AIR DATE:
EPISODE: Episode 11
IABA. IOC. Strandja, Bulgaria 72nd International Boxing Tournament update. Join us on our on-going exploration of the Olympics to be held in Tokyo 2021, featuring Christian from the Friday Night Panel, and the route to the ring. Watch TalkinFight weekdays at 12, 4, 7, and 8:30pm EST on YouTube or LIVE at talkinfight.com/live @Olympic @IOC Media @Abroad in Japan @strandja
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#boxer #boxing #boxingtalkshow
Transcribed:
Hello, viewership, hello, talking fight fans around the world, in fact welcome to another episode of our olympic special leading up to tokyo olympics uh we’ve been watching some boxing uh from bulgaria, both christian and i this morning i think you’re taking notes, i’m not but uh.
I’M always taking notes graham and yeah.
I know this has got again we’re straight a little off the olympics here, but that new importance put on these internationals and what that’s going to mean for international rankings and what that’s going to mean for some athletes in their path to the olympics.
We definitely have been following the tournament going on in sofia and bulgaria at the moment pretty closely.
So today was semi-final action.
I know both of us were up at the crack of dawn with uh the tv i’m watching uh.
What was going on so the afternoon session is over the evening session is actually underway right.
Now it’s been going on for about an hour right now, so i don’t know about you, but i’ve got my tebow running and i’ll be watching some of those.
A little later on this evening, uh for some of the fights that we did see today there were some uh, some walk-offs, so we didn’t necessarily get to see fights in every uh.
You know the full picture in every category.
We have to actually wait for the metals to be handed out at that point.
Uh.
But one thing to keep in mind is: it is semi-final action uh in the tournament structure here.
Is that any name that you hear today minimally is walking away with the bronze methods, so winners from today are going to be headed into either guaranteed gold or silver position and they’ll be fighting for those and anyone who did not qualify to go onto the finals Tomorrow is going to be will be awarded a bronze medal from the department so already great athletes.
Anyone you hear today, even with the losses are, you know, world-class athletes and put up just an absolute hell of a show today.
So yeah we started off this morning with uh with some flyweight action, russia and bulgaria and honestly the first rounds of the afternoon session.
Were i mean i just nothing but ten: nine cards, ten, nine, ten, nine, ten, nine and that was in the light weight, so that was the welterweight uh, the kazakhstan, the kazakhstan you had uh valentin uh ozova won that one over the bulgarian uh yumalova, and that Was in a unanimous decision – and i said everything on this card was just – was just nine ten, nine, ten, nine right across the board – and it was almost like watching – twins, twins fight uh between this match.
Just you know, you saw more more shots landing on leather than you did actually on the body.
I think you can agree with me on this one.
It wasn’t necessarily these were boring, fights to watch it.
Just there really wasn’t a whole lot going on.
It was just so evenly matched and that, but we did come away with a unanimous decision on that.
One uh moving along, though uzbekistan uh the uh kamedova versus ukraine’s anna lasenko.
Now lesenko won this one on a split decision.
It was a slow first round uh, but intensity really picked up on the second between these two uh.
The ukrainian was definitely sorry uh.
It was definitely hitting harder, but it just at the end of the day it was.
It was enough, the other, because we had our uzbekistanian was just faster but was not landing shots the same way and just was not aggressive enough at the end of that match to pull off a win and that’s what, at the end of the day, took it Away from her uh, my personal thought is it’s gon na be uh.
Lisenko, though in is gon na take gold in this particular weight class over uh human uh, sorry, uh, humanova, yumazova camp.
I’M sorry again, you know me and my pronunciations are all over the map.
Um, but my guess is gon na be ukraine over bulgaria in this weight class, and that’s just because lisenko is just at the end of the day, just way more intense the intensity.
The aggression was just way better and i think she’s going to be hoping for a lot of points early out of the gate and she’s going to hope to tire her opponent out really quickly thoughts, feelings on those first couple of matches.
