Yogeshwar Dutt and current World Champion Oksana Herhel came out on top and proved their reputation right to guide their team Haryana Hammers to a 5-2 victory over Dilli Veers on the third day of the inaugural edition of the Pro Wrestling league at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium on Saturday.
Even with Haryana winning convincingly, Dilli'sIndian icon player Vinesh Phogat was the saving grace, who won her bout comfortably, even as others came out short.
In a closely contested battle, Yogeshwar, making a comeback from a knee injury, posed a tough fight against World Championship silver medallist Navruzov Ikhtiyor of Uzbekistan, representing Dilli Veers, to eke out a narrow 3-2 win in Men's 65kg category.
With Haryana already having won the contest before Yogeshwar took the mat for his much-awaited bout of the day, the london Olympic bronze medallist took time to get to the rhythm.
In the opening round, Yogeshwar managed to earn a point and that too because the Uzbek wrestler got a warning from the referee, but it was enough to give the Indian a cushion of 1-0 lead at the break.
In the second round, the grappler from Sonepat tried his best to overpower his rival and his efforts paid rich dividends as he managed to push his opponent down on the mat for two points. But in the end, Ikhtiyor earned back a point by pushing Yogeshwar out of the mat to reduced the margin of defeat.
"I was under a lot of pressure coming to fight after a long time, following the recovering from my injury. That's the reason why I also took time to get back my rhythm. But I am very happy to have won this one and it has boosted my confidence a lot," Yogeshwar said at the post match media conference.
"It was good to fight a World Championship silver medallist and this would certainly give me a lot of confidence," he added