Yago Abuladze stands the pressure in super final U60kg

Russian Yago Abuladze captured the gold medal at the Grand Prix in Tashkent U60kg. In quite a surprising weight category Abuladze defeated World Championships surprise Wang Yung Wei (TPE) in the quarter final and resisted home favourite Diyorbek Urozboev in the semi-final. The final turned out into a huge battle where none of the two gave up, both kept attacking and both couldn’t convince the referee until the eight minute in the golden score.

Koga Genki started his final against the Yago Abuladze with the firm intention to demonstrate that he could be part of the future greats. Despite the intensity put by the two competitors, after the regular time, there was still nothing on the scoreboard, except for a small shido awarded to Koga. But it was definitely from the start of the golden score that the match took on a whole new dimension.

Already Junior and Cadet World Champion, and son of the illustrious Koga Toshihiko of Japan was triple world champion and Olympic champion.

Despite the penalties that were distributed, the intensity of the contest increased crescendo, the two judokas chaining the attacks just as beautiful as the escapes, the beautiful ground session just as striking as the incredible immobilization exits. At the end of the suspense, Abuladze and Koga found themselves in a immobilisation position.

The question was who was above. Given the impossibility of determining who was controlling the other, the waza-ari was canceled and the final resumed its long course. It was finally close to 8 minutes of golden score, to be added to the first four minutes, making a match of almost 12 minutes, that Abuladze, totally exhausted countered a last attempt of Koga to win what will remain as a fight of anthology. Congratulations to the Russian, but such a match is only possible if the commitment of the two athletes is not total, so congratulations also to Koga.

The first match for the bronze medal saw Yang Yung Wei (TPE) and Lee Harim (KOR) facing off. It was in the golden score that the two athletes could finally decide the winner, when Lee was penalized a third time for a false attack offering the fifth medal in grand prix to Yang.

But for the public it was clearly the second match for the bronze medal that was important because the Uzbek Diyorbek Urozboev was opposed to the Turkish Mihrac Akkus. The fight was rough and manily when Urozboev, who had just taken control of his opponent's sleeve disappeared to the ground to perform an accurate tai-otoshi that allowed him to score a waza-ari. Keeping control of the sleeve, he chained on an arm lock for Ippon. The public could explode with joy.