Indian boxer Manoj Kumar boxes his way into pre-quarter finals

A former Asian bronze-medallist, Manoj will next be up against fifth seed Uzbek Fazliddin Gaibnazarov in the pre-quarters scheduled on Sunday. Evenly-matched on pace and agility, the two boxers were quite distinct in their attacking approach. 

While Petrauskas, the London Olympics bronze winner in lightweight 60kg division, aggressively tried to engage the Indian from close range, Manoj preferred to back-peddle and hit from a distance. At the end of the opening three minutes, it was Manoj’s tactics that found favour with the judges, who awarded the first round to the former Commonwealth Games gold-medallist on a split decision. 

In the second round too, Petrauskas was the more aggressive of the two but Manoj managed to stave off the challenge by sticking to his strategy of keeping a distance and hitting occasional uppercuts to the Lithuanian’s body. None of the boxers were willing to make any change to their strategy in the final three minutes as well although the desperate attacks launched by Petrauskas did unnerve Manoj to an extent. 

The pumped up effort secured Petrauskas the final round but it was not enough to turn the bout in his favour as Manoj was adjudged the winner. Manoj joined 7th seed Vikas Krishan (75kg) as the second Indian in the pre-quarters. Tomorrow, Shiva Thapa will open his campaign in the bantamweight (56kg) category. 

In other events, judoka Avtar Singh failed to progress after losing to Refugee Olympic Team’s Misenga Popole in the second round of the men’s 90 kg and weightlifter Satish Sivalingam finished 11th in the men’s 77kg Group B (lower) category.

Sivalingam lifted 148kg in snatch and 181kg in clean and jerk for a total of 329kg to finish fourth in the six-lifter Group B category. 

After the Group A competition was over, he stood overall 11th in the field of 14 lifters. Sivalingam, who had a won gold in the 2014 Commonwealth Games, holds the national record of 336kg (149+187) in men’s 77kg. 

Group B is meant for lower-ranked competitors who have registered lower entry weights and by finishing fourth even in this category, Sivalingam has no chance to be on the podium. 

Kazakhstan’s Rahimov Nijat clinched the gold with a total lift of 379kg (165+214), while China’s Lyu Xiaojun and Mahmoud Mohamed were second and third with a total of 379kg (177+202) and 361kg (165+196) in Group A event.