Sunil Kumar on Tuesday overpowered Azat Salidinov of Kyrgyzstan 5-0 in the 87kg summit bout to end India's 27 years of gold medal drought in the Greco-Roman category in the Asian Wrestling Championships here on Tuesday. Before Sunil, Pappu Yadav had won the 48kg Greco-Roman title in 1993. Sunil with his comprehensive defence, was able to keep Salidinov at bay for most part of the bout. Salidinov did not have any answer to the Indian's strategy and finally went down pretty easily.

Earlier, Sunil made an impressive comeback in his semi-final bout to reach the final. He was down 1-8 against his Kazakh opponent Azamat Kustubayev but made a great comeback, grabbing 11 points on the trot to win the bout 12-8. In 2019 also, Kumar had made it to the final and ended with a silver medal. "I am feeling happy to have earned India's first gold medal today. I have worked really hard on my ground techniques and it feels good to have done better than my last year's performance," Sunil said later.