Wrestling at the 1956 Summer Olympics – Men's freestyle middleweight

The men's freestyle welterweight competition at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne took place from 28 November to 1 December at the Royal Exhibition Building. 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, as modified in 1952 (adding medal rounds and making all losses worth 3 points—from 1936 to 1948 losses by split decision only cost 2). 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
Punkari withdrew after his bout.


 * Bouts


 * Points

Round 3

 * Bouts


 * Points

Round 4

 * Bouts


 * Points

Round 5

 * Bouts


 * Points

Medal rounds
Stanchev's victories over Skhirtladze in round 1 and Hodge in round 5 counted for the medal rounds, giving the Bulgarian wrestler the gold medal with a 2–0 record against the other medalists. Hodge defeated Skhirtladze in a de facto silver medal match.


 * Bouts


 * Points