successful tournament.

However, because the Yarigin still attracts the best from Russia, it also attracts the best from around the world. And the extended journey and less than hospitable climate ensures that only the best of the best compete, keeping most so-called "tourists" from entering the tournament. 

So Who Is This Ivan Yariguin Anyway?

He was one of the most dominant Russian wrestlers of the 1970s, winning two Olympic Gold medals (1972 and 1976) and a World Championship (1973) at 100kg.

Below is a video of Yariguin dismantling Russ Hellickson at the 1973 World Cup in Toledo, Ohio.

Ivan also beat Hellickson 19-13 at the 1972 Montreal Olympics where Hellickson won silver. 

After Ivan was done beating up the world, he began a coaching career that lasted through the 1980s. In 1993 he became the first president of the newly constituted Russian Wrestling Federation. While holding that position, Yariguin helped bring the World Championships to Krasnoyarsk in 1997. You can read about Team USA's experience at this event in this excellent Sports Illustrated article. 

Yariguin tragically died in a car accident in 1997, shortly after the World Championships. Yariguin spent most of his adult life in Krasnoyarsk and was born in a nearby Siberian town. The tournament that began in 1990 that we now know as the Yariguin, and the venue in which it's held, was named in his honor shortly after his death. 

What's in a Name?

Here is the segment where we discuss the spelling. Is it Yarygin or Yariguin? There is no simple answer. In the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, it's Иван Сергеевич Ярыгин or Ivan Sergeyevich Yarygin, as it plainly states on his Wikipedia page. So why does FloWrestling and United World Wrestling use the "Yariguin" spelling? 

The short answer is because that is how Ivan's widow, Natalia Yariguina, spells it, as you can see from this invitation to the 2016 Yariguin Tournament, which was sent out back in October of 2015. 

The issue of different spellings arises because the Russian-Cyrillic and English-Roman alphabet do not line up one-to-one. There's no absolute correct way to write "Ярыгин" in English, just as there is no absolute correct way to write "Burroughs" or "Snyder" in Russian. 

Ярыгин is pronounced yah-REE-gin. Spelling the final syllable "g-i-n" may make sense to most native English speakers, but it is confusing to those who speak other languages like French, where "g-i-n" is pronounced with a soft G, like "origin." 

Moreover, speakers of English as a second language will likely be confused by the fact that the word "gin," as in the potent potable, is also pronounced with a soft G. So rather than confuse the rest of the world to just to appease some Americans who find "Yarygin" a more aesthetically pleasing orthographic arrangement, Mr. and Mrs. Ivan Yariguin would appear to have preferred to use the spelling which has now been adopted by both UWW and FloWrestling.

This concludes our spelling portion of the article. 

OK, That's All Fine, BUT NOW I WANT MORE YARIGUIN

That's wonderful news. We have more Yariguin for you! Not only will we be streaming the entire 2019 tournament starting at 11 p.m. ET Thursday night (Krasnoyarsk is 12 hours ahead of the East Coast, so just add half a day to whatever time it is and that's what it is in Kras-town), but we have a killer FloFilm "Prepared to Fight" about the 2016 tournament. 

Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3

And there will be more content for the 2019 tournament, which is in fact piling up as I type. Enjoy!