Photo: Tony Rotundo
Team USA added two more World champions in Astana on Friday. Bo Bassett won gold at 65kg in his Senior World Championships debut, and Kyle Snyder won his fifth World title at 97kg, winning a bracket that included three Olympic champions.
Bo Bassett, 65kg: World Champion in His Debut
Bassett beat Armenia's Vazgen Tevanyan, a two-time Olympian, 9-1 in the gold-medal match. The Virginia Tech freshman is the first American World champion at this weight since Bill Zadick won it in 2006, when the weight class was 66kg.
His run through Astana:
- Round of 32: Fall 1:13 over Peiman Biabani (Canada), the 3 seed
- Round of 16: TF 12-0 over Quentin Sticker (France)
- Quarterfinal: Dec 14-13 over Abasgadzhi Magomedov (Russia)
- Semifinal: TF 12-2 over Abdulmazhid Kudiev (Tajikistan)
- Final: Dec 9-1 over Vazgen Tevanyan (Armenia)
It caps a remarkable year for Bassett, who won U20 World gold in Bratislava in August, wrestled at the U23 World Championships in Las Vegas this month, and earned this spot by beating Real Woods in two straight at Final X.
Kyle Snyder, 97kg: Title No. 5 in the Toughest Bracket in Astana
Snyder beat Japan's Arash Yoshida 4-4 on criteria for gold, his second straight World title and fifth overall. It came in the deepest bracket of the tournament. Abdulrashid Sadulaev and Hassan Yazdani both took bronze, and Olympic champion Akhmed Tazhudinov finished fifth.
His run through Astana:
- Round of 16: TF 10-0 over Alperen Tokgoz (Turkey)
- Quarterfinal: Dec 4-4 over Abdulrashid Sadulaev (Russia)
- Semifinal: Dec 5-0 over Zbigniew Baranowski (Poland)
- Final: Dec 4-4 over Arash Yoshida (Japan)
Two of his four wins were 4-4 criteria decisions, including the quarterfinal against Sadulaev. Snyder is now a six-time World and Olympic champion, with five World titles (2015, 2017, 2022, 2025 and 2026) and 2016 Olympic gold. The title is his ninth World medal and his 11th World and Olympic medal overall.
A Big Day for Team USA
Friday's medal session also brought Everest Leydecker's gold at 55kg, which clinched the women's freestyle World team title, the first for the U.S. since 1999, and Abigail Nette's silver at 59kg. Team USA now has eight medals in Astana, four of them gold: Adaugo Nwachukwu, Leydecker, Bassett and Snyder.
Kyle Dake wrestles for his fifth World title at 86kg on Saturday, and Zain Retherford and Wyatt Hendrickson wrestle for bronze. Follow every American live on our Team USA Senior Worlds tracker.