Asian Wrestling Championships | Bajrang Punia strikes gold in nail-biting final

04/23/2019

Bajrang Punia was having a comfortable campaign in the Asian Wrestling Championships before the gold medal bout, where he had to play out of his skin to overcome Kazakhtan’s Sayatbek Okassov. In other matches, while Praveen Rana, Ravi Kumar, and Kadian won, Rajneesh was eliminated.

Bajrang Punia maintained his “favourites” tag for the Olympics on Tuesday by beating Kazakhstan's Sayatbek Okassov 12-7 in a dramatic fashion in the 65kg men's freestyle category. This was Bajrang's second gold at this tournament after he had previously won it in 2017. Overall, it was his fifth medal for the Indian in this championship.

The CWG and Asian Games champion was surprisingly trailing 2-7 with 60 seconds to go for the final bell before he came up with three masterstrokes and an exposure move to win eight points on the trot after he had initially begun with a two-point take down. The Kazkah was evidently outplayed by Bajrang’s unparalleled stamina and brain under pressure.

Prior to this, Punia was up against Uzbekistan's Sirojiddin Khasanov in the semis and the Indian ace dominated his opponent 12-1 to compete for the gold medal bout of 65kg. Prior to Khasanov, Punia had defeated Iran’s Peyman Biabani Sri Lanka’s Charles Fern in previous rounds.

Rana, competing in the 79kg category, had a trickier task against Kazakhstan's Galymzhan Usserbayev as he could manage a narrow 3-2 win to set up a clash with Bahman Mohammad Teymouri of Iran for the gold medal match. He had previously beaten Japan’s Yuta Abe of Japan and Mongolia's Tugs Erdene Denzensharav.

In the 57kg weight category, Ravi Kumar made his way into the bronze medal play-off round by defeating Taiwan’s Chia Tso Liu 4-0 in repechage. He would be facing Yuki Takahashi of Japan next. Satyawart Kadian also advanced into the bronze medal round in 97kg. Kadian had lost to Batzul Ulziisaikhan in his quarterfinal but eventually went to cut after his Mongolian opponent reached the final.

However, Rajneesh was ousted of the tournament early after losing his match in the 70kg category.