Pakistan's Inam Butt wins gold in beach wrestling

KARACHI: Pakistan’s most celebrated wrestler Inam Butt added another feather to his cap when he won the gold medal in the third tournament of Beach Wrestling World Series 2021 in Greece.

This was the second consecutive gold medal for Butt in this year’s Beach Wrestling World Series. He had earlier won the second tournament in Rome as well.

Butt, who downed Romania’s Mihai Nicolae Palaghia in the quarter-final and Ukraine’s Oleksii Yakavochuk in the semi-final, defeated Azerbaijan’s Ibrahim Yusubov in the final to win the gold medal in the 90kg weight category.

The fight was 2-2 in the allocated time but Butt was declared the winner as he had secured the final point in the fight.

Butt's teammate Zaman Anwar also won the bronze medal in the 90+kg weight category after beating Ukraine’s Ivan Malin.

Butt termed the occasion a great day for Pakistan sports and dedicated the medal to nuclear scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan and wrestler Zubair Aslam — who was known as Jhara Pehlwan.

“It’s a great achievement for us and I thank everyone who has been supporting us. We will continue to make Pakistan proud,” Inam said in a video message sent to Geo News.

“I dedicate this win to Jhara Pehlwan as today is his death anniversary and our hero Dr AQ Khan,” he added.