Asian Wrestling Championship: Indian wrestler Ashu loses bronze medal play-off

Almaty: Indian grappler Ashu lost his bronze medal play-off bout to Iran’s Hossein Nasrollah Assadi Kolmati in the 67kg Greco-roman category of the Asian Wrestling Championship on Wednesday. For the Iranian, the bout ended in a 9-0 victory by technical superiority. In the last edition in 2020, Ashu had settled for the bronze medal defeating the same wrestler. The result meant none of the Indian wrestlers could clear the bronze medal play-offs stage in the ongoing championship. On Tuesday, Gurpreet Singh and Sandeep also lost their bronze medal bouts as Indian wrestlers drew a blank on the opening day of the tournament. In 77kg, Gurpreet lost his bronze play-off 0-5 to Kyrgyzstan’s Kairatbek Tugolbaev. He earlier lost a hard-fought semi-final (7-7) on criteria to Iran’s Pejman Poshtam. Sandeep suffered defeat in the 50kg bronze medal fight 5-11 to Nurmukhammet Abdullaev of Kyrgyzstan after losing the semi-final by technical superiority to Japan’s Yu Shiotani. In 63kg, Neeraj was ousted at the Qualification stage, losing by technical superiority to Korea’s Hanjae Chung. In 87kg, Sunil Kumar made an exit after losing his quarter-final 1-3 to Uzbekistan’s Rustam Assakalov while Naveen Kumar (130kg) lost his last-eight stage match by technical superiority to Uzbekistan’s Sukhrob Fattoev.