Yogeshwar Dutt thumps Masoud, moves into Bronze medal bout

Dutt moved into the Repechage round 2 with a comprehensive 2-0 victory over Gomez Matos Francis from Puerto Rico. Esmaeilpoorjouybari Masoud from Iran was Dutt’s next opponent and victory in this match would put up one step close to the bronze medal

Round 1

Cautious play has been a trend in all of Yogeshwar’s matches apart from the first one, and after a lot of missed grabs and false throws, the round moved into a clinch. The Iranian seemed to have gotten the better of the Indian on the throw, but the judges felt otherwise, awarding 3 points to the Indian. The decision was challenged by the Iranian camp and the decision was overturned. Masoud was awarded the 3 points and the round. Bad luck then for the Indian, but the match was far from over.

Round 2

Dutt started off better in the second, clearly the more desperate of the 2. And the desperation turned to joy for a while, as he raced into 3-0 lead. But Masoud was not going to go down that easily and clawed back 2 points to cut the lead down to 1. So even though the Indian took the round, Masoud was still leading 5-3 on aggregate.

Round 3

15 seconds in the final round and Dutt’s constant pressure culminated in a force-out for the Iranian. First blood to Dutt then, and he wasn’t satisfied with it. After 20 more seconds, Yogeshwar forced his opponent out of the ring once more and levelled the match on overall technical points.

As the 2nd minute of the round started, it looked as if Masoud was tiring quickly. And Dutt made the most of it, pinning him down twice to race into a mammoth 4-0 lead for the round, and an overall lead of 7-5.

There was no time for the Iranian to make a comeback and Yogeshwar’s camp erupted in delight as the Indian headed into the bronze medal match after yet another fighting performance.

Tremendous effort by Yogeshwar then, and he is defying belief by motoring into a medals contention position.