BITTERSWEET IN RING,
GOLD IN SIGHT After securing final berth, Mary Kom pours her heart out for Sarita, who fell prey to ‘biased’ judging
INCHEON: India’s most decorated woman boxer MC Mary Kom should feel extremely lucky she is not meeting a South Korean boxer in the 51kg category final on Thursday.
“After what she has seen on Tuesday, it has left her rattled,” said chief coach GS Sandhu. When Mary stepped into the ring exuding confidence in the first bout of the day, there was not a single Indian spectator who entertained thoughts of the fivetime world champion losing.
Her semifinal opponent Le The Bang of Vietnam did not possess the credentials to upend the champion boxer, who has made a grand comeback after the birth of her third child, Prince.
It was straight and simple. Mary Kom, agile and alert as ever, started landing punches the moment she saw chinks in the defence of her tall opponent.
Mary’s left-right combination in the first round gave an indication that Le won’t stand a chance. The left-right flurry just when Le was backing off was the way of Mary telling the young Vietnamese not to get too ambitious.
By the end of the third round, Mary Kom had virtually ensured a place in the final. And when the unanimous 3-0 decision came in her favour, all hell broke loose inside the Seonhak Gymnasium. She will take on Zhaina Shekerbekova of Mongolia in the contest for gold.
CONTRASTING FORTUNES An intervening bout later, L Sarita Devi too walked out confidently and was even more assertive than Mary Kom. The trouble was Sarita was up against a Korean. “It’s sad to see such things happening in international boxing,” said Mary, who shares a very warm relationship with Sarita. “Being a mom, I can understand how she would be feeling right now.”
As for the match, Mary Kom, who has an Asian Games bronze from the 2010 Gunagzhou Games, said, “It was a tough contest but the Vietnamese girl was landing wayward punches. Had she been accurate she could have troubled me more.”
Pooja Rani lost her semifinal bout to Li Qian 2-0, Shiva Thapa went down to Mario Fernandez of the Philippines 0-3, Satish Kumar was a 2-1 winner against Hussein Eishaish Hussein of Jordan in the super heavyweight quarterfinals, while Devendro Singh couldn’t make t he l ast- f our after a controversial loss to Shin Jonghun of South Korea 0-3, the decision too raising quite a furore.
Gold-medallist at the Guangzhou Asian Games, Vikas Krishan too moved into the semifinals getting past Uzbekistan’s Normatov Hurshidbek by unanimous points decision in the 75kg category.
But even on Monday, the middleweight boxer had taken a dig at the controversial new scoring system.
“I feel good, but boxing has gone into regression,” Krishan had said. “We are not able to get the scores so we are not able to change our game because we don’t know if we are up or down. Yes I am the defending champion but four years ago scoring was different.”