Graham, i know you were watching as well: yeah um, i you know what surprised me the most uh, not necessarily the caliber of the boxing boxing itself is, is great, but the caliber of the broadcasting i thought was pretty shite uh, both the broadcasting and the camera Perspectives were like, like amateurship, i guess it doesn’t matter good commentators.
The commentators knew what they’re doing so.
You know our our blow by blow commentary that we’re watching.
There was yeah i’ll agree with you that like, but that was well done.
But as far as your camera angles, as far as the information that you the viewer being presented with, while watching this broadcast yeah left a lot to be desired under a professional situation, you would see more stat you’d see names up longer.
You would see stats um.
You would see scorecards at the end of the round.
How did this turn out uh? We aren’t seeing that that is true and for europe’s oldest boxing tournament, it is a little disappointing that they weren’t able to kind of get there getting together, because, regardless of whether or not they were going to have crowds at the end of the day, they were Going to be televising this and with the actual production very fast-paced, i mean they were wiping down those ropes and getting the next boxing pair in there, just like oh yeah, just within 30 seconds yeah, because because it was live, it wasn’t taped, and so it was Not like anyone it’s in their edit so anyway, from a production perspective, these guys have it together, uh with respect to leading the boxers out putting them in the ring.
Having that fight finished wiping down the ring bringing the next pair, it’s pretty fast in terms of like entertainment, uh, it was good well done but, like i said, not a lot of down time for sure, not a lot of doubt right so, but but i said You know the one thing that disappointed me was uh.
I would have thought they would have had their game, given it’s an online audience uh well, given that they, regardless of the pandemic, they were still going to have to televise this, and they were still going to be putting it online.
This this shouldn’t be a we needed to scramble kind of thing.
This should have been well well thought out well in advance.
Well, i’m just i’m just saying that you know i’m sure they would have televised it years ago.
So i’m pretty sure those very same television crews would have been available in the same amount of graphics that we have here.
Have they have there? I’M just i i just caught me off guard uh, it’s almost like someone’s in there with their iphone almost uh anyway.
One of the big ones, though yeah one of one of the big fights, though today, regardless of how it was filmed uh, would have been the uh, the men’s flyweight uh, one of the big one semis that we had.
There was uh between india’s deepak kumar, yeah, yeah and uh.
Uzbekistan’S uh zorev, who was the world champion, was who was the gold medalist from rio exactly so he obviously he had so.
There were some strong thoughts that he was just going to kind of walk away on this one, but deepak kumar has been kind of a big story.
If you uh you, google strandia right now and just hit the word news uh prior to the tournament.
You know.
Prior to what’s happening today, seven out of ten stories that you’re going to find will be about deepak kumar.
So it’s interesting remember how we were mentioning who’s had their qualifiers, so it occurred to me that russia may in fact be they’re.
Not are they well? Are they european, i’m not sure uh but they’re? Definitely asian um so anyway, so so so from across the board, you had indians, russians, a whack of former uh, former soviet republics, yeah right right and uh, and what i saw traditional western european, very few traditions.
But then i heard that comment about the big event happening next week in spain and i’m going wow uh there’s a lot of action going on drawing lots of participants from spanning india, the subcontinent, russia and take russia all the way.
Eastbound all the way to camp catcher, and i thought wow.
This is a lot of action going on over there right now, yeah the russians will be fighting in the european tournament.
I just had to double check that before i bounced in there just taking a look at the uh at the uh asia oceana tournament that has already taken place and just taking a look at some of the uh.
The results from that and we’ve seen.
No russians fought in that tournament, so the russians look like they’re going to be lumped in with the european tournament, because i can’t imagine that absolutely no russian qualified for the olympics, so yeah they’ll be they’ll, be uh yeah, exactly they’ll, be part of the european tournament.
So anyway, so yeah, so i might take a look at that.
Sir.
Go ahead, your takeaway i i was just the eighth, the quality of the boxes from around the world in the sense of that, wherever they’re from wow, the diversity was blowing me away.
