Tasoev beats Kokauri again for third world title

Ushangi Kokauri had been here before. In 2018, in this same city, he lost the world heavyweight final to Guram Tushishvili and settled for silver. Eight years later, with the National Gymnastics Arena full and loud, he reached the final again and met the one man he has never beaten. Inal Tasoev had won all seven of their previous contests, and with about 100 seconds left he countered an attack with ouchi-gari to make it eight. A third world title for the Russian, a second silver in Baku for Kokauri, and the record for a heavyweight, Aleksander Mikhailin’s three world titles, equalled.

Tasoev’s day had looked like a man with somewhere to be. Stefan Kovinic of Montenegro lasted 39 seconds before an ouchi-gaeshi ippon. Kanta Nakano of Japan, whom Tasoev had beaten twice before, scored first with kouchi-makikomi for yuko and was then thrown for ippon with osoto-gari. By the final there was nothing left to learn about his opponent, which is the quiet advantage of an 8-0 record: Kokauri had to find something new, and in front of his own crowd he could not.

Krpalek’s sixth world medal and an all Azerbaijani bronze fight

The bronze contests carried their own weight. Lukas Krpalek, Olympic champion at U100kg in Rio and at +100kg in Tokyo, came through the repechage past Jur Spijkers of the Netherlands and then finished Martti Puumalainen of Finland on the ground in just over two minutes. It was the Czech’s sixth individual world medal, two golds, one silver and three bronzes, and Puumalainen, who had lost his semi final to Kokauri, went home fifth. The other bronze was an Azerbaijani affair, Kanan Nasibov against Dzhamal Gamzatkhanov, which the crowd treated as a win either way and which took six and a half minutes including golden score before Gamzatkhanov collected a third shido. Nasibov had come through the repechage past Valerii Endovitskii of Russia; Gamzatkhanov finished fifth.

Two medals for the hosts and a short day for Kim Min-jong

Azerbaijan left the heavyweight category with a silver and a bronze, which on any other day would have been the story. The names missing from the final block told the rest: Kim Min-jong of Korea, world champion in 2024 and Olympic silver medallist in Paris, out in the preliminary rounds; Nakano out before the medals; Georgia’s Demetrashvili beaten in his opening contest. The heavyweight division keeps producing new candidates, and Tasoev keeps beating them. Three titles in, the only comparison left is with Mikhailin, and the next World Championships in Astana will decide whether the record stays shared.

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