Tamyra Mensah Stock Techs Her Way to Semifinals for Team USA in Tokyo; G'Angelo Hancock Goes 1-1 in Greco

Team USA's Tamyra Mensah Stock earns a 10-0 first-period tech over 2016 Olympic champion Sara Dosho of Japan in the first round of the Tokyo Olympic Games at 68 kg. Image courtesy of Larry Slater. 

On day two of the Tokyo Olympic Games, top-seeded Women’s freestyler Tamyra Mensah Stock (68 kg) and Greco competitor G’Angelo Hancock (97 kg) took to the mat, beginning their respective quests for Olympic gold for Team USA. Also, Ildar Hafizov (60 kg) had his second Greco match of Tokyo 2020 via Monday’s repechage after dropping his opening-round bout to Cuba’s Luis Orta Sanchez. 

Mensah Stock, arguably the biggest "lock" to win a gold medal across all of the Women’s freestyle weights, showed exactly why she is such a heavy favorite, storming to a 10-0 first-period tech over 2016 Olympic champion Sara Dosho of Japan. Mensah Stock, a 2019 World champion in her own right, used multiple takedown-to-lace sequences to get the job done before the end of the first period. 

Mensah Stock punched her ticket to the semifinals after securing her second straight tech fall of the night. This tech came over 2015 World Silver medalist Feng Zhou (China) 10-0 thanks to five takedowns from the American. The win avenges a loss to Zhou from the 2020 Pellicone finals.  

As for Hancock, his ability to turn his opponent and not be turned himself by Serbia’s Mihail Kajaia allowed the American to secure a 5-1 decision in his Tokyo opener. After Kajaia gave up a passivity point and was put down, Hancock added a pair of gut wrenches to have a 5-0 lead before the break. In the second period, Hancock surrendered a passivity point of his own and was put down. However, Kajaia was unable to turn Hancock. The bout ended with that same 5-1 score. 

Hancock’s berth in the semifinals was upended by a tough 4-3 loss to Poland’s Tadeusz Michalik in the quarterfinals. Hancock took a 1-0 lead into the second period. Then, the turning point in the match came when Hancock lost a challenge that turned it from 2-1 to 3-1 in favor of Michalik, with roughly two minutes to go. The only points scored were three step-out points, two for Michalik and one for Hancock. The American fell 4-3.

Hafizov fell to 0-2 in Tokyo after a 7-1 loss to Russia’s Sergey Emelin, who was the 2018 World champion and the 2019 World runner-up. With that, Hafizov's competition in Japan has come to a close.

With both wrestlers hit with one passivity point each, we had a 1-1 score with 1:58 remaining in the match. Emelin made the most of his time in the top position. From there, the Russian turned Hafizov three times to win it 7-1. 

Here is the USA Wrestling Official Release. 

Team USA Results


60 kg Greco-Roman Repechage

Sergey Emelin (ROC) over Ildar Hafizov (USA) 7-1


97 kg Greco-Roman

G'Angelo Hancock (USA) over Mikheil Kajaia (Serbia) 5-1

Tadeusz Michalik (Poland) over G'Angelo Hancock (USA) 4-3


68 kg Women's Freestyle

Tamyra Mensah-Stock (USA) over Sara Dosho (Japan) 10-0

Tamyra Mensah-Stock (USA) over Feng Zhou (China) 10-0



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