Tashkent (Uzbekistan): Seasoned Mohammed Hussamuddin (57kg) and Varinder Singh (60kg) will take centre stage on Monday when the Indian boxers kick off their campaign in the IBA World Boxing Championships here.
Experienced campaigner and 2022 Asian Championships bronze medallist Hussamuddin will fight against Alen Rustemovski of Macedonian on Monday in the first round, while Varinder Singh will go up against Mujibillo Tursunov of Uzbekistan.
Tokyo Olympian and 2019 Asian Championships silver medallist Ashish Chaudhary will take on Meysam Gheshlaghi of Iran in the 80kg opening round on Tuesday. Debutant Harsh Choudhary (86 kg) will look to make an instant impact as he will take on Australia’s B. Mcallister on Tuesday.
Nishant Dev (71kg), who finished in the quarter-finals in the 2021 edition will take on World championships bronze medallist Sarkhan Aliyev of Azerbaijan.
Four Indian pugilists will start their campaign on Thursday. In the 48 kg category, Govind Sahani will fight M Shafiev of Tajikistan, while, the 2019 Asian Championships silver medallist Deepak Bhoria (51kg) will square off against Luis Delgado in the first round. Deepak is expected to face Tokyo Olympics bronze medallist and reigning World Champion Saken Bibossinov of Kazakhstan in the second round.
Six-time Asian Championships medallist and second seed Shiva Thapa (63.5kg) got a bye in the opening round and will play against the winner of the bout between D. Phillip of Trinidad and Tobago and Brazil’s Dos Reis Yuri in the round of 16.
Narender Berwal (92+kg), who is seeded eighth in the tournament will take on Tajikistan’s M. Abroridinov in the pre-quarters.
Naveen Kumar (92kg) will fight P. Amiri in the pre-quarters on Friday as he also got a bye in the first round of the tournament. Akash Sangwan (67kg)
and Sumit Kundu (75kg) will be up against M. FU (China) and sixth seed Pavel Sosulin of Russia in the round of 16, respectively.
The gold medalists will walk away with prize money of USD 200,000. The silver medallists are to be given USD 100,000, and both bronze medallists will be awarded USD 50,000 each.
–IANS