How PJ Duke Beat Bryce Andonian | WTT Finals 2025

PJ Duke made his way to Final X this weekend, beating 2 2025 NCAA champions, and then Bryce Andonian here in the finals, and he’s a senior in high school. It cannot be overstated how difficult this is to achieve. This does not happen very often.

Bryce Andonian is known for upperbody attacks, throws, and general craziness, so that’s an important thing to note, he’s dangerous. I won’t be showing every throwing engagement, just the ones that lead to scores, but there are a lot of em. And throughout the whole thing, PJ Duke looks cool as a cucumber, almost comfortable.

Anyways, Bryce gives away a shot clock point at the 1:06 mark. 1-0 Duke.

15 seconds left in the first, light hand fighting going on, Bryce goes for a collar tie but PJ grabs the wrist here, and this gets interesting. He must notice the arm was a little high up or something, he lifts the wrist up even higher which exposes the arm, gives himself enough time to get a deep underhook. That’s pretty cool, not a normal idea. Duke immediately goes for a knee pick on the right but Bryce stabilizes. This is another dangerous place to be with Bryce Andonian, if you push too hard for that far knee pick and your opponent goes underhook on that side they can easily toss you, you know, lateral drop, so you have to be careful. An ankle pick is much safer in that regard because you’re lower to the mat, it’s harder for them to get under you and get enough leverage for a throw.

Bryce tries to circle away, Duke is able to stay solid and get to that far ankle, much safer, and run Bryce backwards out of bounds for a takedown. 3-0 Duke. It’s not easy to keep this kind of forward pressure when you get to an ankle pick from an underhook by the way, usually you’d throw the underhook away, or depending on your angle, you’d try to cut the corner and come up to a double, but Duke is able to keep the momentum moving forward, which makes things a little easier.

About 15 seconds into the second, Duke digs for something similar, underhook to that far knee, but Bryce is able to pull him up this time, digs for an underhook as Duke grabs a body lock. Duke tries to just whip him down, then attacks the knee again, Bryce still stabilizes, gets his own body lock, and inside trips Duke out of bounds. Duke throws his underhook super hard to the right, as if to do a lateral drop maybe, which doesn’t get anything but keeps him from exposing his back, they both land on their sides and then recover to their bases, and come up. So, this was super close to being 4 points for Bryce, feet to back, but it wasn’t, just ruled a push out point to Andonian because Duke stepped out first. This was so close to being so much worse.

1:20 left, Bryce is chasing hard, gets to another body lock, over under, Duke tries to chest whip, Bryce slips the overhook out, goes for an ankle pick on the right, I feel like Duke steps out here but they don’t call it. Bryce still going for this body lock and so Duke goes for a double and runs Bryce out of bounds for the push out, 1-0. And that’s the last score of the match.

PJ Duke wins 4-1, makes Final X, and has to go back to high school.