Let's start with the fact that for half the audience, Rustam was a favorite. In the last meeting with the American athlete, he was the winner, he also definitely very well improved his power performance compared to the first stage of Top 8. As he confirmed, the flight to China was easier than to Malaysia, and visually he looked more massive and confident. But the result of the match is 0:6 in favor of Tim Bresnan. What went wrong for Rustam?

Let's get back to their last Vendetta fight #50 in 2018. The first thing that caught my eye: in that duel, there was never ended with a victory in each of six rounds. Each victory for both athletes became technical as a result of opponent's fouls. The second is that Rustam’s grip was very shallow, because of this he cannot fully realize the power of his wrist and “turn off” Tim's pronator. The third - as a consequence of the second, Rustam never entered a closed attack hook during a duel, and only once was able to get into with a sufficiently deep hook, but still in the open position, that is, without covering his arm with his shoulder, and also without turning off fully Tim’s pronator.

This suggests that in that match, it was not Rustam who won in the full sense of the word, but rather Tim lost. The Ukrainian armwrestler has very few chances to win against Tim, who is superior to him in anthropometry: either by fouls, or if Bresnan will consciously try to fight against Rustam in a hook.

What did we see during the second stage? Tim Bresnan approached the fight more calmly and did not allow fouls. He, clearly understanding his advantage in anthropometry, included a strong wrist stretch during the grip, and even when he lost the start, Rustam could not supine Tim’s hand and exclude his stretch and pronator from the fight. However, it cannot be said that Babaev’s wrist was not up to standard. This was clearly seen from the way Rustam controlled his wrist in defense.

This time Tim made no mistakes and Rustam had nothing to cling to.

Could there be a different outcome? Obviously, yes. But this outcome, alas, did not depend on Rustam, because it was not in his power to change the size of his hand, nor to make the opponent make mistakes.

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