{"id":39700,"date":"2018-08-20T11:24:16","date_gmt":"2018-08-20T11:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/?p=39700"},"modified":"2018-08-20T11:24:16","modified_gmt":"2018-08-20T11:24:16","slug":"asian-games-2018-wrestler-bajrang-punia-wins-gold-in-mens-65kg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/asian-games-2018-wrestler-bajrang-punia-wins-gold-in-mens-65kg\/","title":{"rendered":"Asian Games 2018: Wrestler Bajrang Punia Wins Gold in Men\u2019s 65kg"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"heading_small\">A dominating Bajrang Punia opened India\u2019s gold medal account at the 2018 Asian Games, bringing smiles and relief to the Indian camp which was jolted by the early exit of star wrestler Sushil Kumar today<\/p>\n<p>An in-form Bajrang won his maiden Asian Games gold in the 65kg category but a \u2018rusty\u2019 Sushil lost his last chance to add an Asiad gold to his collection of medals after losing his qualification bout 3-5 to Bahrain\u2019s<\/p>\n<p>Adam Batirov in the 74kg category.\u00a0<a title=\"External site that opens in a new window\" href=\"https:\/\/sports.ndtv.com\/commonwealth-games-2018\/commonwealth-games-2018-anish-bhanwala-bajrang-punia-shine-as-india-take-gold-tally-to-17-on-day-9-1837368\" target=\"_BLANK\">Bajrang<\/a>\u00a0came into the Games after winning three tournaments \u2014 Commonwealth Games, Tbilisi Grand Prix and Yasar Dogu International \u2014 and carried on with his superlative show here. Such was his domination that the 24-year-old from Haryana won all his bouts, until the final, by technical superiority.<\/p>\n<p>He outclassed Uzbekistan\u2019s Sirojiddin Khasanov (13-3), Tajikistan\u2019s Fayziev Abdulqosim (12-2) and Mongolia\u2019s N Batmagnai Batchuluu (10-0) to storm into the gold medal bout.<\/p>\n<p>Bajrang Punia dedicates his medal to Late PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee<\/p>\n<p>In the final, he was tested by Japan\u2019s Takatani Daichi but Bajrang held his nerves to prevail 11-8 in an exciting battle. He raced to a 6-0 lead but the Japanese kept at it and put Bajrang under immense pressure.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Bajrang emulated his mentor Yogeshwar Dutt, who won gold in the last edition and is now one of the few Asiad gold medal winners in wrestling.<\/p>\n<p>Kartar Singh (1978, 1986), Satpal Singh (1982), Rajinder Singh (1978), Changdi Ram (1970) and Maruti Mane (1962) are among Asiad gold winners from India. A lot was expected from all five wrestlers in action\u00a0but Sandeep Tomar (57kg), Mausam Khatri (97kg) and Pawan Kumar (86kg) faded out early.\u00a0Pawan got a chance to redeem his campaign but lost his repechage round by technical superiority (0-11) to local boy Fahriansyah.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest blow though came when two-time Olympic medallist Sushil, who was exempted from Asiad trails, lost tamely. Sushil, winner of a bronze at the 2006 Doha edition, was competing at the Games after skipping the last two editions. The Indian led 2-1 after the first period with a takedown but the Bahraini made a strong comeback to silence the Indian fans.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A dominating Bajrang Punia opened India\u2019s gold medal account at the 2018 Asian Games, bringing smiles and relief to the Indian camp which was jolted by the early exit of star wrestler Sushil Kumar today An in-form Bajrang won his maiden Asian Games gold in the 65kg category but a \u2018rusty\u2019 Sushil lost his last [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39701,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39700"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39702,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39700\/revisions\/39702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}