Uh, the quality of the boxing second to none is up there and that that dumar, the indian chop, uh wow, gave it us all to a world champion and beat him um so anyway.
So yeah, but yeah took the first two rounds on that.
One zorov uh kind of he ramped everything up in the third, but it just wasn’t enough to catch up.
He had been too slow and he had his bell rung.
Just you know too many times in the middle.
You know at one point it did look like he got staggered pretty good in the second at one point, but it wasn’t till the third he tried to.
He tried to mount some kind of comeback on this one, but it just it just wasn’t happening, oh good.
So what what else did you see cnn’s after that? Oh yeah? Well, then, after that we had uh, you know because they’re dead well, yeah they’ve been still in the flyweight category before they got up into the middleweights uh.
I don’t think we did welter weight was only the women’s welter, that’s gone through so far.
Okay, i think the men’s welter is part of this afternoons.
Okay, because i walk over, i missed a couple came back and anyway well, we also saw we saw no.
We actually saw a fight get stopped today.
Uh ilya papa beat uh his armenian counterpart in the first round with a surprise left, and that was you know.
Halfway into the first round yeah i saw that as well, yeah, so yeah, so even at the olympic level.
We’Re seeing knockouts so not a bad thing: the middleweights, the middleweights right after that we saw middle age.
We saw in one fight, we saw two standing, eights yep and then the fight eventually stopped in the third, and that was uh.
Kizniak won that one alexander kisneck got out of ukraine uh against the moldova and andre remy, and that was a that was supposed to be.
You know.
A pretty heavy hitting fight and people were looking forward to this one uh, but you know again: kizniak just uh in the second round, put uh vermeil through not one but two different standing eights and i kind of agree with the announcers on this one that it Probably it could have been, maybe should have been stopped in the second.
But how do you stop vreme when he’s still throwing punches right and even into the third, when they finally did stop it to remy’s uh credit? I mean he wasn’t defending and that’s why that’s? Why it had to be stopped? He just he was offering no defense, but it went on as long as it did, because, even though he couldn’t defend himself, he was still he was still attacking.
He was still throwing punches while just eating uppercuts one after another like there was just.
I did steady diet of uppercuts at that point, so i mean it was stopped later than it could have been.
But it’s i mean it’s hard to do that.
You know if you’re in the ring you’re, you are the referee, and you see this guy still is putting up a fight.
How do you stop that? You know it’s easy to arm their quarterback as always, but uh that one i was.
I was a little surprised by so good entertainment, good boxing, going on right now, uh over there in bulgaria for free available on the olympic channel.
It’S pretty cool yeah, but i mean from that morning session until we got all the way up to the middleweights there and that uh kishny act, vermae fight pretty much.
I think every card prior to that, and i think, though, out of the fights that happened in one two, three four six or seven fights that had gone on before that part in the day, every single one of them had been scored 10-9 across the board.
It wasn’t it wasn’t until that middleweight fight uh, where uh remy went uh, had to have the fight stop for him that we actually saw the first 10-8 of the day.
So we’ve been seeing some really really evenly matched fights going forward here.
Yep.
Will it change the rankings i haven’t heard of any major upsets at this point uh that appeal? Oh, my god, this our minds are blown and this is going to catapult.
You know so and so up into the is it helping rankings.
Of course i mean again anyone you hear about today.
Anyone we’re talking about is already taking home a bronze medal from an international.
Of course.
That’S going to help your rankings.
Is it gon na help as much as you know, a gold medal? No, of course not, but it definitely definitely helps you know.
Top three is still better than you know, not meddling at all, and you also have to keep in mind that there were 200 uh uh competitors at this tournament.
So we had 200 people boxing for what’s 13 gold medals at the end of the day, so meddling at all is still you know it’s, it’s no small feat, and it’s still, you know you’re still a world-class athlete at that point in time and we, you know, As as we’ve seen with some of these uh some of these fights going on here and that we some surprise stuff again knock down standing eights, we just saw in the very last fight i was just watching here before i had to uh pop off and uh To come on here with you, i was watching uh, the second of the light welterweight for the women’s division.
