Two More Medals at the World Wrestling Championships

Róbert Fritsch on the podium

Dávid Losonczi, bronze medalist of last year’s World Championships – who had already secured an Olympic quota with his semifinal results – scored the biggest success of his career and won a silver medal for the Hungarian delegation. In addition, on Saturday, Róbert Fritsch won a silver medal as well in Greco-Roman style wrestling in the 72-kg category.

Róbert Fritsch, 2022 European champion, first defeated Jamol Zhumabayev of Uzbekistan on Friday, then defending champion Ali Feizollah Arsalan of Serbia, and he also beat Harada Singo of Japan in the semifinals. Fritsch was confident about the final, having already won two tough fights against his rival, Ibrahim Ghanem of France before.

As Magyar Nemzet reports, it quickly became clear in the final that the forces on the mat were evenly matched. Neither side seemed to be clearly better than the other in the standing fight. After the break, the Hungarian looked a bit more convincing, but after 40 seconds Fritsch got stuck painfully with his fingers during a defensive action which Ghanem took advantage of, so the Hungarian went behind.

Fritsch was visibly in a lot of pain and after a short assessment of his finger he continued to fight and did his best to make an action, but he did not succeed and lost the match.

“I am sad. I was unlucky (…) and my finger moved in the wrong direction. I felt that if I could have strengthened myself properly, I could have come back from it and still played a lot,” said the competitor.

The other medalist, Dávid Losonczi, had reached the final on Saturday with an excellent, uncontested performance. He defeated three of his four opponents with technical kicks.

His rival in Sunday’s final was Ali Cengiz of Turkey, who defeated him 8:7 in an exciting fight,

writes Hirado.hu.

The 23-year-old Hungarian started the fight with his typical strength, and although he could not do anything from the position, his rival had to go down for passivity after one and a half minutes. After the break, the Hungarian wrestler was still in the lead, but he did not look so fresh. Soon his Turkish opponent equalized. Losonczi had no power left and eventually lost.

Losonczi was very bitter after the fight, but emphasized that he is proud of himself anyway, the medal and the Olympic quota mean a lot to him.

“I wrestled well during the whole World Championship, I think I did more than the Turk to win this time, I felt that I did it, but the judges did not see it that way,” he concluded.

Featured photo via MTI/Kovács Tamás