Abhimanyu caused upset in the preliminary round of World Wrestling Championship

All four Indian freestyle wrestlers won their preliminary round bouts here on Saturday, with 70kg wrestler Abhimanyu defeating seventh-ranked Ihor Nykiforuk of Ukraine on the first day of the United World Wrestling (UWW) World Championships. .

Abhimanyu, a bronze medalist at the Under-23 World Championship in June and ranked 26th in the world, defeated the Ukrainian player 19-9. Abhimanyu had taken a 5-0 lead in the first three minutes of play. The referee had to stop the game at 2.41 minutes of the second period. The Indian player will face the challenge of Moldova’s Nikolai Grahamej in the pre-quarterfinals.

Akash Dahiya made a winning start by defeating Moldova’s opponent Leomid Kolesnik 10-5. The world number 21 wrestler will now face Uzbekistan’s Jahongirmirza Turobov, who has been seeded sixth here and is the 2021 Asian Championships gold medalist. In other preliminary round bouts, 86kg wrestler Sandeep Mann defeated Dejan Mitrov of North Macedonia with a win by technical superiority (10-0). He will face Lin Jushen of China in the second round of qualification.

India’s 125kg wrestler Sumit also registered an easy victory over Japan’s Taki Yamamoto, ranked 30th in the world. He won 3-1 to set up a pre-quarterfinal clash with Poland’s Robert Baran. Seventh-seeded Baran is a European Championships silver medalist besides being a quarter-finalist at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.

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