Amruta Pujari Takes Silver in Women's 72kg at U23 Wrestling Worlds in Las Vegas, India's Tally Reaches Three

LAS VEGAS

Indian grappler Amruta Pujari clinched a silver medal in the women’s 72-kilogram weight category at the Under-23 World Wrestling Championships in Las Vegas on Saturday, according to a press release from the Wrestling Federation of India reported by ANI and IANS. Pujari’s silver took India’s overall medal count at the championships to three, in a campaign that now includes a bronze, a historic Greco-Roman silver, and two more wrestlers still in contention through repechage.

Building on an impressive campaign highlighted by two consecutive pinfall victories in the earlier rounds, Pujari faced a tough challenge in the final against Ukraine’s Iryna Zablotska, the Wrestling Federation of India release said, as reported by ANI via Devdiscourse. Despite a spirited effort, the Indian wrestler went down 0-6 in the gold-medal bout, settling for a hard-fought second place on the podium. The Times of Bengal, reporting the same campaign, added the shape of that finish: Pujari trailed 0-6 before Zablotska sealed the contest, and she had reached the final by pinning China’s Wenjin Qiu in the semifinal.

That semifinal pin is the result that defines Pujari’s week as much as the final defines its ending. A pin — a fall — is wrestling’s most decisive finish: the bout ends the moment it is secured, with no need for the clock or the judges’ tally to settle anything. To win two consecutive bouts that way on the way to a world final, as the federation release described Pujari’s run, is to arrive at the gold-medal match having left no doubt in either of the rounds before it. The final ran the other way, 0-6 to a Ukrainian opponent, and Pujari leaves Las Vegas with silver. Both halves of that sentence are the story, and neither cancels the other.

Komal’s bronze: a criteria win, a clear win, a loss, and a 7-2 finish

Pujari joins Komal, who secured a bronze medal in the women’s 59-kilogram division, and Vishvajit More, who earlier made history in the Greco-Roman 55-kilogram event, the federation release said. Komal defeated Kazakhstan’s Viktoriia Khusainova 7-2 in the bronze-medal match to finish third in her division, according to the release reported by ANI and IANS.

Komal’s path to that bronze, as the release laid it out, was a study in the different ways a wrestling tournament can test the same athlete. Earlier, she edged Canada’s Ella Finding on criteria after their bout ended 1-1 — the tie-breaking method by which a level score is resolved in wrestling’s rules, sending the wrestler who holds the criteria advantage through. She then beat Moldova’s Madalina Prisacari 8-3, a clearer margin, in the next step of her run. Her run was halted in the semifinal, where Ukraine’s Alina Filipovych won 13-1 — reported in the syndicated accounts as a win by technical superiority, the margin-based finish that ends a bout early when one wrestler’s lead becomes decisive — sending Komal into the bronze-medal contest instead of the final.

That is the particular demand of the medal-bout structure: a wrestler can lose a semifinal by a wide margin in the afternoon and still have to produce her best, most composed wrestling afterward with a medal directly on the line. Komal did exactly that, beating Khusainova 7-2 for bronze. IANS, in its account, put it plainly: Komal had opened India’s medal account in the women’s wrestling at the championships, and she redeemed a lopsided semifinal loss by avoiding an empty-handed finish. The sequence — criteria win, points win, heavy loss, medal win — is not a straight line, and that is precisely why it reads as a tournament performance rather than a single result.

More’s silver is a first for India in Greco-Roman at this level

Vishvajit More achieved a landmark result for Indian wrestling, becoming the country’s first Greco-Roman silver medallist at the U23 World Championships, according to the federation and championships releases reported by ANI and IANS. Having previously earned two bronze medals at the tournament, More climbed another step on the podium after a closely contested final. Georgia’s Koba Karumidze claimed the title with a 13-12 victory, leaving More just one point short of gold.

