The fourth day of the Boxing World Championships started with a loss for the Indian contingent as Pawan Bartwal went down in the second round of the men’s 55kg category but Lakshya Chahar continued to progress in 80kg winning his bout.
26-year-old Pawan, who defeated Brazil’s Michael Douglas Da Silva Trinidade in the first round, was up against an experienced opponent in form of former World and Asian champion Mirazizbek Mirzakhalilov of Uzbekistan.
The bout started slowly with both boxers sizing up each other but Mirzakhalilov unleashed a flurry of punches landing one hook and one jab on Pawan. Pawan was caught off-guard with the intensity and tried catching up to it but the Uzbek boxer was accurate with his punches. Expectedly, the judges scored 4-1 in the favour of Mirzakhalilov, a former Asian Games bantamweight champion from Jakarta, and AIBA featherweight champ from 2019. He had announced his return at the Strandja Memorial.
As the bell rang for the second round, Pawan came out with better strategy and both boxers were involved in a punch fest. Pawan landed two really good combinations of a left hook and a right jab. The duo exchanged more heavy punches with Mirzakhalilov breaching Pawan’s guard twice. The second round was also scored in the Uzbek’s favour 4-1.
In the final round, Pawan knew that he had a mountain to climb and despite two energy sapping rounds, boxed with the same intensity and better than the Uzbek landing more accurate punches than the first two rounds. However, Mirzakhalilov, who has also played as a professional boxer, brought in his experience and endurance to wait till the last few seconds to land one hook and couple of more punches, sealing the bout via unanimous decision.
While the campaign ended for Pawan, Lakshya entered pre-quarterfinals in the men’s 80kg category defeating former Asian champion and 2016 Rio Olympics quarterfinalist Hussein Iashaish by unanimous decision.
The final score of 5-0 might suggest that it was an easy bout but that is far from the truth. There was nothing to separate both the boxers by the end of the second round.
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Lakshya won the first round 3-2 after landing his punches from a distance taking advantage of his height. The story was similar in the second round but this time the Jordanian led 3-2 in the judges’ scorecard to make it 0-0 going into the final round.
However, the final round was anti-climatic as Lakshya used his straight jabs well and constantly breached the defence of Iashaish with his punches from the left side. In particular, Lakshya connected two left hooks that left Iashaish flummoxed and he barely recovered from it. Lakshya will face Frenchman Yojerlin Cesar in the last 16.
Earlier on Saturday night, Sachin Siwach, who got a first round bye, defeated Jacob Cassar of Australia 5-0 in a round of 32 bout to enter the pre-quarterfinals. He will meet Kazakhstan’s Biibars Zhexen.
Later tonight, three Indian boxers will be in action in the evening session with Jaismine (women’s 57kg) facing Jucielen Cerqueira Romeu of Brazil, Sanamacha Chanu (women’s 70kg) taking on Natalya Bogdanova of Kazakhstan and Abhinash Jamwal (men’s 65kg) competing against Hugo Barron of Mexico.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