Uh beatrice ferreira, beating uh, a nuni astarian uh.
You might know uh very recently beat uh katie harrington.
Who was ireland’s hope for this uh and in a split decision that harrington was visibly not happy with? If you happen to watch any of that footage or if you go onto youtube and watch yesterday’s footage at all, you’ll see uh and it was uh an interesting decision, we’ll say and uh.
I believe harrington was uh, suggesting that the referee that the judges have uh eye exams in slightly more colorful terms as she was leaving yesterday.
She was not amused uh, but she went on.
That was the fight.
I was just watching her against the reigning world champion.
Beatrice ferreira who’s one of uh, one of the only people fighting out of the americas here uh in this tournament of fighting for brazil and is the reigning world champion uh beatrice ferrer did win that on split decision.
I mean out of the opening of that fight.
Again, it was pretty pretty just common, it was.
They were just kind of feeling each other out.
There wasn’t a whole lot going on in the in the first little bit there uh, it was just a well-paced fight between two well-matched fighters.
Esterian usually likes to keep her opponents kind of at arm’s length, uh and likes to play that outside game, whereas uh ferreira does not and didn’t give her an inch and that really paid off at the end of the day.
Uh.
As far went on with that split decision to to move on for a gold medal, uh try on this one it’ll be interesting.
Uh this this one, this category in particular because she’s going to be going against uh mira, pucken and patoken out of finland who uh won her bout today against uh her kazakh opponent, uh ibrahimov, i’m sorry! I know i wrote this down here somewhere, ibrahimonov ibrahimov, sorry out of kazakhstan um now her defend now, this is going for the token here didn’t start boxing until she was 28.
she’s, actually right at the uh, the cutoff right now this one as she is boxing At the age of 40.
, so she was 20, 27 or 28 and a mother of two when she decided to take up boxing and is now.
You know obviously a well experienced fighter at this point in time.
But you know at 40 years of age as we know, that is the cut-off for international.
So this will be one of the last times we get to see her and she is already too old to compete at the olympic games, but i think she’s going to leave it all in the ring for that particular one.
That’S that’s going to be a good one um.
You may also remember that name uh, because she’s talking about the irish losing today apparently uh she was the one who beat uh katie taylor in rio yeah, so the women’s welterweight gold tomorrow is gon na be uh.
That’S gon na be a one one to keep an eye on for sure between uh ferreira and uh and puckkin uh, and we had sargon.
I was just gon na say we were gon na plan to do an episode tomorrow as a recap of these gold.
When do you think uh they’ll be over? Oh i’ll have to take a look at what the uh the schedules.
Obviously today is running longer because we’ve got 26 fights versus 13 fights tomorrow.
So i’m just curious like our morning, their afternoon type thing, i have a feeling it’ll, probably because gold medal is 13.
they if they’re doing i.
I actually don’t have this schedule in front of me for tomorrow’s fights, if they’re doing it again as the morning and afternoon session or if they’re going to be doing just a straight afternoon session timing, wise it’ll, be the same as today.
I have to imagine so.
If it’s only an evening session, it’ll be starting: uh 11 a.
m, eastern standard time and uh.
What was about 6 45 7 a.
m.
This morning the uh the their afternoon session started in bulgaria.
So i’ll have to look that up and i’ll uh i’ll, let you know but yeah whatever time that finishes, let’s uh you and i find an excuse to connect tomorrow, just to have a quick look, because we also saw we saw some great fights.
Today we saw we saw a couple of people who looked more, like uh they’re having a uh two guys fighting in a phone booth at one point uh, which one was that which fight was that that would have been the uh okay, that was russia’s pavel suzukin.
Uh versus kazakhstan’s uh ru reyes uh now that went to the russians on that one, but again at uh.
At one point, the second round again it looked like two guys fighting in a uh in a phone booth.
It almost looked like more like a hockey fight than an actual box, and i think that’s the mid layer right here just trying to find a way to punch each other in the face from this far away it was.
