Vijender stuns Olympic gold medallist

By IANS,

New Delhi : India’s Olympic hope Vijender shocked Athens Olympic gold medallist Bakhtiyar Artayev of Kazakhstan to storm into the semifinal of the Presidents cup boxing tournament in Taiwan.


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Vijendra registered a 12-7 victory Tuesday in the 75 kg category in the quarter-final of the competition in which only Beijing qualifiers are participating.

Vijender’s victory is a sweet revenge as he had lost a close bout to Artayev in the smi-finals of the Doha Asian Games in 2006.

The Indian flustered his famed opponent with deft movements and fast straight punches and jabs. The Kazakh could not read Vijender’s style and a last minute flurry and hectic trade of punches was not enough to save his day.

Vijender will now meet Angkhan Chomphuphuang of Thailand in the semi-final Friday.

Among other Indian boxers, Anthresh Lakra lost to Dmytro Bulenkov of Ukraine in the 57 kg category.

Jitender went down to Yunusov Anvar of Tajkistan in a hard hitting encounter in the 51 kg category. Dinesh Kumar will take on Uzbekistan’s Abbos Atoeve, current world champion in 81 kg Wednesday.

A total of 126 boxers from 26 countries are competing across the 11 weight categories The semi-finals and finals will be held on Friday and Saturday.

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