UWW World Championships: All Four Indian Wrestlers Win Opening-round Bouts on Day 1

All four Indian free-style wrestlers on show on the day one of the UWW World Championships won their opening-round bouts with 70kg grappler Abhimanyu upsetting world number 7 Ukraine’s Ihor Nykyforuk on Saturday.

Abhimanyu, the bronze-medal winner at the U23 World Championships in June and ranked 26th in the world, defeated the Ukrainian 19-9, effecting a victory by fall (VFA).

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The referee stopped the contest 2.41 minutes into the second three-minute session, after Abhimanyu had also dominated the first three-minute session, taking a 5-0 lead.

The Indian Indian will take on Nicolai Grahmez of Moldova in the in the pre-quarterfinal.

Akash Dahiya too began on a winning note defeating his Moldovan opponent Leomid Colesnic, scoring an overwhelming 10-5 verdict from the referees.

The world ranked No.21 grappler will take on Uzbekistan’s Jahongirmirza Turobov, who is seeded sixth here and a gold medallist a the 2021 Asian Championships.

In other opening-round bouts, 86kg grappler Sandeep Mann got the better of Dejan Mitrov of North Macedonia with a win by technical superiority (10-0), and will take on Lin Zushen of China in the second qualification round.

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India’s 125kg grappler Sumit too had an easy outing against Japanese Taiki Yamamoto, ranked 30th in the world to the Indian’s 29th, winning the contest 3-1, to set up a pre-quarterfinal clash with Poland’s Robert Baran. The seventh seed Baran is a European Championships silver medallist besides being a quarterfinalist at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.

(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – PTI)