Sports News | Wrestler Abhimanyu Upsets Higher-ranked Ukrainian in Opening Round of World Championships
Get latest articles and stories on Sports at LatestLY. 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 here on Saturday.
Belgrade, Sep 16 (PTI) 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 here 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).
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.
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.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)