Canadian John Jr Messe A Bessong takes the world title

John Jr Messe A Bessong had a dream 2022 season with many podiums and even a few gold medals. On Saturday, at the Cadet World Championships held in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Quebecer continued his momentum to become world champion in the cadets.

Messe A Bessong started the day strong by quickly winning his first two fights against Gereltbayar Ochir of Mongolia and Ramazan Ahmadov of Azerbaijan. Two victories that gave confidence to the Canadian and his coach Alexandre Émond.

"It was pretty easy in his first two fights. He did not spend too much energy and he was very expeditious, which is enough to give us confidence quickly. He managed the start of the day well," explained the coach.

The 17-year-old continued his epic quarter-final by defeating Emirkhan Zholdoshkaziev of Kyrgyzstan. He then reached the final thanks to his victory over the Japanese Dota Arai, a rather unknown opponent to the Canadian.

"The athlete from Kyrgyzstan was as tall as John, which is quite rare honestly. John managed to beat him strategically by making him take several penalties. Then, the Japanese was left-handed, which is a bit of John's pet peeve, but he managed to beat him quite easily and he had gained confidence for the final.”

Messe A Bessong completed this perfect day by winning the grand final in front of the Brazilian Gabriel Santos. The latter is clearly the one that gave the most trouble to the Quebecer during the day.

"It's been a great day for John, I'm really happy for him. He had already trained with the Brazilian in the past. John was coming from behind at the end of the fight, he took a risk by going to the body and the technique worked. He threw the Brazilian to the ground to win by ippon," said Alexandre Émond.

With his very imposing physique and his excellent record in 2022, John Jr Messe A Bessong arrived in Sarajevo with the gold medal in his sights. He admittedly met all expectations.

"John has an extraordinary physique and he is super athletic for his size. I think he would be successful in all sports. He was coming to Sarajevo to get on the podium, there is no doubt about that. He believed in the gold medal obviously, when he saw the draw, he knew he had a good chance of going all the way," Émond added.

The Turkish delegation had high hopes for their heavyweight, Ergin Recep, who clearly had the potential to win the gold medal. Maybe he didn't believe in himself enough. In any case, he still managed to get into the bronze medal match against Dota Arai (JPN).

Left-handed, Arai was looking for the uchi-mata early on in the match, but was counterattacked for a first waza-ari for Recep. Not keen to repeat the same mistake, Arai went for the o-uchi-gari and this time was more successful; one waza-ari apiece. Meanwhile the Turkish judoka was penalised twice, making things a little complicated. Recep then received his third penalty and sent the bronze medal to Arai and Japan.

The third double of the day, two judoka came from the same country; this time Romania, to compete for a place on the podium. Darius Georgescu and Bogdan Petre gripped up but Georgescu was immediately in danger and received two of a possible three shido for false attacks. The third one indeed came a little later  and that meant a bronze medal went to his teammate Petre.