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.

File image of Deepak Punia. PTI

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.