Bajrang Punia has become the first Indian wrestler to get seeded at the World Championship, which will be held in Budapest, Hungary from October 20 to 28.

In the 65kg category of men's freestyle event, Punia has been seeded third. With 45 points in the ranking list released by the United World Wrestling, he had been accorded the third spot.

This year, Punia won gold medals in both the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games. He defeated Kane Charig of Wales by technical superiority at CWG 2018 while he overcame Japanese Takatani Daichi 11-8 in the Asian Games final.

Punia recently expressed his displeasure over not receiving the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award while Mirabai Chanu and Virat Kohli were accorded the honour by the President of India.

Also read - How Kohli was chosen for Khel Ratna over Bajrang Punia. Sports Ministry explains

However, days after threatening to move the court over his non-selection for the award, Punia said he was advised by his mentor and 2014 Asian Games gold medallist Yogeshwar Dutt to concentrate on World Championship.

United World Wrestling has introduced the seeding system for the first time ever in the World Championship, utilising the pre-championship performance ranking points to determine the competitive seeds. This follows the new ranking series that was announced during the 2017 World Championship in Paris. Previously, wrestlers were pulled into the brackets via a random draw of lots.

Turkey's Selahattin Kilicsallayan is the top seed (50 points) in the 65 kg class weight category while Ilias Bekbulatov from Russia and the Indian grappler are positioned second and third, respectively. Haji Aliyev from Azerbaijan is stationed fourth in the seeding list.

Bajrang has been training for the last fortnight at the Matrahaza Olympic Training Center in Matrahaza, Hungary. He had reached Hungary before other team members arrived on October 10.

Understandably, Punia was elated after getting seeded for the big event but he wanted to now perform according to the seeding given to him.

"I had come here early to get acclimatised to conditions and I am fully focused. I hope I can live up to everybody's expectations and return home with a gold medal," Punia said.

Punia had previously won a bronze medal at the 2013 World Championship and now aims to change the colour of the medal to end the year on a high.