Deepak Punia, Udit clinch silver medals at Asian Wrestling Championship; bronze for Dinesh

Deepak Punia won his third silver medal at the Asian Championship and fifth overall while Udit settled for his second successive runner-up finish at the continental event on the concluding day of the event, Amman (Jordan) Sunday.

The 25-year-old Punia, who could not qualify for the Paris Olympics, began his comeback with a hard-fought contest against Bekzat Rakhimov in 92kg category. He faced stiff resistance from his Kyrgyzstan rival but prevailed 12-7 in a high-scoring quarterfinal.

Japan’s Takashi Ishiguro was supposed to be a tough rival but Deepak outplayed him to comfortably win 8-1.

In the gold medal bout against Iran’s world number one Amirhossein B Firouzpourbandpei, Deepak lost the first point for stepping out. He hardly made a move in the first two minutes of the opening period, conceding two more points on takedown.

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The 2019 World Championship silver medallist remained over defence throughout and kept losing point after point to suffer a tame defeat by technical superiority in the end.

Deepak had won silver medal at the Asian championships in 2021 (Almaty) and 2022 (Ulaanbaatar) apart from bagging bronze in 2019 and 2020.

Udit (61kg) blanked China’s Wanhao Zou 2-0 after prevailing 9-6 against Bekbolot Myrzanzar Uulu from Kyrgyzstan.

In a pacy start to the gold medal bout, world number one Takara Suda began with a single leg attack, pushing Udit out to open the scoring in a jiffy. Suda again attacked the right leg of Udit and converted that into a two-point take down.

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Udit also attempted a leg attack but Suda got him into a headlock.

In the second period, Udit went on an offensive targetting Suda’s legs twice and also got Sada’s right ankle in his hands but the Japanese was superb in his defence, never allowing the Indian to convert those moves into points. He did not miss his chance to get another two-pointer for a 5-1 lead.

With just 11 second to go, Suda had lost steam completely but Udit could only get three points, losing 4-6 eventually.

Udit had settled for a silver medal last year also.

Mukul Dahiya had a great opportunity to win a bronze after he logged two impressive wins to reach the semifinals but will return empty handed.

Singapore’s Weng Luen Gary Chow was an easy prey for Dahiya, who won by technical superiority and without losing a point and then beat world number two Mukhammad Abdullaev from Kyrgyzstan 3-1.

In the semifinal, he was overpowered by Iran’s world number three Abolfazl Y.Rahmani Firouzjaei, who won by technical superiority.

Later in the bronze play-off he lost 2-4 to Japan’s Tatsuya Shirai.

Competing in heavyweight 125kg class, Dinesh outclassed China”s Buheeerdun to win by technical superiority in the quarterfinals but Mongolian Lkhagvagerel Munkhtur beat him in the semifinals 5-1.

In the bronze play-off against Turkmenistan’s Saparov Zyyamuhammet, Dinesh waged a superb battle in the second period after being down 0-6 in the first..

His rival, who suffered bleeding from his nose throughout, didn’t have the endurance. If not for multiple stoppages due to bleeding, he would have fizzled out early. Dinesh won 14-12..

Jaideep Ahlawat (74kg), though, was ousted from the competition early. He found a tough Japanese opponent in Hikaru Takata in his opening bout, in which he put up a brave resistance but lost 5-10.

India ended with 10 medals from the championship.