One point is the cruelest and the most clarifying margin in a final. A 13-12 loss does not describe a wrestler who was outclassed; it describes a title bout that stayed live until its last exchanges, between a Georgian who took gold and an Indian who, in losing by the smallest workable margin, still did something no Indian Greco-Roman wrestler had done before at the under-23 world level — reached the silver step. The “first-ever” framing in the releases is therefore not decoration on More’s result. It is the result’s historical content: a barrier result for a discipline and a program, achieved in the same Las Vegas campaign in which Pujari and Komal medalled in the women’s freestyle competition.

Put the three medals side by side and the shape of India’s championships becomes clear. Two silvers and a bronze, across women’s freestyle and men’s Greco-Roman, earned by three different routes: Pujari by consecutive falls and a final loss, Komal by surviving a semifinal defeat and winning a medal bout, and More by a one-point final that rewrote a national first. A tally of three can sound modest until its composition is read properly — and its composition, weight class by weight class and bout by bout, is what the Wrestling Federation of India release, carried by ANI and IANS, actually documented.

Two more Indians still alive through repechage

The campaign is not finished, either. Sweety, in the women’s 53-kilogram category, and Vaishnavi Patil, in the women’s 65-kilogram category, remain in contention for bronze through the repechage route after losing their respective quarterfinals, according to the IANS account. Repechage is wrestling’s second-chance bracket: when a wrestler who beat you goes on to reach the final, your tournament is revived, and a path back to a bronze-medal bout opens that did not exist at the moment of your loss. It rewards staying ready after a defeat — physically, tactically and temperamentally — for an opportunity that depends on someone else’s results as well as your own.

That means India’s final tally in Las Vegas is still, as of the releases published this weekend, a live number rather than a settled one. Three medals are banked. Two more wrestlers hold a route, however narrow and conditional, to add to it. Any preview of India’s championships that closed the book at three would be getting ahead of the bracket, and this story does not: Sweety and Patil are described here exactly as the sources described them — in repechage contention — no further and no less.

A Las Vegas campaign, reported from the federation’s own account

A note on sourcing belongs in this story, because it shapes what can and cannot be claimed. The results above are attributed throughout to the Wrestling Federation of India press release as reported by ANI and IANS, and syndicated by outlets including Devdiscourse, IANS Live and MyKhel. That is a strong, specific chain for scores, margins and medal outcomes — the federation is the governing body for the team, and the agencies carried its release with the bout lines intact and consistent across outlets: Pujari 0-6 in the final after two pinfall wins and a semifinal pin of Wenjin Qiu; Komal 7-2 for bronze after a 1-1 criteria win, an 8-3 win and a 1-13 semifinal loss; More 12-13 in a historic Greco-Roman final. Where an additional detail appeared in only one syndicated account — the Times of Bengal’s description of the final’s fall finish — it is attributed to that account in the text above.

What the releases do not provide, this story does not invent: no quotes from Pujari, Komal or More appear in the federation release as syndicated, so none are manufactured here, and no move-by-move account of bouts the release summarized by score alone has been reconstructed. The medals, the margins and the first are verified. The celebration quotes, when the wrestlers give them through a sourced channel, will belong in an update, not in an invention.

For Las Vegas, the championships add an international age-group world event to a weekend the city already fills with headline sport — on Sunday night across town, Previously reported the Bills holding off the Raiders 33-30 at Allegiant Stadium. The wrestling, by contrast, belonged to Saturday and to a different kind of podium arithmetic: three medals, one national first, and a silver medallist in Pujari whose run to the final was built on falls. In a sport where the most decisive finish ends a bout instantly, she produced two of them in a row before the final turned. Gold went to Ukraine’s Iryna Zablotska, 6-0. Silver, and a place in India’s three-medal Las Vegas campaign, went to Amruta Pujari.

Sources: Wrestling Federation of India press release as reported by ANI via Devdiscourse and Latestly, and by IANS via IANS Live, October 17, 2026; MyKhel, October 18, 2026; Times of Bengal account of the final, October 2026, attributed in text where it is the sole source.