Melelashvili advances to Greco-Roman semifinals at U23 World Championships

TIRANA, Albania – The U.S. pushed one athlete to the Monday evening semifinal round at the U23 World Championships as Beka Melelashvili won three matches to highlight the American Greco-Roman effort.

Melelashvili marched to the 82 kg semifinals with an impressive opening session. He began his day by avenging a recent loss to Venezuela’s Daniel Bello Vega by technical fall, 9-0. In round two, Melelashvili won a high-scoring contest over Individual Neutral Athlete Vadzim Paleyenka, 12-7, to set up a quarterfinal showdown against familiar foe Data Chkhaidze of Georgia, who was a U20 World bronze medalist last year.

The quarterfinal against his former countryman tested Melelashvili’s patience on the mat. He went into the break down 1-0 after giving up the first passivity call of the contest. The arm drag proved effective for Melelashvili in the second frame, and he used it to catapult himself to a 5-2 decision win over Chkhaidze.

Up next for Melelashvili is a gettable match against Elmin Aliyev of Azerbaijan in the semifinals. Aliyev was a U17 European bronze medalist last year, but finished outside the medal stand at the U17 Worlds.

Senior National Team member Max Black is the lone American in the running for a repechage match entering the evening session. He was upended by three-time age group World medalist Nihad Guluzade of Azerbaijan, 9-0, in his only match of the day at 60 kg. Guluzade needs one more win to pull Black into tomorrow morning’s wrestle-back.

Robert Perez III started off strong with a 3-3 decision over 2024 Olympian Nestor Almanza Truyol of Chile at 67 kg. He luck reversed against Japan’s Haruto Yabe, who posted an 8-0 score over Perez III in the second round.

Going 0-1 on the day and out of the repechage running are Justus Scott at 72 kg and Wyatt Voelker at 97 kg.

The U23 World Championships continue at 6 p.m. local time with the Greco-Roman group one (60-67-72-82-97 kg) semifinals. Tirana, Albania, is located six hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Time.

Updated brackets and match-by-match results are available on UWW Arena. A live broadcast of the event is available for the U.S. market at FloWrestling.com.

Revisit the details of each match from today in our day one match notes article.