Cardenas, Stoddard advance to men’s freestyle semifinals at U23 World Championships

TIRANA, Albania –Americans Jacob Cardenas and Lucas Stoddard navigated to the U23 World semifinals in men’s freestyle on Friday morning at Tirana’s Feti Borova Sports Hall.

Cardenas, who has won U23 World medals the past two years, looked outstanding in a 3-0 outing at 92 kg. He opened his day with a 10-0 thumping of Individual Neutral Athlete Mustafagadzhi Malachdibirov, who was this year’s U20 World champion. Cardenas followed with a 5-1 decision over Poland’s Filip Szucki and an emphatic second-period pin against 2022 U20 World silver medalist Andro Margishvili of Georgia.

Standing opposite Cardenas in the semifinals is 2022 U17 World runner-up Musza Arsunkaev of Hungary. A win would clinch a third-straight U23 World medal for Cardenas in the weight class—the only color he lacks is gold.

Stoddard, who was a U23 Pan American champion this year, picked up two wins over European opponents. A comfortable 8-1 decision against Nicolae Stratulat of Moldova got Stoddard warmed up for a much closer second match. He escaped with a 1-1 quarterfinal win over Individual Neutral Athlete Pavel Dziatlau. The pair traded step out points, Dziatlau in the first period and Stoddard in the second period, with Stoddard taking it on criteria.

The competition takes a big step up for Stoddard in his 125 kg semifinal against Iran’s Amirreza Masoumi Valadi, who is a five-time age-group World champion.

2023 U20 World champion and two-time U20 World finalist Mitchell Mesenbrink and 2024 U23 Pan American silver medalist John Gunderson both went 1-1 and are still in the running for a repechage match. Mesenbrink dropped a high-scoring quarterfinal to 2024 Senior Asian champion Kota Takahashi of Japan, 11-8, at 74 kg. Gunderson was taken out 11-0 in the round-of-16 at 86 kg by Individual Neutral Athlete Arslan Bagaev, who is a two-time age-group World medalist and current U23 European champion.

Down at 61 kg, 2023 U20 World bronze medalist Nic Bouzakis dropped his opener to two-time U20 European silver medalist Levik Mikayelyan of Armenia, 10-3. Mikayelyan went on to lose in the quarterfinals which eliminated Bouzakis from a wrestle-back opportunity.

The U23 World Championships continue at 4:45 p.m. local time with the men’s freestyle group one (61-74-86-92-125 kg) semifinals, followed by the women’s freestyle group two (53-57-62-65-72 kg) medal matches at 6 p.m. For those following along live, 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 four match notes article.