Azeri ace Orujov back to his best with first gold medal this year

Olympic silver medallist Rustam Orujov of Azerbaijan won his first IJF World Judo Tour title since September 2017 with a polished performance in China. Two-time Masters bronze medallist Orujov defeated 2017 Tokyo Grand Slam silver medallist Arthur Margelidon (CAN) in the U73kg final after 16 seconds of added time with a waza-ari score.

Orujov, who had won their one previous contest back in 2014 at the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam, went unbeaten in Guangzhou to win Azerbaijan’s first medal at the World Judo Masters 2018 with their four remaining judoka set to compete on day two.

In the first semi-final Margelidon tapped out 2016 World Judo Masters silver medallist Ganbaatar Odbayar (MGL) with shime-waza to guarantee a career-best result. In the second semi-final Orujov defeated world champion An Changrim (KOR) by a waza-ari score from sutemi-waza which was the only score in an exciting contest.

The first bronze medal was won by An who beat Osaka Grand Slam bronze medallist Tommy Macias (SWE) after three minutes of golden score. An recovered from his semi-final slip up to salvage a bronze medal in his first outing as the world champion and in the red backpatch. The South Korean judoka utilised te-waza to produce a waza-ari score to earn his first medal at judo’s invite-only event.

The second and last male bronze medal contest saw London 2012 Olympic champion and Rio 2016 Olympic bronze medallist Lasha Shavdatuashvili (GEO) pin down Ganbaatar for 20 seconds and ippon. Shavdatuashvili kept control of the head of Ganbaatar and freed his legs from those of the Mongolian to apply the osaekomi-waza for the maximum score.