India’s Ramesh Kumar has bagged a bronze medal in 74kg bout in the World Wrestling Championship (WWC) after defeating Alexandr Burca of Moldova in the bronze medal playoff bout in Herning, Denmark on Thursday.

The 27-year old Ramesh has become first Indian to win a medal in the World Wrestling Championship after a long period of 42 years. Last time, Vishambhar Singh had won silver medal in freestyle in 1967 World Championship.

Ramesh was trailing 0-3 at the end of first round but he came back in the second round to add two points in his tally. Ramesh was declared winner of the match on the basis of technical points after match ended with both wrestlers tied at 7-7.

Ramesh had defeated Dustin Schalatter of the America 3-2 in the first round and he had ousted Terziev of Bulgaria 7-4 in the quarterfinal bout to advance into the semifinal. But, Ramesh had lost to Chamsulvarayev of Azerbaizan 0-3 in the semifinal encounter.

Meanwhile, Olympic bronze medalist Sushil Kumar went down to Japanese Tatsuhiro Yonemitsu 0-5 in the bronze medal playoff match of 66kg freestyle category.