BANGKOK – Thai ace Worapoj Petchkoom dealt Joan Tipon another beating Friday, fashioning out a 9-6 victory to clinch a berth in the Olympics while completing a shutout for the RP PLDT-Smart boxing team in the first AIBA Asian Olympic qualifying here.
Tipon tried to rally with a barrage of punches in the fourth but could only move within 6-8 as he failed to impress the judges despite connecting with solid blows to the face, enabling Petchkoom to sail to victory with counterpunches, including a soft tag to the face.
Despite Petchkoom’s three-point win, Gaspi said the result could have gone either way, saying the Thai fighter was awarded at least two points on soft punches although he stressed that the Athens Olympics silver medallist won it fair and square.
Thus, the five-man RP PLDT-Smart boxing team went home empty-handed, its goal of clinching two Olympic berths smashed by a top-caliber field.
It would have spared the RP bets the humiliation had they not insisted in joining the event in the first place.
All the right things Tipon did in whipping Pakistan’s Mukamamad Ali in the quarters he failed to do against Petchkoom, who cleverly fought at a distance and leaned on shots that came in trickles.
In a fight billed as explosive owing to the caliber of two of the region’s top fighters in the bantamweight division, Tipon and Petchkoom virtually turned it into a lackluster duel as both spent most of the time sizing up each other.
In fact, referee Potiev Nurmuhammed of Turkmenistan had twice admonished the two fighters to mix it up.
Petchkoom scored in a brief exchange at center in the opening round and carried a 1-0 lead into the second where the Thai stepped up his charge with counterpunches each time Tipon would lunge to the body.
Petchkoom, egged on by boisterous home fans, took a 4-1 lead in the third then piled up two more points as against Tipon’s one to virtually clinch the match with a 6-2 lead in the fourth.
Tipon, also cheered on endlessly by the big Filipino crowd, went for broke and changed to attack mode but he failed to impress judges J. Dolmayos of Hungary, Takeo Tachikawa of Japan, M. Budkiv of Russia, Mohamed Zahra of Syria and Taiwan’s Chen Jing-ming. He did manage to score four but Petchkoom scored three to run away with the victory.