The first of two days of World Cup wrestling is officially in the books. How did everyone do? We shall discuss. 

USA 10, India 0

India received a rude welcome to Iowa City. Accepting a last minute invite to the World Cup after Russia pulled out, India promptly ran into the buzzsaw that is the 2018 USA Freestyle World Cup wrestling team.

The Americans dismantled the Indians, winning all 10 bouts. India didn't come with their best wrestlers, and in fact, didn't bring a 57 kilogram wrestler at all. Of the nine bouts that were wrestled, seven were won by technical fall. The closest match was Joe Colon's 6-4 win over Sandeep Tomar at 61kg. 

The full box score is below.

57kg Thomas Gilman (USA) winner by forfeit (India)

61kg Joe Colon (USA) dec. Sandeep Tomar (India) 6-4

65kg Logan Stieber (USA) tech. superiority S. Sharvan (India) 12-2

70kg James Green (USA) tech. superiority Arun Kumar (India) 10-0

74kg Jordan Burroughs (USA) tech. superiority Vinod Kumar (India) 11-1

79kg Kyle Dake (USA) tech. superiority Sachin Giri (India) 11-0

86kg David Taylor (USA) tech. superiority Pawan Kumar (India) 10-0

92kg Hayden Zillmer (USA) dec. Deepak Punia (India) 7-0

97kg Kyle Snyder (USA) tech. superiority V. Viky (India) 10-0

125kg Dom Bradley (USA) tech. superiority Pushpender Singh (India) 10-0

USA 7, Japan 3

A much tougher Japanese squad was on deck for the American's second dual of the day. Things kicked off with a marquee 57kg bout, which was a rematch of the 217 World Championship gold medal match.

Once again, it was Yuki Takahashi who prevailed over Thomas Gilman thanks to Takahashi's counters that scored the only offensive points of the match. 

Japan reeled off two more wins, a close one against Kendric Maple and a not so close one over Logan Steiber to race out to a 3-0 lead. Maple had a match-winning last-second takedown reversed on video review and Steiber was on the receiving end of a nasty unintentional headbutt and an intentional bite. Trying to eat your opponent is apparently only a caution and a single penalty point though, and Steiber did not have enough in the tank for a comeback.

From then on it was all Stars and Stripes. James Green and Jordan Burroughs did what you'd expect them to, though their opponents made them work for it. 

Kyle Dake had the highlight of the dual, with a chest wrap head-over-heels toss of world silver medalist Sohsuke Takatani that should have been five but was called merely a four-pointer. Dake then received a favorable call on another four-point throw that could have been ruled in favor of Takatani but was not overturned on review, which then gave Dake his tenth point for the 10-0 tech fall. 

Kyle Dake back at it again! @kyledake444 -#uww #unitedworldwrestling #wrestling #usa pic.twitter.com/LdZlYIqi5T

— World Wrestling (@wrestling) April 7, 2018

Four more tech-mauls later and Team USA completed their comeback with a thorough dismantling of Japan's upper weights. The full box score of America's second victory of the day is below. 

57kg Yuki Takahashi (JPN) dec Thomas Gilman (USA) 4-1

61kg Kazuya Koyanagi (JPN) dec. Kendric Maple (USA) 2-2

65kg Takuto Otoguro (JPN) dec. Logan Stieber (USA) 10-5

70kg James Green (USA) dec. Kirin Kinoshita (Japan) 8-5

74kg Jordan Burroughs (USA) dec Yuhi Fujinami (JPN) 7-1

79kg Kyle Dake (USA) tech. superiority Sohsuke Takatani (JPN) 10-0

86kg David Taylor (USA) tech. superiority Masao Matasusaka (JPN) 12-2

92kg J'Den Cox (USA) tech. superiority Takeshi Ishiguro (JPN) 11-0

97kg Kyle Snyder (USA) tech. superiority Taira Sonoda (JPN) 10-0

125kg Nick Gwiazdowski (USA) tech. superiority Nobuyoshi Arakida (JPN) 10-0

 Full results from the 2018 World Cup in Iowa City can be found here. 

What About The Other Countries?

Glad you asked! In other action from teams in the American pool, Japan beat up the less-then-their-best Georgian team, 7-3. Japan won the first seven duals to clinch the contest before Georgia was able to finally notch a win. Japan will have no problem beating India tomorrow and will wrestle for third place. 

Georgia also beat India 8-2. It was nice of India to accept the last-minute invite but they did not arrive in Iowa City with a World Cup caliber team. 

In the other pool, Azerbaijan, the other favorites to make the gold medal match, took care of business, beating Cuba 8-2 and Kazakhstan 9-1. 

Highlights from the match versus Cuba included a thrilling defeat of Yowlys Bonne by Akhmednabi Gvarzatilov at 61kg and Alejandro Valdes shocking the crowd at Carver-Hawkeye with a pinfall of three-time world champ and Olympic bronze medalist Haji Aliev. Kazakhstan meanwhile managed to salvage a win in their dual with Azerbaijan when Daulet Shabanbay upset Jamaladdin Magomedov at heavyweight.

Also, Mongolia came out fighting against Kazakhstan, knocking off the team that finished well ahead of them at the 2017 World Championships with a 6-4 victory. The Cubans proved too much for the Mongolians, however, and beat them 7-3. Nearly every match between Cuba and Mongolia was a hard fought entertaining affair.

Tomorrow everyone wraps up their round-robin pool matches and then we get the placement matches. See you then!