BEIJING — Henry Cejudo stood in the bowels of the wrestling arena today, still huffing from his triumphant semifinals victory, when the man he beat, Namid Sevdimov, walked by, head down. While Sevdimov’s coach screamed in his wrestler’s ear, he smacked the Azerbaijani wrestler in the head with rolled-up papers.
Cejudo, the scrappy American hope, dramatically held on to win the Olympic freestyle semifinals, stealing the third and final period by a 4-3 score, winning the match, two periods to one. The 55-kilogram gold-medal match, against Japan’s Tomohiro Matsunaga, was scheduled for 3:20 a.m. Denver time.
A Colorado Springs resident and two-time state high school champion in the state, Cejudo won all three of his Olympic qualification matches the same way — losing the first period and storming back to win the final two.
“I think he’s a better ‘pressure wrestler’ — when he has to get something done, he gets it done,” said Kevin Jackson, the U.S. Olympic freestyle wrestling coach. “We’d rather not go that route. I don’t know how much he likes the pressure, but he can live there.”
For breakfast, Cejudo had Radoslav Velikov, the Bulgarian who was previously the world champion. Next up was Besarion Gochashvili, whom the 21-year-old Cejudo buried in the third period, due to a brilliant, cat-quick grab of his opponent’s legs, dropping the Georgian to the mat.
Then came the match against the stoic, chiseled Sevdimov. In the first period, Cejudo looked overmatched. Cejudo’s personal coach, Terry Brands, spent time between periods trying to calm Cejudo, rub his arms and scream in the wrestler’s cauliflower ears.
And in the second period, Cejudo regained his form. He scored the first point of the period and won 3-2. In the decisive period, Cejudo broke a 3-3 tie by harnessing his opponent’s leg in the air and flipping him onto the mat. And in the final 30 seconds, Cejudo was relentless, not letting Sevdimov have a shot.
“I put my American will together and took him out,” Cejudo said.
