Uzbek judokas finish 5th in Grand Slam Tbilisi campaign with 5 medals

For the first bronze medal match in men’s 90 kg weight class, Davlat Bobonov of Uzbekistan, second in Tashkent two weeks ago and Israeli Li Kochman, without reference this season, faced each other.

Kochman started by attacking but was penalised twice for kumi-kata infringements, forcing him to take risks and Bobonov, who looked a little tired, still found the necessary energy to propel Kochman in the rafters of the venue with a majestic ura-nage, for ippon.

This was again the case for the second Uzbek athlete, Shermukhammad Jandreev, pitted against Mongolian Gantulga Altanbagana for a place on the podium. During most of the match Gantulga seemed quite passive, but he was obviously looking for the right moment to apply his preferred technique, uchi-mata and he did it perfectly, with superb execution and perfect control of the sleeve to score ippon.

The first bronze medal contest in men’s 100 kg, saw the winner of the 2017 Abu Dhabi Grand Slam, Russian Niiaz Bilalov and Uzbekistan’s Muzaffarbek Turoboyev, bronze medallist in Tashkent two weeks ago facing each other.

Once again the Uzbek rose to the podium after launching zillions of attacks in regular time and in golden score. Only one was actually necessary and had the required control to score a waza-ari with a soto-maki-komi.