It is well known that Amit Kumar was always tipped to be Sushil Kumar apart from Yogeshwar Dutt's successor. In fact, Sushil himself pointed at the youngster during the London Games last year and awarded him the tag of the "next star of Indian wrestling". Truly, he knew what he was speaking and Amit was well aware he had to justify those words.
The 19-year-old boy from Nahri hailing from Sonipat in Haryana did just that on Monday evening. In fact, he won the silver medal at the Papp Laszlo arena at Budapest in the 55kg category of the World wrestling championships.
Remarkably, the Asian Championship (2012) bronze medalist lost by 1-2 against the highly experienced Hassan Farman Rahimi of Iran in 2011.
Particularly, Amit followed the steps of Bishamber Singh who had won silver medal in World freestyle wrestling championship in Delhi. Of course, Sushil Kumar is the only Indian to have won a World gold medal which he achieved at Moscow in 2010. Amit had declared to the media from Budapest after advancing to the semis that there hasn't been any testing bout till date. He wants to see how the semifinal match goes on.
However, the semifinal encounter was nothing different. It cannot be ignored that the Asian junior gold medalist destroyed his rival Sezar Akgul of Turkey in less than 2 minutes. Notably, the world No. 4 hammered 2009 World Championship silver medalist by 8-0 in a one-sided bout. Then, the Sonipat grappler opened his campaign against 2010 Moscow World Championship bronze medalist Yasuhiro Inaba of Japan. Amit outwitted the Japanese by 10-2. The next contender for the Indian was Zoheir el Ouarraque of France. However, the latter failed to make an impact as the 19-year-old Indian cruised by 8-0 on technical fall. Anyway, the quarterfinal against Angel Alesm Escobedo of USA was nothing different. Subsequently, Angel was penalized for "passivity" getting 30 seconds to score according to the new rule. However, Amit was brisk and hauled a point for caution and yet another point for pushout.
Amit Kumar of India during his clash against Yasuhiro Ibana of Japan in the freestyle 55 kg category qualification round of the FILA World Wrestling Championships in Budapest on Monday, lost in the final to Hassan Rahimi of Iran.
