Asian Games 2018: Gold medal winner Bajrang Punia believes in 'beating big names to become big'

Bajrang Punia won the first Gold medal for India at the 2018 Asian Games. Punia beat Takatani Daichi of Japan 11-8 in the final of the Men's Freestyle 65 kg category on Sunday to clinch second Asian Games medal and first gold.

Bajrang made a flying start in the bout taking an early 6-0 lead. However, Takatani fought back to make it 6-4 at the end of first period. 

In the second period, Takatani managed to get through Bajrang’s defence early and made it 6-6. However, Bajrang got back into the game to make it 8-6. 

Both wrestlers took two points during one move to make it 10-8. It went down to the final seconds and the Indian got another point when Japan’s review failed. 

ajrang had beaten Takatani in September last year to win the gold medal at the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games.

Bajrang Punia has been the most outstanding Indian wrestler this season for India with three gold medals before Asian Games 2018. Punia had won a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games and followed it up with victories in Tbilisi Grand Prix in Georgia and Yasar Dogu International in Istanbul.

Before the Asian Games, Punia had said his mentor Yogeshwar Dutt taught him that conquering big names is the only way to earn a big name. 

"Yogeshwar is my role model. He always tells me that 'you can do it, you are the best'. He will never say that if the opponent is an Olympic champion, you can't win. He says 'you have trained well, you are fit, so you can beat anyone. If we beat World Champions, only then the world will acknowledge us and we will make a name'. So, he says beat the bigger guys to make it big. He always keeps morale and motivation level high," Bajrang had said. 

The 24-year old trained in Sonepat fine-tuning his game ahead of the Jakarta Games.
 
Bajrang had won a silver at the Incheon Games in 2014. He also said that his real target is to excel at 2020 Tokyo Games.