ASBC Asian U-22 & Youth Boxing Championships: Four Indian boxers march into semi-finals

Astana (Kazakhstan): Indian pugilists Aryan, Yashwardhan Singh, Priyanshu and Sahil marched into the semi-finals with confident wins at the ASBC Asian U-22 & Youth Boxing Championships here on Wednesday.

Aryan gave India a perfect start with a 5-0 unanimous decision win against Uzbekistan's Juraev Shakarboy in the 51kg category. His win was followed by a good show by Yashwardhan (63.5kg), who made a remarkable comeback after going down in the first round to grab a 4-1 victory over Iran's Mirahmadi Babaheidari.

Priyanshu (71kg) and Sahil (80kg), on the other hand, didn't break sweat as they wrapped the bout with referee stop the contest (RSC) decision against Chinese Taipei's Wu Yu En and Turkmenistan's Yklymov Abdyrahma respectively.

Meanwhile, Jatin ended his campaign in the 57kg category with a 1-4 loss against Uzbekistan's A Nodirbek.

The youth semi-finals will be played on Friday.

Aryan (92kg), Nisha (52kg), Akansha Phalaswal (70kg) and Rudrika (75kg) will be in action later tonight in their respective youth quarter-finals bouts.

Late on Tuesday, Jugnoo (86kg), Tammana (50kg) and Preeti (54kg) claimed victories to enter the U-22 semi-finals.

On Thursday, eight U-22 pugilists will take the ring for their quarter-finals bouts -- M Jadumani Singh (51kg), Ashish (54kg), Nikhil (57kg), Ajay Kumar (63.5kg), Ankush (71kg) and Dhruv Singh (80kg) in the men's category and Guddi (48kg) and Poonam (57kg) in the women's section.

The tournament has seen participation from over 390 boxers from more than 24 countries, fighting for medals across 25 weight categories. The finals for the youth and U-22 category will be played on May 6 and 7 respectively.