J’Den Cox officially punched his ticket to the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro with a first-place finish in the 86-kilogram weight class at the World Games Qualifying Tournament in Mongolia early Sunday morning.
The Missouri junior wrestler won five matches on his way to the championship and only let three points score on him throughout the day.
After two technical falls in Cox’s first matches, he headed to the quarterfinals and defeated Poland’s Zbigniew Mateusz Baranowski 4–1 after a late takedown in the second period.
The top three finishers in each weight class secured their spot at the Olympics. Cox earned his place on the team by defeating Uzbekistan’s Umidjon Ismanov 5–2 in the semifinals.
In the finals, Cox lead Venezuela’s Pedro Francisco Ceballos Fuentes 2–0 early in the first period. Cox controlled the entire match and shut out Fuentes in the next two periods to end the championship and tournament with a 6–0 win.
As a young wrestler still in college, Cox’s complete control over the mat under extreme pressure attracted the attention of world-renowned wrestlers, including Jordan Burroughs, a four-time world and Olympic champion.
Congratulations to J'den Cox @SuperstarW14T on officially qualifying for Rio. This man is still in college and taking the world by storm!
— Jordan Burroughs (@alliseeisgold) April 24, 2016
In previous interviews with The Maneater, Cox expressed how much making the Olympics would mean to him.
“There would be the utmost pride, and it would be the utmost honor to be able to do that,” Cox said in January. “That would be amazing. It would be mindblowing. I’d love the opportunity to do so.”
Cox, a two-time NCAA national champion and a three-time All-American at 197 pounds, decided to cut weight and entered the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in the 189-pound class to start his Olympic journey. He entered the U.S. tournament as the No. 9 seed but shocked fans in Iowa City, Iowa, when he defeated four-time NCAA national champion Kyle Dake twice in a best two-out-of-three finals format to win the championship.
Ben Askren was the last Missouri wrestler to compete at the Olympics. Askren wrestled at the 2008 games in Beijing.
_Edited by Peter Baugh | pbaugh@themaneater.com_
