LIGHT flyweight Mark Lester Durens and bantamweight Junmilardo Ogayre successfully hurdled their international debut Tuesday, scoring big wins to advance to the semifinals of the ASBC Asian Elite Men and Women Boxing Championships in Dubai.
A standout in the 2018 Philippine National Games, Durens, after drawing a first-round bye, overwhelmed Kuwait’s Mansour Khalefa and scored a referee-stopped-contest victory just as the bell ending the first round sounded.
The Cagayan de Oro native unleashed a series of combinations capped by an overhead right to Khalefa’s head, prompting the referee to stop the fight to prevent the Kuwaiti, who was in a wobbly and dazed state, from being harmed further.
Also drawing an opening-round bye, Ogayre scored a clinical 5-0 win over Sri Lanka’s Rukmal Prasanna to also reach the semis.
Aside from assuring themselves of at least the bronze medals, Durens and Ogayre also earned $2,500 each (roughly P120,000) after the International Boxing Association, known by its French acronym AIBA, decided to award cash prizes for the first time in the event totaling $400,000 (P19.2 million).
Durens will next face Kazakhstan’s Daniyal Sabit, who shut out Indon Kornelis Kwangu Langu 5-0 while Ogayre will tackle Uzbekistan defending champion Mirazibek Mirzahalilov, who scored a 4-1 win over tough Mohammad Usam Udin of Indonesia.
“Durens and Ogayre worked hard in training,” noted national men’s boxing coach Roel Velasco. “They have studied their potential opponents in the Asian championships so are doing well there.”
Light welterweight John Paul Paunayan wound up black and blue at the hands of Tajik reigning titlist Bakhodur Usmonov, who scored a referee-stopped-contest win. The referee stopped the carnage with a minute and 43 seconds left in the third round of their quarterfinals bout.
Paunayan won his first-round match last Monday with a 5-0 rout of hometown boy Majid Alnaqbi.
Also exiting was lightweight Maricel dela Torre, who absorbed a 0-5 beating from Indonesia’s Huswatun Hasanah, who bagged a bronze medal in the same weight division in the 2019 Southeast Asian Games.
Scheduled to fight Wednesday night in the quarterfinals is Olympic-bound middleweight Eumir Marcial, who drew a first-round bye. He battles Mongolian Otgonbaatar Byambar-Erdene.
The Mongolian is the same foe whom Marcial beat via RSC on the way to ruling his weight class in the Asia-Oceania Olympic qualifiers in Amman, Jordan in March 2020.
