Pocket pitbull Felix Diaz claimed the Dominican Republic’s first ever Olympic boxing gold yesterday.
Diaz was at times wild, but he never let up his frenetic attacking as he easily outpointed Manus Boonjumnong of Thailand 12-4 in the featherweight final.
Manus was the reigning champion, but he struggled to contain the Dominican, who stands only 1.65m tall.
PHOTO: AP
The pair were level at 2-2 after the first round, but Diaz dominated the third, scoring eight points to just one as he swarmed all over Manus and never stopped throwing haymakers that one way or another found their target.
“We spent all day yesterday watching videos of Boonjomnong because we knew that there has to be an effective strategy to fight him, nobody else could find the right strategy, but I guess we did,” Diaz said. “I made history because I’m the second boxer in the history of the Dominican Republic to win a medal. This is so important for me, but also for my country. I don’t have a coach, I have a magician. I want to dedicate my victory to my parents, my two little kids and to all the people in the Dominican Republic who have been watching my bouts at 3am in the morning every day just to support me.”
Manus, a reformed playboy, may have lost but there was better news for his teammate, 33-year-old veteran Somjit Jongjohor, who beat Andris Laffita of Cuba 8-2 to win flyweight gold.
The 2003 world champion held up a picture of his country’s king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, after the victory.
“All my life I’ve been waiting for today. I went through so much, hurt so much, but I have tried my hardest,” Somjit said.
Laffita admitted Somjit had been too fast for him, particularly in the first two rounds during which the Thai opened up a 6-0 lead.
The most contentious fight of the evening was the middleweight final between James DeGale and Cuba’s Emilio Correa, which the Briton won 16-14.
But he was roundly jeered after the bout by a pro-Cuba crowd — seemingly mostly Russians — who felt that Correa had been hard done by.
The Cuban, who was trying to emulate his father who won gold at welterweight in 1972 in Munich, was penalized two points in the first round for biting — a charge he denied — and found himself 10-4 down at the halfway mark.
He closed things up to 12-10 at the end of the third after DeGale was penalized for holding, but the Briton’s counter-punching impressed the judges more than Correa’s aggression and punch output — although there was no doubt who the crowd thought should have won.
There were even murmured jeers at the beginning of the British national anthem.
“That’s disrespect. I don’t know where they’re going with that,” DeGale said of the booing. “But listen, I’ve got the gold medal, I made history and it doesn’t matter.”
Correa criticized the judging in the fight, something that many losing fighters have done throughout the tournament.
“I’m not happy with the way the judges scored the fight but that’s it. He won and he’s got the gold medal,” he said.
In the heavyweight division, Rakhim Chakhkiev of Russia gained revenge on Italy’s world champion Clemente Russo.
Chakhkiev was beaten by Russo in the final of the World Championships last year, but he scored two unanswered points in the final round to eek out a 4-2 victory.
The most one-sided bout of the night was at light-welterweight where Ukraine’s Vasyl Lomachenko stopped France’s Khedafi Djelkhir in the first round.
Djelkhir was totally out-gunned from the start and took three standing counts before the referee waved off the contest.
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