Injuries and fate have conspired to keep Yianni Diakomihalis, a two-time Cadet world champion, from competing overseas since September of 2016. Yianni made up for his international absence this summer, competing in Europe in two high-caliber competitions.

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These tournaments took place in between Yianni's Final X matches with Zain Retherford, which have been a saga all unto themselves. Despite not knowing if he still had a shot at making the 2019 senior world team, Yianni took it upon himself to compete in two of the toughest tournaments he could possibly enter: the Yaşar Doğu, a UWW Ranking Series Event in Istanbul, and the Ziolkowski Memorial Tournament in Warsaw, Poland, traditionally used by Russia as a World Championship tune-up. 

The Yaşar Doğu was up first, and Yianni was there to do more than barter for a fez at the bazaar or watch coach Esposito enjoy some Turkish ice cream.

Turkish ice cream show... Espo got got pic.twitter.com/yWLps0PrNt

— Yianni Diakomihalis (@yiannidiako_LGR) July 10, 2019

Instead, Yianni would, unfortunately, draw Zain Retherford in the first round, and have a rematch with the Hodge Trophy-winning former Nittany Lion sooner than he expected. 

The team spot wasn't on the line, though both wrestlers compete as if it was.

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Yianni took the hard-fought bout 9-5.

In the quarterfinals, Yianni faced off against Azerbaijan's 2018 U23 silver-medalist, Ali Rahimzadeh, who Yianni teched with relative ease.

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Yianni's semifinals against Ismail Musukaev proved to be quite memorable. The Hungarian wrestler by way of Dagestan raced out to a 9-0 lead, though at the cost of completely exhausting himself. Yianni's pace was nearly the death of Musukaev, who was cautioned out of the match, a rare sight in high-level international wrestling. 

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Yianni's finals opponent, Ali Haji Mohamed of Bahrain, clearly wanted nothing to do with that, and promptly forfeited the gold medal to the American. 

Matches from Yianni's tournament in Poland are hard to find, but his bracket can be accessed by clicking here. 

Yianni teched his first opponent in the first period. In the quarterfinals, Yianni beat Asian runnerup Sayetpek Ossakov of Kazakhstan 11-0. In the semifinals, Musakaev decided that one near-death experience at the hands of Diakomihalis in one month is enough, and conceded the match to Yianni without stepping on the mat. 

Yianni then made it back to back international gold medals when he defeated 2019 Euro Games bronze medalist Gor Oganesyan of Ukraine. Luckily, that match is available on YouTube, which you can watch as the first match in the embed below. 

Yianni had a much tougher go with Oganesyan, giving up the first takedown and then barely holding on for a 9-8 victory. The scrambles between these two were things to behold. Highly recommend watching this one. 

Regardless of the results of Yianni's next competition with Zain, it's pretty clear that Yianni will almost definitely be taking an Olympic redshirt season, which means quite a few more international competitions will be on the docket. Whether or not the next one will be to Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan will be decided by Labor Day.