Junior Asian champion Deepak Punia to vie for gold at Wrestling World Championship

Trnava (Slovakia): Junior Asian Champion Deepak Punia on Saturday earned a shot at the world championship title after reaching the final of the 86kg event in the junior world wrestling championship. In a dominating show, Punia lost only two points en route the final, where he will fight it out with Turkey’s Arif Ozen. [caption id=“attachment_5242001” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Deepak Punia. PTI[/caption] The two points he lost was in the semi-final against Moldova’s Ivan Nedealco where he scored a 6-2 win. In his previous bouts, Punia beat Patrik Szurovszki (7-0) and Jayong Jin (11-0) without losing a single point. Another Indian in fray, Naveen Sihag settled for silver in the 57kg after losing the final 1-12 to Russia’s Akhmed Idrisov. Medal hope remains alive for Sachin Rathi and Sanjeet too as they will fight for bronze after losing their semi-final and quarterfinal respectively. Rathi lost his 74kg semifinal to Abubakr Abakarov by technical superiority (0-11 while Sanjeet lost his 92kg quarterfinal 2-7 to Iran’s Abbas Ali but made the repechage round. Suraj Rajkumar lost in the quarterfinals 3-6 to Panagiotis Ioakeimidis in the 61kg category. Disappointment was in store for Sandeep Singh Mann, who lost his 79kg repechage round to Ukraine’s Adlan Bataiev.