Vikas in final, 3 others settle for bronze in Asian Championships

Vikas defeated Iraq’s Waheed Abdulridha 3-0 to set up a clash with Uzbekistan’s Bektemir Melikuziev in the final on Saturday. However, Satish Kumar (+91kg), L Devendro (49kg) and defending champion Shiva Thapa (56kg) lost their respective semifinals despite valiant efforts and settled for bronze medals. All three of them had earlier assured themselves of berths in next month’s World 

Championships -- the first qualifier for 2016 Olympics.

Also making the World Championships cut on Friday were, Madan Lal (52kg) and Manoj Kumar (64kg) after the Uzbek boxers who beat them in the quarterfinals -- Shakhobidin Zoirov, seeded second, and Fazliddin Gaibnazarov respectively -- advanced to the final.

Vikas, an Asian Games bronze-medallist, was the last Indian in action on Friday and he made sure that the contingent had something to cheer for after a largely disappointing day. Unlike his usual defensive style, the Haryana-lad was attacking in his approach on Friday and let loose a flurry of combination punches to push Abdulridha on the backfoot.

The Indian, the busier of the two when it came to <g data-gr-id="20">attack</g>, did not allow Abdulridha to come out of the shell guard in the first round. In the second round, Vikas targetted Abdulridha’s torso, forcing him to counter-attack. Vikas then took full advantage of the defensive lapses committed by the Iraqi and connected his left uppercuts with deadly accuracy.