Bajrang Punia delivered India’s first gold medal at the 18th Asian Games by beating Japan’s Daichi Takatani in the final bout of the 65kg freestyle wrestling event in Jakarta on Sunday.
The Yogeshwar Dutt protégé, who had clinched the silver in 2014 beat his Japanese opponent 11-8 to take a step ahead and win the yellow metal.
Punia, who had earlier struggled against Sirojiddin Khasanov in the campaign opener, bounced back from being 0-3 down to defeat the Uzbekistan wrestler 13-3. He then followed it up with another dominating show in the quarter-finals where he routed Tajikistan’s Abdulqosim Fayziev 12-2 to break into the final four.
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This was however not the end and Punia continued his dominating show overpowering Batmagnai Batchuluun of Mongolia 10-0 to round-off his third straight victory via the technical superiority.
The 24-year-old Haryana wrestler then overcame the tough Japanese in a closely-fought final bout to win his maiden Asiad gold. He was at his best at the start of the fight and raced to a 6-0 lead in the opening period but Takatani bounced back to level terms in the second game.
From there Punia showed excellent defensive temperament to hold on to a great victory.
At the beginning of the year, he had won three consecutive gold medals, which included a Commonwealth gold along with the Tbilisi Grand Prix (Georgia) and Yasar Dogu International (Istanbul).
Meanwhile, Pawan Kumar, who had lost his quarter-final bout to Iran’s Hassan Yazdanicharati, was presented with another opportunity to win a medal after Yazdanicharati entered the finals of the 86kg wrestling category. The Indian qualified for the repechage and beat Fahriansyah of Indonesia in the Repechage Round 2 to enter the bronze medal match.
Kumar had begun his campaign with an 8-0 opening bout victory over uthy Heng of Cambodia.
Elsewhere, two-time Olympic medallist Sushil Kumar suffered a shock 3-5 opening round defeat against Adam Batirov of Bahrain in the 74kg category bout. Sandeep Tomar also went down despite putting up a tough fight against Reza Atrinagharchi in the quarter-final.