Chances are becoming better for the Philippines to send more qualifiers to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
This is after the Philippine boxing team came away with victories in two of three preliminary matches that it joined on Saturday in the Asia-Oceania Olympic Qualification Tournament Saturday at the Prince Hamzeh Hall in this ancient capital city.
Filipino fighters Carlo Paalam and Irish Magno made it to the quarterfinals after hurdling their assignments.
“They are focusing on their qualification. And there’s good news that we can have more,” said Philippine Sports Commission chairman William Ramirez following Friday’s Philippine Sportswriters Association Awards Night where he was hailed as Executive of the Year.
Paalam and Magno joined early quarterfinalists featherweight Nesthy Petecio, middleweight Eumir Marcial and lightweight Riza Pasuit in disposing of their rivals.
The 21-year-old Paalam picked off his rivals during a series of counterattacks, and won against Afghanistan’s Ramish Rahmani via unanimous decision, 5-0, the flyweight division.
The 27-year-old Magno was impressive when she easily disposed of Winnie Au of Hongkong in an abbreviated RSC2 (Referee Stopped Contest, 2nd round).
Magno’s right had Au stumbling forward and a left uppercut to the gut put the Filipina fighter on the right track in round one.
Then Magno unleashed another left-right combination to finish off Au on the second round.
Veteran campaigner Ian Clark Bautista got knocked down twice to Chatchai Decha Butdee of Thailand, 0-5.
ABAP secretary-general Ed Picson, said there are now five of seven boxers in the quarterfinals
And this is more than satisfactory.
“We didn’t get the draw we were hoping for. Ian faced Butdee early and James Palicte had the 2017 Asian champion Uzbek Abduraimov in his first fight, but that’s the way it is. Now we have five, so we will aim for 5 qualifiers for Tokyo. But none of the five fights will be easy”.
Meanwhile, Nesthy Petecio is set to meet Japanese Sena Irie, with whom she’s 1-1 head to head, while Magno takes on five-time world champion Meri Kom of India, and Pasuit clashes with no. 3 seed Wu Yi Shih.
Paalam will go up against no. 1 seed Amit of India, and Marcial tackles Mongolia’s Byamba Erdene-Otgonbaatar.
The Filipino boxers need to win their respective quarterfinal matches to be assured of a berth in the Tokyo Olympics.