Asian Boxing C’ships: Shiva, Sumit enter quarters

TIL Desk Sports/ Fourth seed Shiva Thapa (60kg) advanced to the Asian Boxing Championship quarters with a hard-fought victory, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Shiva, a World Championships bronze-medallist and a two-time medallist at the Asian meet, edged past Kyrgyzstan’s Omurbek Malabekov in a split verdict to make the last-eight stage, where he will face Chinese Taipei’s Chu-En Lai in the quarterfinals on Wednesday.

Also advancing to the quarters was Sumit Sangwan (91kg), a former gold-medallist at the Asian Olympic Qualifiers. He defeated Mongolia’s Erdenebayar Sandagsuren in his last-16 bout late on Monday. Up ahead for Sumit is third-seeded Chinese Fengkai Yu.

Shiva managed to get the better of Omurbek by landing most of the few clean punches. Both the boxers played the waiting game for a major part of the contest but the former Asian champion from India was a shade ahead of his rival in capitalising on the opportunities he got.

Omurbek, despite his long reach, struggled to connect cleanly and even ended up sustaining a cut above his left eye. Vikas Krishan (75kg), Gaurav Bidhuri (56kg) and  Amit Phangal (49kg) are the other Indian boxers to have entered the quarters so far. The tournament, featuring 179 boxers from 28 countries, is a qualifier for the August-September World Championships in Hamburg, Germany.