It was another fine day for Indian boxers as Manoj Kumar and Kavinder Bisht won their opening bouts in the World Boxing Championship in Hamburg on Saturday.
Manoj defeated Moldovan Vasilii Belous 3-2 in an exhausting welterweight (69kg) contest while Kavinder dug deep to beat Japan’s Ryusei Baba in the flyweight (52kg) bout, which ended 3-2 as well.
However, there was slight disappointment as Asian Games bronze-medallist Satish Kumar (+91kg) lost his opening bout to Azerbaijan’s two-time world champion Mahammadrasul Majidov 5-0. Satish was under the weather going into the contest, having suffered a bout of viral fever before the championships.
Bisht was the first player to take the ring and he was made to toil hard against Baba, who was playing an aggressive brand of boxing. However, Bisht hung in there and soon his right hooks connected. He upped the ante further in the final three minutes to get the decisive nod from the judges in his favour. He will now face third-seed Algerian Mohamed Flissi a two-time World Championships medallist.
Manoj, the 31-year-old Commonwealth Games gold-medallist was in his elements from the word go and used his reach to good effect against Belous.
The faltering Moldovan had almost minimal response to offer in the first two rounds and resorted to throwing wild swings at the Indian. The burst did tire out Manoj in the last round and Besoul tried to grab the advantage at this stage. However, Manoj had done the job by then to ensure that the final verdict went in his favour.
“Both Manoj and Kavinder had tough bouts in a very different way. But they knew how to manoeuvre and they did just that,” said India’s Swedish coach Santiago Nieva. “The results have been good so far but there is a long way to go,” he added.
Awaiting Manoj in the second round is fourth-seeded Venezuelan Gabriel Maestre Perez. Perez had won a bronze in the 2013 World Championships and he is also a Pan-American Games gold-medallist.
Earlier, Amit Phangal (49kg) and Gaurav Bidhuri (56kg) had won their respective bouts to enter the second round of the marquee boxing event.
