Kilty, Welker to bronze match, Blades, Glaude, Nwachuwku drop quarters at 2025 World Championships

ZAGREB, Croatia – The U.S. women picked up a couple signature wins during the Wednesday morning session at the 2025 World Championships, with the duo of Macey Kilty and Kylie Welker winning repechage, and three athletes qualifying for the quarterfinal round.

Kilty opened the morning with a second-period pin against 2024 Olympic bronze medalist Grace Bullen of Norway. Up 2-1 entering the second, Kilty went on the attack while Bullen was put on the shot clock. She converted a single leg to the back to stick Bullen in 4:39. Kilty will face Asian silver medalist Enkhjin Tuvshinjargal of Mongolia in the bronze medal match. A win would give Kilty a third Senior-level World medal.

Welker set the tone for Team USA as the first bout of the day on mat A. She looked excellent in a 10-0 technical fall win against two-time age-group World medalist Elmira Yasin of Türkiye. Welker scored three takedowns and two turns to end the match early in the second frame. Her 76 kg bronze medal match opponent is familiar foe Anastasiya Alpyeyeva of Ukraine, who is a five-time age-group World medalist and reigning European champion. Welker defeated Alpyeyeva in the finals of last year’s U23 Worlds, 3-1.

Taking center stage with women’s freestyle group three were Felicity Taylor at 53 kg, Adaugo Nwachukwu at 62 kg, Kennedy Blades at 68 kg and Alexandria Glaude at 72 kg. Nwachukwu, Blades and Glaude each made the quarterfinals before falling, staying in the mix for repechage. Taylor dropped her opener and was eliminated from the tournament.

The big win of the session came early on from Glaude in the round-of-16. She utilized great positioning and mat awareness to take down 2021 World champion and three-time World medalist Masako Furuichi of Japan, 3-2. Glaude went on to drop a close quarterfinal to 2022 U20 World silver medalist Nurzat Nurtaeva of Kyrgyzstan, 8-4.

Blades, a 2024 Olympic silver medalist at 76 kg, exploded in the first round with an 11-0 technical fall against Asian silver medalist Radhika of India. The win set up a primetime showdown versus 2024 World champion Ami Ishii of Japan in the quarterfinals. Unfortunately for the American side, Ishii had Blades’ number in every area, scoring a 12-1 technical fall in one of the more impressive efforts we’ve seen in Zagreb this week.

Nwachukwu, a 2022 U20 World bronze medalist and four-time age-group World Team member, looked strong in two early round wins on Wednesday. She ran into 2017 World champion and two-time Olympian Orkhon Purevdorj of Mongolia in the quarterfinals, coming up short, 5-2.

For a complete match-by-match breakdown of the morning session for Team USA in Zagreb, browse our day five match notes.

The tournament resumes at 4:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday with the women’s freestyle group three (53-62-68-72 kg) semifinals, followed by the women’s freestyle group two (50-57-65-76 kg) medal matches at 6 p.m. Zagreb, Croatia, is in the GMT +2 time zone, which is six hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Time.

The Senior World Championships are streaming live on FloWrestling.com to the U.S. market. Brackets and updated results are available on UWW Arena.

USA Wrestling will provide regular updates on TheMat.com and its social media platforms throughout the event.