Thomas Gilman recently making the transfer out of the Hawkeye Wrestling Club into the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club has seemed to make all of the difference in his senior level career. As a returning world team member dropping two straight matches at Final X to Daton Fix he decided that a change needed to be made and it has paid off exponentially. He came back in 2021 and swept Vito Arujau 2-0 in a 3 match series and took soon to be Olympic Champion Zavur Uguev to the wire. Now let us fast forward to 2021 where Gilman has already locked up his world team spot at 57kg being an Olympic medalist. The main talk about the field is that it is easing up with Olympic Champion Zavur Uguev taking some time off. His backup however is not to be overlooked.
Abubakr Mutaliev will be the new Russian representative at 57kg and he is definitely not a man that should be overlooked by any stretch of the imagination. He has been a staple for Russia at 57kg and as we know a lot of these Russian back ups can perform when the time comes as we have seen before.
The real dark horse in this bracket which is crazy to even call him that would be Yuki Takahashi of Japan who claimed the 57kg spot for them since he defeated Rio silver medalist Rei Higuchi to wrestling in Tokyo where he lost in a very controversial match and was not given a shot to wrestle back being the guy was caught and pinned in the semifinals. He will definitely be looking to redeem himself in Oslo and should not be counted out.
The main 2 guys that would have to be looked at in this bracket in terms of winning it will be India’s Ravi Kumar who took silver to the Russian Uguev and already has a win over Yuki Takahashi, And the USA’s Thomas Gilman who took bronze and lost to Uguev in the main bracket. If we are going by score differentials Gilman would have the advantage in this matchup. However that will be an absolute blood bath of a matchup which many wrestling fans are waiting to see!
Projection For Oslo: Thomas Gilman (Gold), Ravi Kumar (Silver), Yuki Takahashi/Nurislam Sanayev (Bronzes)
All Projections are based off of past matches and placements at most recent tournaments*
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