Kang Dongshin beat India’s Paritosh 5-0, and then an 11-year-old beat him 10-2 for Asian Games gold
India’s Puyo Puyo and Pokemon Unite campaigns both ended on Saturday, the day Japan’s Yuki Kurihara won esports gold at 11.
Sep 26, 2026
Paritosh’s Asian Games ended in the Puyo Puyo Champions quarter-finals on Saturday, beaten 5-0 by South Korea’s Kang Dongshin at the Aichi Sky Expo. It was a heavy defeat, but Kang then went all the way to the final, and lost that 10-2 to an 11-year-old.
Yuki Kurihara is a primary school student who only got his pro licence in April, and he is the youngest athlete Japan has ever sent to an Asian Games. Al Jazeera and South Korea’s Star News called him the youngest gold medallist in the Games’ history, though Japan Today points out that no public record of youngest medallists exists.
No way back for Paritosh
The debutant got into the last eight the hard way. In Thursday’s group stage he beat Mongolia’s Munkhzorig Ganbold 3-0 and Singapore’s Koh Mun June Justin 3-2, then lost 3-0 to Chinese Taipei’s Tzu-ang Kuo and 3-2 to Thailand’s Tanarak Wongkitikun. Two wins from four was enough for third in Group B.
Kang, 24, was a different level. Paritosh did not win a single game against him.
Kurihara beat Kang twice
Kang had already lost to Kurihara once this week, 3-1 in the group stage, which was his only defeat in Group A. The final was even more one-sided. Kurihara went a game down early, then took ten of the next eleven. In the semi-final he had beaten Tanarak, one of the two players who beat Paritosh in the group, 10-1.
He barely reacted at the end. “To be completely honest, I felt a bit embarrassed, so I couldn’t really show my expressions,” Kurihara said afterwards, as reported by Al Jazeera. He was happier talking about the medal itself, which he called “really beautiful, shiny and heavy”.
Pokemon Unite team out too
India’s six-man Pokemon Unite team also went out on Saturday. After an opening 2-0 defeat to South Korea on Friday, they lost 2-1 to Hong Kong in the final selection match for the last quarter-final place, and it is Hong Kong who now play the Philippines in the last eight.
The roster of Adnan Mohammed Badshah, Rudra Narayan Nayak, Deepkumar Vipulbhai Patel, Sai Krishna Nalluri, Dipjyoti Laxman Nath and Reuben Godfrey Fernandes came through the Revenant XSpark line-up that won India’s National Esports Championships this year.