New Delhi: Olympic hero Vijender Singh was on Saturday ousted in the very first round, upstaged by his Cuban nemesis Emilio Correa Bayeux, but Jai Bhagwan entered the second round on a mixed day for Indian boxers at the World Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Vijender, a bronze-medallist at the previous World Championships in Milan and the 2008 Beijing Olympics, lost 9-16 to Bayeux in the opening bout of the 75kg middleweight category.
Bayeux had beaten the Asian Games gold-medallist Indian in the Olympic semifinals before a hand injury took away almost a year from him.
“Bayeux kept a shell guard in the first round and scored through occassional uppercuts. That spoilt the bout for us. Besides he managed to connect a very powerful uppercut in the final round which resulted in an eight count for Vijender,” national coach Gurbax Singh Sandhu said.
The loss means that the seventh-seeded Indian will have to wait till next year’s Asian Olympic qualifiers to make the cut for the London Games as he needed to reach at least the quarterfinals to qualify from the ongoing event.
But Commonwealth Games bronze-medallist Jai Bhagwan thrashed Evaldas Petrauskas of Lithuania to enter the second round. Jai beat Petrauskas, a Youth Olympics gold-medallist, 15-8 to enter the second round where he will take on Czech Miroslav Serban. Serban beat Nuwan Thennakoon of Sri Lanka 16-10 in his opening bout.
Vijender, who has slipped from top to number eight in the world rankings, was trailing from the start, finishing the opening round 1-4 down.
However, Jai ensured that India had something to cheer about with his win in the afternoon session. (PTI)