On the evening of March 19, Beijing time, the table tennis WTT Grand Slam staged a very wonderful China-Japan showdown, and the national table tennis Olympic champion Fan Zhendong narrowly defeated Japan's Yukiya Utada 4-2 after 6 sets of vicious battles, and each set was quite fierce. After the game, Fan Zhendong even more generously showed his respect to his opponents, bluntly saying:
"This is also the first time he has played with Utada (Yukiya), I think everyone should also give him applause, today his performance is really wonderful!"
This competition Utada Yukiya men's doubles reached the final, with Toue Hayabusa and Fan Zhendong / Wang Chuqin played difficult to solve, men's singles and fan Zhendong created great difficulties, which performance than the men's singles "round trip", mixed doubles 0-3 defeat out of Zhang Benzhi and do not know where to go, it seems that the national table tennis has added a big opponent!
Born in 2001, Yukiya Utada is the new main player of Japanese men's table tennis, who became famous in the national championships as early as 2020, defeating Tomokazu Zhang and others to win the singles championship, and later became a substitute for the Tokyo Olympics, which can be regarded as the no. 4 main force of the Japanese team.
However, Yukiya Utada, who is an expert in the civil war, has not been very good at foreign competitions, and although he won the men's doubles championship at the Asian Championships in 2021, most of the top Asian athletes did not participate at that time, and in general, there was still some luck. After the arrival of 2022, Yukiya Utada finally broke out.
In this Grand Slam tournament, Utada Yukiya men's doubles defeated the world champion combination Zhuang Zhiyuan / Chen Jian'an to advance, and then challenged Fan Zhendong / Wang Chuqin with Toue Hayabusa in the final, the two sides fought fiercely after 4 rounds to divide the winners and losers, although in the end it was the national table tennis championship, but each set was violently impacted by the Japanese youngsters, and it was not easy to win!
In the men's singles final, Utada Yukiya and Fan Zhendong played inextricably, the two sides repeatedly decided to lose by 2 points, and Utada Yukiya has always been fighting with injuries, several games are using ice packs to cover their necks and heads, did not expect to have such a strong fighting force, it is really not to be underestimated!
At present, Zhang Benzhihe's state is too up and down, which makes the Japanese Table Tennis Association and fans feel very disappointed, and the rise of Utada Yukiya is undoubtedly a blessing for other countries, but it will also become a major hidden danger in national table tennis: so can this young player pose a threat to the Chinese team again? Let's wait and see how he will perform in the future!