Manisha Bhanwala Came Back From 0-6 to Win the 59kg Final 8-6 at the 2026 World Wrestling Championships in Astana, the First Women's World Title for India

Manisha Bhanwala won the women’s 59kg title at the Senior World Wrestling Championships in Astana, Kazakhstan, on 30 October 2026. She beat Abigail Nette of the United States 8-6 in the final after trailing 0-6. United World Wrestling (UWW), the sport’s governing body, calls her India’s first women’s world champion. She is also the second Indian wrestler to win a senior world title, after Sushil Kumar at 66kg in 2010.

Her gold was one of four medals ANI lists for India at the championships. Neelam Sirohi (50kg) and Kajal Dhochak (76kg) won silver on 28 October, and Tanu Sharma took bronze at 72kg on 29 October.

Down 0-6, then eight straight points

UWW’s report of the final says Nette put Manisha on the mat for four points early on. India challenged the call, the challenge failed, and Nette got a fifth point. A caution against Manisha made it 6-0. PTI adds that the four-pointer came after Nette secured a tight grip and lifted Manisha’s leg, and that Manisha was thrown from near the edge of the mat.

Before the break Manisha scored a step-out, a point for forcing an opponent out of bounds, to make it 6-1. In the second period Nette attacked a leg and Manisha slipped behind her for a takedown. The US corner challenged, arguing the referee had blown the whistle to stop the action. The challenge failed, which gave Manisha another point and put Nette in par terre, the ground position where one wrestler is down on hands and knees. That made it 6-4.

From there she turned Nette with a gut wrench for two points to level at 6-6. Nette still led on the tie-break criteria. Manisha then scored a pressure takedown to go 8-6 ahead, and PTI says she defended that lead through the last 27 seconds against a tiring Nette.

“Bharandaaj [gut-wrench] is my favorite move,” she told UWW. She said that when she got the turn she thought she might reach 10 points or even pin Nette, and that she was puzzled when Nette escaped. After the restart she took Nette down again.

The road to the final

The 59kg bracket had 18 entries, according to UWW’s results. Manisha’s semi-final was on Thursday 29 October. She beat Altyn Shagayeva of Kazakhstan by fall in 4:26, a pin that ended the bout at 10-0. In the other semi-final Nette pinned Mariia Vynnyk of Ukraine, 6-0 in 2:13, so the final was between the two wrestlers who had finished their semi-finals by fall.

The two beaten semi-finalists went to the bronze matches. Vynnyk won hers 7-6 over Svetlana Lipatova, and Shagayeva lost by fall in 2:59 to Mongolia’s Bolortuya Khurelkhuu, who took the other bronze.

Silver for Neelam and Kajal, bronze for Tanu

Two days before Manisha’s final, Neelam and Kajal each reached a world final, on the fifth day of the tournament, Wednesday 28 October. UWW’s report says the only Indian woman to have reached a senior world final before this edition was Anshu Malik, who took silver at 57kg in 2021. Neelam and Kajal became the second and third, and Manisha the fourth, so three Indian women wrestled for world gold in one edition for the first time, as PTI and All India Radio both note.

Neelam lost the 50kg final to Japan’s Yui Susaki, who won her fifth world title by pinning her in 2:15. Kajal, a teenager at her first senior worlds and the 2025 world U20 champion at 72kg, lost the 76kg final 8-6 to Ukraine’s Anastasiya Alpyeyeva. UWW says Kajal twice led on criteria and scored a takedown with six seconds left, but ran out of time trying for the turn that would have won it. “I can beat them all,” Kajal told UWW.

On 29 October Tanu Sharma won the 72kg bronze medal match 9-5 over Precious Bell of the United States, after leading 7-0 with a four-point headlock throw. UWW’s Day 6 results list her and Japan’s Mahiro Yoshitake as the two 72kg bronze medallists.

One timing note: the PTI and All India Radio reports from 30 October place the silver-medal finals “yesterday” or on Thursday. UWW’s own reports are dated Wednesday 28 October, and this article uses those dates.

A weight class off the Olympic list

Manisha won the 2025 Asian Championships in Amman, Jordan, at 62kg, beating North Korea’s Kim Ok-ju 8-7 after trailing 2-7, according to The Bridge and Khel Now. In Astana she wrestled at 59kg, a class that is not among the six women’s freestyle weights listed for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics: 50, 53, 57, 62, 68 and 76kg. The world championships also hold women’s bouts at 55, 65 and 72kg, none of them on that list.

Manisha told UWW she wants to defend the title next year in Las Vegas at 57kg, which she called the Olympic weight category.

What came before

Sushil Kumar’s 66kg gold in Moscow is the only earlier Indian senior world title. UWW’s 2019 retrospective dates the final to 12 September 2010 and gives the score as 3-1 over Russia’s Alan Gogaev, in front of what it calls a hostile home crowd. It says India had never won a gold at a global wrestling event before then, and that his win sent more children, girls included, to village akhadas, the traditional wrestling training halls.

Indian women had stood on world podiums before Manisha. Scroll’s 2019 table of Indian world medallists includes bronzes for Alka Tomar at 59kg in 2006, Geeta and Babita Phogat at 55kg and 51kg in 2012, and Pooja Dhanda at 57kg in 2018, and Anshu Malik’s 2021 silver was the nearest any Indian woman had come to gold. Geeta Phogat’s earlier Commonwealth Games gold and the film made about her family are covered in the Phogat sisters article, and Indian wrestling’s first individual Olympic medal, the 1952 bronze, is in the Khashaba Jadhav article. Earlier in October 2026 Indian wrestlers also won six medals, two of them gold, at the Asian Games, as the Asian Games report records.

Rohtak, a father’s wish and federation camps

The Bridge describes Manisha as a wrestler from Rohtak whose father first sent her to a hostel to get fitter. Khel Now says she began wrestling in 2013 and trains at Sir Chhotu Ram Stadium under Mandeep Singh, who is also named as her coach by The Bridge. In 2022, hours before she flew to the Asian Championships, her father died. She wrestled anyway and won bronze, she told The Bridge. In Astana she carried his photograph to the final, UWW reports, and said the gold fulfilled his wish.

After the win she credited the Wrestling Federation of India for running camps under the Target Olympic Podium Scheme (TOPS), ANI reported. Union Sports Minister Mansukh Mandaviya posted his congratulations on 30 October, and ANI reported that she was received at Delhi Airport on 1 November. As of 2 November 2026, the medal count in ANI’s 31 October report stands at one gold, two silver and one bronze.