Greco-Roman Wrestling at Aichi-Nagoya: Nao Kusaka's Comeback Grit and the Gap in the Final

On the mat at the Aichi-Nagoya arena, Nao Kusaka knelt for a long time. The stands still echoed with chants of “Japan” from thousands of home fans, but the electronic scoreboard had closed at 5-2 in favour of Abdevali of Iran. The Olympic champion, the man expected to deliver a gold medal in front of his home crowd, could only leave the mat with silver. The roar faded into a silence. A match without a roar still tells more than an entire noisy season. And what matters here is not the silver medal, but the way a champion won and lost on the same day.

The context of the men's Greco-Roman 77kg event at these Asian Games is a clash between the continent's traditional wrestling powers. Japan, Iran and Kazakhstan have long shared most of the medals on the Asian stage. Nao Kusaka entered the tournament as Olympic champion, which meant every eye turned to him. The pressure on the chosen one is sometimes greater than the pressure on the champion, because in that position, silver is read as failure.

The competition was held in a single-day knockout format. In wrestling, that means an athlete may have to go through several bouts in the same session, and each bout leaves a mark on both the body and the mind. In Greco-Roman, the rules stipulate that wrestlers may attack only with the upper body and arms, and may not hold below the waist. This is an important technical detail, because it strictly limits the scoring options and turns every upper-body exchange into a genuine struggle.

Against that backdrop, Kusaka was not only fighting his opponents, but also fighting the expectations he had set for himself.

The quarter-final is the bout that opens the whole story. Kusaka faced Zhadrayev of Kazakhstan. Trailing 4-9, he was pushed into a position with almost no way back. But from that low point, he produced two step-outs and two exposures. Under wrestling rules, each step-out is worth one point and each exposure is worth two. A run of six unanswered points took Kusaka from 4-9 to 10-9. This is the kind of scoring that demands extremely high technique in Greco-Roman, where the lower body is almost neutralised as an attacking option.

The bout did not end there. Zhadrayev disputed the final exchange and asked the referees to review the video. He lost that challenge. Under the rules, a failed challenge awards an extra point to the opponent, meaning Kusaka was moved up to 11-9 and the bout was over. This detail decided the result. The video-review mechanism, designed to protect fairness, became the factor that ended the bout. It shows that at the elite level of wrestling, the gap between winning and losing sometimes lies not in technical class, but in a referee's decision and a choice to challenge.

If the quarter-final showed comeback grit, the final exposed the opposite weakness. Against Abdevali of Iran, Kusaka conceded two early points. He fell into chase mode and could not reproduce the comeback he had made in the quarter-final. The 5-2 result does not reflect a comprehensive technical gap, but a recurring problem: Kusaka starts slowly. Notably, he conceded early points in both the quarter-final and the final. In the quarter-final, he had enough to make up for it. In the final, that gap became insurmountable.

This is the core point: Kusaka's decisive weakness is not his technique, but the way he enters a bout. A wrestler who can expose an opponent's back twice in a single match certainly possesses elite skill. But repeatedly conceding first points points to a warm-up or early-focus problem. This is the kind of flaw opponents can study and exploit deliberately.

After the bout, Kusaka himself offered a harsh self-assessment. He said he was simply weak. For an Olympic champion to describe himself that way is a notable psychological signal. It suggests the pressure of home expectation and the pressure of the reigning-champion status are weighing heavily, and could affect his confidence in the next cycle.

Yet the wider picture of Japanese wrestling is far from gloomy. In the Greco-Roman 97kg event, Yuri Nakazato won gold. Notably, he stepped onto the podium hobbling because of a leg injury, and he himself admitted he had never imagined he could win. This is the story of an outsider going beyond his own limits. In the women's freestyle 62kg event, Ozaki brought home another gold for Japan, beating opponent Kim.

Three gold medals across different events show the depth of Japan's wrestling programme. When one Olympic champion falls, the host nation still has other faces to carry the results. This is the mark of a systematically developed system, rather than the success of a single individual. That depth also helps soften the public pressure from Kusaka's silver.

Seen from the outside, it is easy to fall into the trap of the decline narrative. An Olympic champion losing at home seems to be evidence of a downward slide. But the data does not support that reading. Kusaka is 25 this year, at the most mature stage of his career. He still produced a six-point comeback in a quarter-final, something very few wrestlers can do. His problem is not ability, but consistency in the opening minutes. A declining athlete would not be capable of such an explosion. An athlete at his peak who starts slowly would.

This is the blind spot of the media. The result of a single day of competition is turned into a verdict on an entire career. The silver is read as an ending, when in fact it points to a specific, fixable hole. Analysing a wrestling bout based on the final result while ignoring what happened inside is like judging a race by the finish line alone. But in wrestling, every point is generated by a specific exchange, and it is those exchanges that need to be read.

In a sport where each bout lasts only a few minutes, reviewing the full sequence is the only way to understand what really happened. The 5-2 result in the final does not say that Abdevali was comprehensively superior. It says that on a given day, the man who started better took control and did not let his opponent turn the tide. In the quarter-final, Kusaka was the one who did that to Zhadrayev. In the final, he was the one who let Abdevali do the same to him.

This silver medal, therefore, is not a full stop. It is a signal. It shows that if Kusaka solves his start problem, he remains one of the strongest wrestlers in his weight class. But it also shows that opponents have begun to read him. Iran and Kazakhstan, with wrestlers who have faced Kusaka directly, will have enough data to prepare for future meetings. In wrestling, where every exchange can be reviewed and analysed, keeping a weakness secret is almost impossible.

It is worth noting that neither Nakazato nor Ozaki were the names most mentioned before the tournament. Nakazato even stepped onto the podium while injured. Their achievements show that in a tightly scheduled competition, the decisive factor is sometimes not the class written on paper, but the ability to endure and adapt from bout to bout. An Olympic champion can fall, while an outsider can rise. That is the nature of combat sport.

The biggest question now is not whether Kusaka still has what it takes to win, but whether he can change the way he enters a bout. Because at the elite level of wrestling, the gap between gold and silver often lies not in what happens across the whole match, but in the first twenty seconds. And for a 25-year-old athlete still in the most mature phase of his career, there is still enough time to fix it. What to watch at the next tournament is not the final result, but how Kusaka begins.