Dharmender Dalal cut a sorry figure as he lost his bronze medal play-off match in the men's 120kg Greco-Roman wrestling competitions to round off another disappointing day for Indian grapplers in the Asian Games in Guangzhou on Tuesday.
Having won his repechage round 1 bout against Chivinn Chum of Cambodia, Dharmender set up a fight against Iraq's Salman. Ali in the bronze medal bout but he could hardly pose a challenge to his opponent, going down 0-3 in the encounter.
Earlier in the day, after losing his quarter-final bout, Dharmender still had an outside chance of bagging a bronze, provided he wins his repechage round 1 and then overcame Salman.
Dharmender, however, started the day on a high when he got the better of Hirokazu Shinjo of Japan 3-1 in his opening round match to advance to the quarter-finals.
But he came a cropper against Kazakhstan's Nurmakhan Tinaliyev, who proved to be too strong for him. Tinaliyev took 10 minutes and 58 seconds to register a 3-0 comfortable win over the Indian.
Having failed to enter the last four stage, Dharmender did well to outplay Chivinn Chum 3-0 in repechage round 1 to set up a clash against Salman.
But Dharmender's campaign ended when Salman prevailed over him in 17 minutes 16 seconds.
Meanwhile, another Indian -- Vinod Kumar bowed out of the competition much earlier after he was outplayed 0-3 in the opening round by Tsogtbaatar Damdinbazar of Mangolia.
