Cardenas to finals, Stoddard to bronze match at U23 World Championships

TIRANA, Albania – The U.S. advanced four-of-five men’s freestyle wrestlers from group one to the second day of action at Tirana’s Feti Borova Sports Hall, highlighted by a sensational run to the finals by Jacob Cardenas at 92 kg.

Cardenas muscled his way to the gold medal match thanks, in large part, to a clutch four-point double leg in the latter stages of his semifinal against Musza Arsunkaev of Hungary. Cardenas trailed 2-1 at the time of the four-pointer and wound up winning by a 5-2 margin.

The win clinched Cardenas’ third-straight medal at the U23 World Championships at 92 kg. He earned silver in 2022 and brought back bronze last year. To get his gold, Cardenas must go through four-time age-group World champion and current Senior Asian champion Amirhossein Firouzpourbandpei of Iran tomorrow evening. Firouzpourbandpei defeated Cardenas in the finals of the 2022 U23 Worlds by technical fall, 10-0.

Cardenas won three matches during the morning session of wrestling prior to his semifinal. He opened the 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 added an emphatic second-period pin against 2022 U20 World silver medalist Andro Margishvili of Georgia.

Also in the men’s freestyle semifinals for Team USA was a U23 Pan American champion Lucas Stoddard, who dropped a tough, 10-0, match to five-time age-group World champion Amirreza Masoumi Valadi of Iran. Masoumi Valadi scored three takedowns, including a four-pointer from a high-c position, to get the win and advance to his sixth age-group World final.

Stoddard picked up two nice wins earlier in the day—an 8-1 decision Nicolae Stratulat of Moldova and a 1-1 criteria victory over Individual Neutral Athlete Pavel Dziatlau. He has qualified for a bronze medal match at 125 kg and will face either Kumar Anirudh of India or Individual Neutral Athlete Abdulla Kurbanov.

The repechage overlords were kind to 2023 U20 World champion and two-time U20 World finalist Mitchell Mesenbrink and 2024 U23 Pan American silver medalist John Gunderson, both of whom have qualified for tomorrow’s morning repechage round.

Mesenbrink needs one win tomorrow morning to advance to a 74 kg bronze medal match. His opponent will be the winner between Ali Rezaeiaghouzgeleh of Iran and Bradley Fulmer of Austria.

Gunderson must get two wins to qualify for an 86 kg bronze medal match. His path begins against Miko Elkala of Finland. A win pushes him to a match against 2024 Olympian and 2023 Senior World silver medalist Vladimeri Gamkrelidze of Georgia, winner heads to the bronze medal match.

The men’s freestyle competition continues tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. local time with the men’s freestyle group one (61-74-86-92-125 kg) repechage and group two (57-65-70-79-97 kg) qualification rounds. 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.