Entry with a boom, freestyle wrestler Deepak Punia is born on 19 May 1999, in Jhajjar district, Haryana is currently in Tokyo fighting for gold, he is qualified for semi-finals under 86kg category with the score of 6-3 on Wednesday. His next match is against the USA’s David Taylor.
He was introduced to wrestling at a really young age, he was 4-year-old when started playing it, and at the age of 12, he started earning money by playing the sport. In 2015, he became serious about the sport and started training at Chhatrasal Stadium, New Delhi with Coach Virender Chhara.
He started playing this sport, as his father and grandfather were local competitors; his beginning in wrestling was because his cousin, Sunil Kumar used to earn money while playing this sport and represented India later in the 2018 U23 World Championships. It was his cousin only who introduced him to Virender Chhara. His occupation is that he serves the Indian Army.
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He admires Iranian wrestler Hassan Yazdani and was titled as the 2019 Junior Freestyle of the Year by the United World Wrestling. He likes spending time with friends and loves shopping. As for his career, he has won many championships under freestyle 86kg.
He has won gold at the 2016 World Cadet Championship, 2018 Asian Junior Championship, and the 2019 World Junior Wrestling Championships. He has bagged silver medals in the 2018 World Junior Wrestling Championships, 2019 World Championship, and 2021 Asian Championship. He has won 2 bronze till now and both in the 2019 and the 2020 Asian championship.
His ambition is to get a medal in Tokyo Olympics, and for that, he pulled out of Poland Open when he got his left hand injured so that his Olympics medal may not stand at risk and settled for silver in World Championship.
His semi-final is today against the USA, and he is only few steps away from the medal.