After Vinesh Phogat bagged herself the first Bronze medal by an Indian Women at the Worlds, Amit Panghal and Manish Kaushik also got themselves an unprecedented chance at winning two bronze medals. The success of Amit Panghal and Manish Kaushik, recorded for India an achievement of more than one medal from the World Men’s Boxing Championships.
Amit Panghal, the army man from Rothak started his game slow against Filipino’s Carlo Paalam, as the first round looked mostly dominated by Paalam. But from the 2nd round, second-seeded Panghal’s domination ensured to the following round with a staggering aggression to defeat him with the score of 1-4, repeating the same show as in Asian Games semi-finals last year against the same competitor.
On the other hand, Manish Kaushik, in 63kg category, downed Brazil’s Wanderson de Oliveira for 5-0 to enter the semi-finals as well. Starting his bout with an underlying composure and capitalizing on the poor defense by Wanderson to get the better of him. Both the Bronze medals mark the maiden medal at Worlds for both the champions and also it counts more than a single medal at World Championships for India for the very first time.
Under 91kg category, a former India Open gold-medalist Sanjeet and under 57kg category Asian silver-winner fifth seed Kavinder Singh Bisht made their permanent exit from the championships after meeting with defeat respectively against Ecuador’s seventh-seeded Julio Castillo Torres for 1-4 and the Commonwealth Games champion Peter McGrail of England by 0-5 in the quarterfinals.
Amit Panghal will be facing Kazakhstan’s Saken Bibossinov in the semi-finals, who beat sixth seed Artur Hovhannisyan the Armenia’s European gold-medalist in the quarterfinals. Manish Kaushik, on the other hand, will go against Cuban top seed Andy Gomez Cruz. However, India has advanced from winning just 1 medal at the Worlds in wrestling, only Vijender Singh (2009), Vikas Krishan (2011), Shiva Thapa (2015) and Gaurav Bidhuri (2017) have previously got medals at World Boxing Championships.