It was interesting uh.
It looked a lot more that that particular fight looked a lot more like a traditional boxing match a little bit more measured and understanding.
Once the you know we got into the third round, they actually backed up a little and threw a few more shots at each other uh, but again that one that particular one went to the russian and then we saw you know.
We saw some other really weird stuff today too, where guys tried very quickly to win the heavyweights.
The first of the heavyweight uh uh bouts today uh with uh naric minassian out of armenia, uh winning a split decision against.
I believe the only georgian fighting at this stage of the game – uh yondanan now these guys yodan especially, was uh exhausted by the end of the first round, and just absolutely the pair of them were just dead on their feet by the end of the second uh Nokia i mean the oden is condition uh again, i’m mispronouncing this uh yodanian, his conditioning just was not up to scratch for this fight at all and minassian.
Basically, in my opinion, just took this on a flurry of body shots because they were coming in and these are big guys, the pair of them, and they were just trading body shots at that point and menacing just took more of them.
At the end of the day, this is going to be a hard one to call, though, because the second bout that happened between uh willifred, uh fontaine and bulgaria’s radoslav pentalev uh, who did win that uh pandalev, won that one on unanimous decision um at the end Of the day, panda lives faster, a lot faster, in my opinion, than uh the minastian, but minassian hits like a dump truck, whereas panalev was scoring a lot of a lot of quick blows and i mean he’s not hitting like a pixie or anything like that.
You know he’s not he’s not out to tickle here, but he’s not hitting with the same the same power as minassian and that’s where it’s it.
If it is a short fight, i think this is going to go to minassian as short as these fights ever.
Are you know if it goes if it gets stopped? It’Ll get stuck because of minassian? If it goes the full three rounds, though, i think that uh pandelev has a very good chance of taking this on points, because i think his conditioning is better and he’s going to be able to outlast manasseh and i think he’s going to be able to dance Circles around him cool good breakdown, so we’ve got some stuff to look out for tomorrow and i said uh for anyone who’s not watching it currently, because for some reason they’re watching me instead uh.
I suggest that you check out the olympic channel right now, because they are streaming the last half of the afternoon or the evening session from bulgaria right now and still plenty more at least an hour or two more of uh boxing to come out of bulgaria.
And then, tomorrow i said the gold medal sessions, excellent, so for all the fans out there.
This is a good opportunity to catch up on some pre-olympic boxing, not not qualifying but a good tournament.
Nonetheless, so there you go um did you have anything else for us before we well? Fortunately, in olympic news there have been no major changes, rule changes, venue, changes, personnel, changes or horrifying new developments to the cove and 19 pandemic, or the precautions or reactions that we’re taking for that.
So that being said, no for fingers crossed.
No, i have nothing more for today.
Thank you, okay, great! Well, thanks very much for that uh wrap-up of the sonia tournament over in bulgaria uh.
As i said earlier, it’s leading up to the tokyo olympics in uh july.
Uh i did have i forwarded you some information on what the heck.
Well, we were gon na mention.
I was gon na we’re gon na talk about that a little later on, because that one that wasn’t necessarily time sensitive, but it was in the good news category.
So i suppose we should mention that that they have officially announced the uh when the torch relay will be beginning for the tokyo olympics, and they will be doing everything they can.
Obviously, as you’re handing that thing, torched off between physical people they’ll be doing everything they can uh as far as kovin 19 uh precautions and sanitizing and testing for the runners and everything like that.
But in a very positive note that things are in fact moving forward and in some sense of normalcy, uh for the games, the relay is set to begin on the 25th of march correct alrighty.
On that note, thank you very much again and thanks very much for our listenership for uh liking, sharing and subscribing and remember if you are subscribing to ring that bell get our notifications.
We might join you for a special episode tomorrow, uh, but if not we’re definitely back on monday and prior to that uh beyond the friday night panel this evening, you just can’t get rid of me so much fun all right.
Thank you very much, we’ll see you tonight cheers
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