Iowa Hawkeye Tony Cassioppi has been a dominant force so far at the U23 worlds wrestling tournament and has cruised into the Finals without a really close match. Let us take a deeper dive into his incredible path to the world finals.
Cassioppi along with a majority of the bracket was given a bye into the round of 16. In the round of 16 he faced Martin Simonyan of Armenia, this was surprisingly his most competitive match so far and he pinned the guy. The score was 13-8 before the fall with Simonyan getting a takedown in the first period and starting off the second period with 3 consecutive scores before Cassioppi regained controll of the match and eventually got the pin over the Armenian.
In the quarterfinal round Cassioppi was forced to go all 6 minutes of the bout against Paris Karepi of Albania. However the match was 7-0 with a caution or two against the Albanian at the end and never really seemed to be able to get an offensive sequence going on Cassioppi. Was not too eventful of a match in my opinion but Cassioppi got in did what he had to do and came out with the W.
The semifinal bout was a fun one. Cassioppi with consistent attacks and scoring. He looked the best I had ever seen him in this match and it looked like he was feeling himself and the other guy was trying relentlessly to score but to no avail. Cassioppi ended up defeating Russian Saipudin Magomedov by a score of 5-0. I do not have much knowledge of the U23 wrestling scene but if I were to give it a thought he has a very good chance of becoming a champion.
Tony Cassioppi will be facing Azamat Khosonov of Greece in the finals who has also thoroughly dominated his was to the finals of this tournament. It will be an interesting finals bout to see but I do not really see any way that Tony Cassioppi is not the favored wrestler in this match.
