Linz is a lucky city for Jack Yonezuka. In 2024, he won his first ever IJF World Tour bronze medal at the Upper Austria Grand Prix. Now, two years later, he has won his second IJF bronze medal.
Yonezuka’s first match, against Zelemkhan Batchaev (BEL), was a scoreless one. But the Belgian got his third shido just seconds into the third minute of the match, and was thus disqualified.
He had a bit of a scare in his second match, against Yehonatan Elbaz (ISR), who scored yuko with kouchi-gari in the first minute. A minute later, Yonezuka evened up the scores by getting a yuko from a circling ouchi-gari. It looked like the match would go into Golden Score but seconds before the end of regular time, Yonezuka scored another yuko with another circling ouchi-gari.
Yonezuka then defeated Guilherme De Oliveira (BRA) who tried to throw him off the ground with sumi-gaeshi. Instead, the Brazilian got pinned for ippon.
He fought Bilal Ciloglu (TUR) well in the semifinal but was thrown with koshi-guruma for waza-ari in Golden Score.
Yonezuka’s bronze medal match was against Fabio Basile (ITA). Although the Italian is a former Olympic Champion, Yonezuka was unfazed by that. After all, he had beaten Basile just a few months earlier at the 2025 Tokyo Grand Slam. Their match was scoreless in regular time. In Golden Score, Yonezuka did a timely kosoto-gake against Basile just as the Italian was trying to do a sumi-gaeshi. Waza-ari was given to Yonezuka. And with that, he won his second-ever IJF bronze medal.
