Preview World Championships U100kg

World Champion Lukas Krpalek is on the verge of a big assignment. Getting there isn’t a big thing, but staying at the top is much harder. Last year the tall Czech super star defeated Jose Armenteros of Cuba. On Saturday Krpalek is in a pool with 2013 World Champion Elkhan Mammadov, this is not his year, so this is the opportunity to save the year. Also Ivan Remarenco of the VAE. He can shine or lose in the first round. In the other block of pool B Adlan Bisultanov is perhaps less known, but highly skilled. This Russian men could be a good replacement of Tagir Khaybulaev for the Olympic Games. Tagir is not that far, Bisultanov showed a few times that he is technically capable to stand his man. Toma Nikiforov and could be a roadblock.

Karl-Richard Frey is the captain of pool B but in the second round he may meet Kyle Reyes of Canada. This match comes too early, Reyes is super talented, but Frey maybe too mature for him. Luciano Correa is still Pan Am Games champion, young guys like Benjamin Fletcher and Frederik Joergensen are in form, but so is Martin Pacek who discovered how to win. Jose Armenteros an outsider like last year when he won silver.

Elmar Gasimov is Azerbaijan’s main man in this category, he has the heavy task to compensate the absence of Orujov and Safarov, two medal chances that they had. Under normal circumstances Cyrille Maret is the favourite in the other block, but in Kazachstan the circumstances are different when Maxim Rakov enters the tatami. Only a miracle can bring him in the semi finals, but miracles exist in Kazachstan.

Dimitri Peters is the second medal candidate for Germany. So far the German’s have just one medal, which isn’t even so bad as last two editions they took minimum one medal on the last day. Henk Grol will probably meet Ryunosuke Haga again. The Japanese defeated Grol twice this year. Also Cho Gu-Ham is interesting to watch. He stepped back from +100 to under 100kg.

It’s a great weight category with firm power judo. Will the title stay in Europe for the fourth time or are we back to Asian domination?

Watch all statistics for each individual match here