Oklahoma State University Athletics
Dieringer Wrangles Silver in Bulgaria
August 17, 2013 | Cowboy Wrestling
Aug 17, 2013
SOFIA, Bulgaria – Oklahoma State wrestler Alex Dieringer finished second at the Junior World Championships on Saturday, falling to Russian Alan Zaseev in the 74 kilogram finals.
The Wisconsin native came out on fire, defeating Junior European bronze medalist Lasha Gigashvili of Georgia with a 7-0 technical fall in just 2:25 to open his tournament.
In his second match of the day, the Cowboy was down by six points but stormed back to take and maintain the lead against Bakhtiyar Israfilli of Azerbaijan, sending him to the quarterfinals to face Tekhron Khodjiev of Uzbekistan.
Dieringer showed no signs of slowing down as he pinned Khodjiev in 1:27 in the quarterfinals and went on to stick Romanian Gheorghe Bodisteanu in less than a minute in the semis.
The 2013 All-American met up with Zaseev in the finals where he suffered his lone loss of the tournament in the form of an 8-1 tech fall.
“Silver is cool,” Dieringer said. “Not what I wanted, but I got a lot to build off this experience.”
Dieringer just wrapped up his first season in the Cowboy wrestling lineup with an impressive 35-3 overall record accompanied with a Big 12 individual title and a third place finish at NCAAs.
Junior World Championship action continues tomorrow with Austin Marsden representing the US at 120 kg. The tournament is set to begin at 1 a.m. CT. Fans can watch the tournament live on facebook.com/fila.official.
