Dinesh knocks out Maharjn to advance

Dinesh, the lone Indian boxer in action on the day, defeated Nepal’s Deepak Maharjn 20-8 to enter the second round where he will face Bosko Draskovic of Macedonia.
Draskovic beat Maxwell Amponsah of Ghana 17-7 in his opening bout.

Dinesh, a Commonwealth Championship gold-medallist, established a comprehensive 10-3 lead in the first round itself.

He added five more points in the second round against his Nepali rival’s two to take firm control of the bout.

In the final three minutes, Dinesh’s points tally swelled by another five before he completed a comfortable victory.

With this, four Indian boxers have advanced to the second round of the first Olympic qualifying event as L Devendro Singh (49kg), Suranjoy Singh (52kg) and Akhil Kumar (56kg) have already registered opening-round wins.

On Thursday, India will have two boxers in action.

In the super heavyweight (+91kg) category, Commonwealth Games gold-medallist Paramjeet Samota will take on Vitalijus Subacius of Lithuania.

In the other bout, light weight (60kg) Asian Games gold-medallist Vikas Krishan will make his welterweight (69kg) debut by taking on Kyrgyzstan’s Asadullo Boimurodov.

“Dinesh used a lot of upper cuts and won most of the points from that. The Nepali opponent (of Dinesh) was constantly headbutting Dinesh for which he got a warning in the second round,” national coach Gurbax Singh Sandhu said.

“Overall, Dinesh totally dominated over his opponent,” he added.