Last year was just a bad year all around for J’den Cox. First he missed weigh ins for the olympic trials and he was knocked off by Kamran Ghasempour at the world championships.
Cox would be able to regain and come back to take bronze so he would still end up leaving with a medal. He won the world championships back in 2018 and 2019 while taking bronze in 2017.
He has only wrestled at one olympic games and that was in 2016 while he was still in college down at 86kg. He would knock off Reineris Salas of Cuba in the bronze medal match. Salas also just won bronze at the 2021 olympics up at 97kg.
Looking back on his run from 2018-19 nobody had really been able to touch him or even keep competitive with him at 92kg. A lot of talk was about it being a non olympic weight class which does hold some truth to it but we say Cox take on Kyle Snyder at the Rudis super match and the first match was competitive. The second match did not go to well but you could see it was the strength of Snyder and the pace wearing him down.
Cox was knocked off by Kamran Ghasempour 3-3 in the semifinals of the world championships and he would go on to win gold taking out Magomed Kurbanov in the finals.
Ghasempour crazy enough has never lost an international match in his senior level career. All of his senior level losses come to Iranian opponents and the most notable is Hassan Yazdani.
The 25 year old phenom will be on the scene for years to come and it is hard to imagine anyone knocking him off but Cox seems to be the only guy that has been able to come close. Cox at 27 years old as well will be on the scene for a while so this just may end up as wrestlings next big rivalry.
Looking at Cox’s performance as of lately it has not been the greatest dropping a match to Nate Jackson at Final X and not really winning the other two by any notable margin. He joined the Cliff Keen Wrestling Club not too long ago to train under Kevin Jackson and Soviet legend Sergei Beloglazov so that may be what he needs to get back on track and regain his crown as the 92kg king.
