Wrestling at the 1952 Summer Olympics – Men's freestyle heavyweight

The men's freestyle heavyweight competition at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki took place from 20 July to 23 July at Messuhalli. Nations were limited to one competitor.

Competition format
This freestyle wrestling competition continued to use the "bad points" elimination system introduced at the 1928 Summer Olympics for Greco-Roman and at the 1932 Summer Olympics for freestyle wrestling, removing the slight modification introduced in 1936 and used until 1948 (which had a reduced penalty for a loss by 2–1 decision). Each round featured all wrestlers pairing off and wrestling one bout (with one wrestler having a bye if there were an odd number). The loser received 3 points. The winner received 1 point if the win was by decision and 0 points if the win was by fall. At the end of each round, any wrestler with at least 5 points was eliminated. This elimination continued until the medal rounds, which began when 3 wrestlers remained. These 3 wrestlers each faced each other in a round-robin medal round (with earlier results counting, if any had wrestled another before); record within the medal round determined medals, with bad points breaking ties.

Round 1

 * Bouts


 * Points

Round 2

 * Bouts


 * Points

Round 3

 * Bouts


 * Points

Round 4
Kerslake took 5th place over Kangasniemi due to head-to-head results from round 3.


 * Bouts


 * Points

Medal rounds
Mekokishvili's victory over Richmond counted for the medal rounds. Mekokishvili then defeated Antonsson to win the gold medal at 2–0 against the other medalists. Antonsson then faced Richmond for the silver medal, with the Swede winning.


 * Bouts


 * Points