Sajan Bhanwal storms into semifinals of Under-23 World Wrestling Championships

Three-time World Junior Wrestling Championships medallist Sajan Bhanwal (77kg) began his campaign on a thunderous note by storming into the semifinals of UWW Under-23 World Championships 2019 in Budapest, Hungary on Friday.

A terrific Bhanwal blanked Jesse Alexander Porter 6-0 in the qualifiers to move into the pre-quarterfinals, where he notched up a 3-1 win over Azerbaijan’s Tunjay Vazirzade.

He then rushed into the semifinals on the back of a strong 6-2 win over Per Albin Olofsson of Sweden.

Standing between Bhanwal and a historic spot in the final is Japan’s Kodai Sakuraba. The semifinal is scheduled to be held tonight at 9:45pm IST and will be streamed live on WrestlingTV.

It will be followed by Pooja Gehlot’s 53kg final at 10:30pm IST where she is up against Japan’s 2017 world champion Haruna Okuno.

Sunil Kumar advanced from the 87kg qualifiers to the pre-quarterfinals by sheer dint of his 7-2 victory over Algeria’s Sid Azara. In the next round, he was shown the door by Ukraine’s Semen Novikov in a 0-8 loss.

In 63kg, Rajeet had it tough against top seed Slavik Galstyan and went down 0-8 in his opening bout.

In 130kg, Deepak Poonia could not make much of an impact and succumbed to a 1-6 defeat at the hands of USA’s David Tate Orndorff in the qualification round.