Sofia, 26 Feb: Indian boxers Anamika (50kg), Anupama (81kg) and Govind Kumar Sahani (48kg) signed off with silver medals after going down in their respective final-round bouts at the Strandja Memorial Tournament here on Sunday.
\nAnamika, the reigning national champion, lost by a 1-4 split verdict against China’s Hu Meiyi in the lightweight final.
\nSahani too lost by a similar margin against Shodiyorjon Melikuziev of Uzbekistan in a bout which went went down to the wire.
\nAnupama, on the other hand, was beaten by a technically superior Australian Emma Sue Greentree by a 0-5 unanimous verdict.
\nIndian boxers return home with a haul of eight medals including three silver and five bronze.
\nThe bout between Sahani and Melikuziev, the 2023 Asian U-22 Championships silver medallist, was messy and ugly. Both boxers resorted to body blows and clinching.
\nThe 2022 Asian Championships bronze medallist Indian used his speed and fast punches but played with his guard down giving easy access to the Uzbek.
\nWhile attacking, Sahani threw a lot of punches but wasn’t able to land as many as he would have liked to, which tilted the result in his opponent’s favour.
\nAnamika began aggressively but Meiyi defended well, moving around the ring to take the first round by an unanimous verdict.
\nThe two boxers resorted to a lot of body-clinching in the second round as Anamika started to find her footing.
\nIn the final three minutes, Anamika was the better boxer, landing a flurry of combination punches with four out of the five judges ruling in her favour but it was a little too late.
\nIn the women’s light heavyweight final, Greentree did not let Anupama settle down, dominating from the beginning.
\nThe Indian looked tentative and played with an open guard and Greentree took advantage of that as she punched from a distance, using her long reach to good effect.
\nThe Australian pugilist looked in her element in the second round and continued the good momentum to take the lead.
\nShe took an aggressive approach in the final minutes as well, as she never gave any chance of a comeback to Anupama.
\nThe gulf between the two boxers was evident and it was a no brainer what the verdict would be.
\nFormer Indian boxing high-performance director Santiago Nieva, who is the current Australian national boxing team head coach, was seen celebrating Greentree’s win on the sidelines.
\nThree female pugilists S Kalaivani (48kg), Shruti Yadav (70kg) and Monika (+81kg) claimed bronze medals in the tournament.
\nBishwamitra Chongtham (51kg) and the 2021 World Youth champion Sachin (54kg) also ended their campaign with bronze medals. PTI<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sofia, 26 Feb: Indian boxers Anamika (50kg), Anupama (81kg) and Govind Kumar Sahani (48kg) signed off with silver medals after going down in their respective final-round bouts at the Strandja Memorial Tournament here on Sunday. Anamika, the reigning national champion, lost by a 1-4 split verdict against China’s Hu Meiyi in the lightweight final. Sahani […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-211774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}