The focus was on established stars but it was Sandeep Tomar who produced a show-stopping performance in a do-or-die bout as MP Yodha pipped Mumbai Maharathi 4-3 in the Pro Wrestling League, here on Thursday.
Maharathi’s Vinesh Phogat gave Ritu Phogat a lesson in wrestling, showing no mercy as she trounced her cousin sister 15-0 in the 53kg category.
Yodha’s fortune depended a lot on how the world championship bronze and 2018 Commonwealth Games silver medallist Pooja Dhanda performed. Up against the Pan American Championships bronze medallist Betzabeth in the 57kg category, Pooja was trailing 1-2 at the break. But the ‘pin fall queen’, who won most of her bouts last year by applying that technique, did it again to win the bout 7-4 and bring the Yodha’s back in the reckonings.
The 2018 national championships bronze medallist Deepak Punia made it 3-2 in favour of the Maharathi’s beating his namesake former national champion Deepak in the 86kg category.
Yodha’s Elise Monolova won her 62kg bout against Shilpi Yadav 4-0 to make the final score 3-3 and push the tie to the decider.
In the deciding 57kg bout, Ibragim Ilyasov gave Mumbai a 4-0 lead but Tomar got a pin fall right to bag four points and make it 4-4 in the break. He got another pin fall right at resumption to take a comfortable 8-4 lead. On the counter attack Tomar scored two more points and won the deciding tie for the Yodha’s 10-7.
The national champion Maharthi’s Harphool was up against the European Championships gold medallist Haji Aliyev in the 65kg category to open the day’s proceedings.
Harphool, who gave Asian Games gold medallist Bajrang Punia a tough fight in the previous round, couldn’t get his act together against the European champion today and the Azerbaijan wrestler eventually won the bout 7-0 to give MP Yodha a head start.
The 125-kg superheavyweight bout between European Champion Baisteev Vladislav of Maharathi and Yodha’s Akash Antil was another one-sided encounter which the former won by technical superiority.
Haryana Hammers 5-2 UP Dangal ( Inputs from IANS )
Host Haryana Hammers edged past UP Dangal 5-2 in a Pro Wrestling League Season 4 tie at the Tau Devi Lal Indoor Stadium, at Panchkula, on Wednesday.
The last bout of the evening sealed the deal in favour of the host, as the women's 57kg weight category between Haryana's junior world champion Anastasia Nichita and Uttar Pradesh's 2017 Asian championships silver medallist Sarita went Haryana's way with Anastasia pinning the Indian down and clinching the bout 9-0.
The men's 57kg category bout between the two Indians, Ravi Kumar of Haryana Hammers and Naveen of UP Dangal, brought the best in the wrestlers, which saw Ravi, the 2018 World U23 Championships silver medallist, taking a point lead against the 2018 World Junior Championships silver medallist Naveen after a hard-fought first round.
But despite his best effort, Naveen couldn't create the opening he required and Ravi went on adding point after point to finally clinch the bout 7-2 and give last year's runners-up Hammers a 4-2 winning lead in their first match this season.
Before that, the European U23 silver medallist Iraki Misituri of UP Dangal tried his best to challenge the Hammers' two-time World Championships bronze medallist Ali Shabanov in the men's 86kg category, but lost the first bout of the evening 1-6.
The 2018 World Championships silver medal winner Vanesa Kaladzinskaya didn't have an easy time against the 2017 Commonwealth Championships gold medallist Seema in the 53kg category. However, she used her experience to clinch the bout 3-2 and help U.P restore parity.
Last year's national champion Rajneesh fought the most intense bout of the evening against Pankaj Rana, much unlike the 16-0 score line will suggests. Rajneesh capitalised on some costly mistakes by Pankaj Rana in the 65kg category to clinch the bout on technical superiority and put the Hammers ahead.
The 2018 Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Haryana Hammers' Kiran was expected to give a much tougher fight to the Estonian wrestler of UP Dangal Epp Mae in the 76kg category. But it was the foreign wrestler who clinched the technically challenging bout 5-0 to put UP Dangal's campaign back on track.
In the first super heavyweight bout of PWL 4, Haryana Hammers' Ukranian wrestler Khotsianivski Aleksander got the better of UP Dangal's Georgi Sakandelidze 3-0 after an intense battle for supremacy to put his team ahead with two bouts to go.
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