Internet Desk: Shiva Thapa India’s fourth seeded boxer advanced to the quarter-finals with a hard-fought victory at the Asian Boxing Championship in the 60kg category.
Shiva, who is a bronze-medalist at the World Championships and a two-time medalist at the Asian meet, defeated Omurbek Malabekov of Kyrgyzstan in a split verdict to reach the quarters.
Shiva will face Chinese Taipei’s Chu-En Lai in the last eight tomorrow.
Sumit Sangwan, a former gold-medallist at the Asian Olympic Qualifiers also reached the last eight in the 91kg category. He defeated Erdenebayar Sandagsuren of Mongolia last night. Sumit faces third-seeded Chinese Fengkai Yu in his next match.
Shiva managed to get the better of Omurbek by landing most of the few clean punches in the bout.
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.
The top-six in each of the 10 weight categories in this tournament will make the cut for the big event.
India had won four medals at the last Asian Championships in 2015. Vikas had won the country its lone silver medal, while Shiva, L. Devendro Singh (52kg) and Satish (+91kg) had settled for bronze medals.
India’s last gold medal at the Asian meet had come in 2013 through Shiva, when he was competing in the bantamweight division. Prior to that M Suranjoy Singh (52kg) had won a gold medal in the 2009 edition of the Championship.