Roberto Cammarelle looks for Olympic Gold at Super Heavy. But is there an upset brewing?

The magic of the Olympic draw is the size. At the AIBA World Championships, anyone can send a fighter. Anyone. And they get thrown in a draw of 60-80 fighters and the tournament seems to never end. The Olympics knock that number in half. This gives you the very best, the sorta good, and people given spots because the committee was nice. Sometimes that is a recipe for surprises.

54KG:

Bruno Julie is a guy who I admit to fastforwarding through most of his bouts in the tourney. And why not? Julie is from the nation of Mauritius, a country with no appreciable athletic heritage, no Olympic medals, no well known boxing program, and so on. Julie himself is 30 years old, ancient for a pro bantamweight, much less an amateur. Oddly, he has been televised in the US in both of his previous bouts, including an inane bout between himself and a fighter from Lesotho in the opening round. At the time, it seemed that such was the least important fight ever televised in the history of mankind. He then went on to beat the serviceable Tadjibayev of Uzbekistan and ended up in the Quarterfinals. Certainly the run would end there, right? Hector Manzanilla of Venezuela provided his competition, having beaten Ghana and South Korea’s representatives to the Olympics, and it seemed certain on paper that he was headed to the Semis. Oh, how I was wrong.

Julie’s style is “unpolished Hamed” which is a nice way of saying he flails a lot and doesn’t make any sense in the ring. There’s little scientific about the approach, but its so unorthodox and Julie is just athletic enough to make it work against the mediocre opponents he was blessed to draw. Manzanilla tried to countepunch off Julie jumping in but never figured out where to hit him or got the timing under control. Julie won by a score of 13-9, securing the first ever medal for Mauritius in the Olympics in any sport. There’s no future for a pro career for him, but he will achieve some level of national hero status in the Indian Ocean’s answer to Bermuda.

Other than Julie’s victory, no big surprises. In the semis, Julie will face the very defensively stout Yankiel Leon. The opposite end of the bracket sees Enkhbaytn Badar Uugan of Mongolia up against Veaceslav Gojan of Romania following both men’s comparatively easy victories.

57KG:

Khedafi Djelkhir of France came as one of Europe’s most exciting amateurs, but rarely showed up in most people’s draw sheets. Selimov and Lomachenko looked outstanding the prior year in Chicago and Raynell Williams was a much stronger dark horse candidate. Shoot forward to August 18th, and Williams has lost in somewhat controversial fashion to Djelkhir and the random draw had forced the elimination of either Selimov or Lomachenko. Djelkhir suddenly appeared bound for glory. In order to get there, he first had to get past Arturo Santos Reyes, a tough Mexican with a similar style.

Reyes/Djelkhir was everything you would want from a boxing match apart from the scoring. Both men threw huge volumes of punches and landed tons in the center of the ring, but the 14-9 score simply wasn’t indicative of the action. It was merely 2-2 after all out war broke out in round 1, and it wasn’t until Djelkhir disengaged to protect his lead that points really started to pile up for either one. If you only see one fight from this Olympics, this might be the best option.

Action elsewhere in the division was nowhere near as exciting. US audiences didn’t get to see Yakup Kilic of Turkey beat his Algerian opponent 13-6, but were treated to another stellar performance from Vasyl Lomachenko of the Ukraine. Lomachenko followed up two previous star making performances with a third, this time a 12-3 beating of Chinese fighter Li Yang. Yang attempted to press forward the entirety of the bout, but was unable to properly push the pace against the far better defensive fighter in Lomachenko. Similarly, Idel Torriente of Cuba was beaten by Shahin Imranov of Azerbaijan 16-14. Torrente repeatedly gave up his height advantage and pushed out weak punches, while Imranov found a home for the right hand lead and repeatedly landed it on the marching Torriente.

91+KG:

Its not often that the super heavyweights show more technique than their 201lb counterparts, but that is exactly the situation at the ‘08 Games. The big big men look far more prepared than their brethren one division below, and the improvement among them is noticable. Zhang Zhilei of China is a nearly 7′ tall monster who first broke out in international competition last year, and came into the Olympics expected to probably pick up a bronze. After shutting out Morocco’s Mohamed Amanissi, he was given the task of Kazakh boxer Ruslan Myrsatayev. Myrsatayev replaced prior Kazakhstan based heavyweights Dildabekov (lost to Audley Harrison in 2000 Olympic Final, two silvers and gold at Asian games, lost to Povetkin in Quarters of 2004 Olympics) or Rustam Rygebaev, who had fought at the 2007 World Championships. Given Kazakhstan’s strong history at the higher weights, it was assumed Myrsatayev would be competitive, but it was not to be. Zhilei showed good defense, a strong jab, and good footwork to dominate 12-2 and make it to the semifinals.

Joining Zhilei in his bracket is strong Ukranian fighter Vyacheslav Glazkov, who had beaten Zhilei at the 2007 World Championships in that tournament’s semifinals. With the obvious lower score totals at the Olympics, Glazkov will undoubtedly find himself in a closer bout than the 21:11 score of that first match between the two. The opposite end of the bracket is surprising. Roberto Cammarelle looked robotic as he often does in beating Oscar Rivas of Colombia, but it is David Price of the UK who he will be facing in the semis. Price was in a close fight with Jaroslavas Jaksto when Jaksto retired following the first round with back and leg injuries. Price’s fight with Cammarelle is the first meeting between the two since 2004. Price was scheduled to fight Cammarelle last year but pulled out with a hand injury at the Worlds.

Olympic coverage picks up once more at 5PM EST stateside with the quarterfinal action from the flyweights (48KG), lightweights(60KG), and light heavyweights(81KG).