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Inside news
Hifumi Abe poised to prolong the World title
7 Sep 2018 07:05
by Oon Yeoh of JudoCrazy
Mongolian JudoHeroes
If there was such a thing as a sure-fire bet in judo, it’d be Hifumi Abe, who is an absolute star in world judo. His dominance and his ability to strike fear in the hearts of his opponents is only matched by probably Shohei Ono.
Abe recently lost to Mongolia’s Altansukh Dovdon, who surprised him with a side takedown at the 2018 Zagreb Grand Prix but he’s unlikely to get caught like that again. In any event, the Mongolian competing in Baku is Kherlen Ganbold not Dovdon. Other than that fluke defeat in Zagreb, Abe has had an string of unbroken victories dating all the way back to mid-2015, when he lost to Tumurkhuleg Davaadorj at the Ulaanbaaatar Grand Prix.
Earlier that year, in February, he had also lost to Davaadorj at the Dusseldorf Grand Prix. So perhaps he might have a bit of a weakness against Davaadorj’s fighting style. But as mentioned earlier, the Mongolian competing is Ganbold.
Might he face a problem with Ganbold, whom he has never fought before? It’s possible but odds are he will win. His main challengers are No. 1 seed Tal Flicker of Israel and No. 6 seed An Baul of South Korea. He has never fought Flicker before and the last time he fought An was at the 2014 World Junior Championships, which was some time ago. A betting man would still put his money on Abe though.
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