It was Lombardo (ITA) who stopped the young Portuguese athlete, in the quarter-final, with a ruthless reverse juju-gatame. It was so clean, so sharp and completely unforgiving, a lesson for Kvantidze!
That, all the above, was in pool A; in pool B the craziness continued. Abubakr Sherov (TJK) was leading against world champion Nils Stump until Switzerland’s big thrower found his rhythm and launched the Tajik athlete with a spinning uchi-mata for ippon. Sherov was devastated, letting the win slip through his fingers, but Stump looked re-energised. It was short-lived though as Olympic silver medallist Joan-Benjamin Gaba (FRA) used the 6th minute of their contest to dispatch Stump with a massive e osoto attack which finished as ippon-seoi-nage. Stump would be joining Heydarov on the early bus.
Gaba continued and defeated an on-form Makhmadbekov (UAE) with an o-uchi-gari in golden score to secure his place in his first senior world final. Gaba is on the rise; his Olympic result was not a fluke, not only fuelled by his home crowd in Paris. Gaba is the real deal!
On the bottom half of the draw, Bajsangur Bagajev (SRB) delivered an outstanding performance throughout the first session of the day. He has no medal as yet on the World Judo Tour and his world ranking sits steady around 60th place. His biggest marker for success was in his victory over 3rd seed Shakhram Ahadov (UZB) in the round of 16, an uchi-mata to koshi-guruma combination providing him with the score he needed, 3 minutes into extra time.
Ishihara, Japan’s number two seed, did his job all the way to the quarter-final, where he was upset by Olympic and world medallist Daniel Cargnin. The Brazilian took out Akil Gjakova (KOS) who had already defeated Igor Wandtke (GER), on the way to his meeting with Ishihara. A yuko from a counter was enough to send Cargnin to the semi-final where he passed the Serbian athlete to enter his first senior world final.
The final block will begin at 18:00 local time and it promises to be spectacular!
Final
Joan-Benjamin Gaba (FRA) vs Daniel Cargnin (BRA)
Bronze medal contests
Makhmadbek Makhmadbekov (UAE) vs Bajsangur Bagajev (SRB)
Tatsuki Ishihara (JPN) vs Manuel Lombardo (ITA)