Shrugging off his controversial semifinal defeat, Bajrang Punia held off a spirited challenge from Mongloia’s Tulga Tumur Ochir to bag his third World Championship medal, winning a bronze, here on Friday.
Bajrang posted an 8-7 win over Ochir, the under-23 Asian champion.
Under pressure
Ochir put Bajrang under a lot of pressure, pushing the Indian off the mat to take the lead. He locked Bajrang’s arms to prevent attacks and then effected a four-point throw to lead 6-0.
Bajrang got on board with a counter and true to his style made a superb comeback in the second period. He first erased the deficit and then took the lead with a flurry of moves to eventually nail a narrow 8-7 win.
Bajrang had won a silver last year and a bronze in the 2013 edition.
Later, Ravi Dahiya claimed a bronze on his debut World Championships stunning Asian champion Reza Atri Nagarchi of Iran. Dahiya defeated his fancied rival 6-3 in the bronze medal bout of the men’s 57kg freestyle category.
Tame defeat
Earlier, veteran Sushil Kumar’s return to the World Championships after eight years lasted just six minutes as he lost his opening bout to Khadzhimurad Gadzhiyev of Azerbaijan.
The Indian had raced to a 9-4 lead but conceded seven points in a row to lose his 74kg qualification round bout 11-9. The Azerbaijani wrestler later lost his quarterfinal to USA’s Jordan Ernest Burroughs, resulting to Sushil’s ouster from the championship.
The 36-year-old two-time Olympic medallist has been struggling for long, having made a first-round exit from the 2018 Asian Games. He recently returned to the mat since his defeat in Jakarta, at an event in Minsk, where he had finished fifth.
In the other category which offered Olympic qualification, Sumit Malik lost his 125kg first round bout 2-0 to Hungary’s Daniel Ligeti, who later lost in the quarterfinals.
Non-Olympic categories
In the non-Olympic categories, Karan lost his 70kg qualification bout 7-0 to Ikhtiyor Navruzov and was ousted wen the Uzbek lost his quarterfinal.
In 92kg, Parveen won his first bout by technical superiority against Korea’s Changjae Su but later lost 8-0 to Ukraine’s Liubomyr Sagaliuk. Sagaliuk’s defeat in the quarterfinals shut the repechage door on the Indian.
