Boxing at the Summer Games of the XXXII Olympiad, Tokyo

...wait, Armenia and Azerbaijan? Don't they have some serious bad blood? As in, active open hostilities, and no diplomatic relations between the countries?

No wonder they're trying to make one another pee blood the rest of the summer.

 

Can we just cancel the match after this and make this one ten rounds?

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SD for Bachkov.

He's exciting, but he would get schooled by either Davis or Mamedov.

 

Bakhodur Bahromovich Usmonov (TJK) vs. Elnur Nurgaliyevich Abduraimov (UZB), 63kg

 

Tajik (in red trunks) getting manhandled by the Uzbek southpaw.

That dude is 23??!! Four years Abduraimov's junior, apparently. He's got the hairline and reflexes of a man forty years older, though.

 

29-28 x3, 30-27 x2

UD for Abduraimov, no surprise.

 

Chick middleweight quarters up next.

 

Lauren Price (GBR) vs. Atheyna Bylon (PAN), 75kg

 

Here, since I'm not that invested with the ladies' action...cliff notes on what's going on and what you might want to cherry-pick over the next week:

• 25 sessions in all, two a day (lunchtime and dinnertime for the locals), starting with the Rounds of 32 last Saturday and culminating with gold medal finals matches next weekend (both days). We are in Session 15 now but you have mostly just missed the chaff being cut away, only a few people have advanced to qualify for at least a bronze with the really juicy match-ups pretty much all still to come.

There are probably half a dozen or so key semifinal and quarterfinal matchups you'll want to check out:

1. HW semis - David Nyika vs. Muslim Gadzhimagomedov & Julio César La Cruz vs. Abner Teixeira, both taking place on Tuesday, at noon and 6:50pm respectively local time in Tokyo, which means 11pm on Monday night and 5:50am for us.
2. Welter semis - Pat McCormack vs. Aidan Walsh & Roniel Iglesias vs. Andrey Zamkovoy, both Sunday in Japan, but again the former will be Saturday night at 11pm EST and the latter six hours later at 5am.
3. Lightweight quarters - Keyshawn Davis vs. Gabil Mamedov & Hovhannes Bachkov vs. Elnur Abduraimov in one session taking place half an hour before Nyika vs. Gadzhimagomedov - with the rest of the bracket yet to be determined. Semis once set will be at 2:30pm local time on Friday so 1:30am for us late Thursday.
4. Super heavy quarters - Richard Torrez Jr. vs. Dainier Pero & Ivan Veriasov vs. Kamshybek Kunkabayev in one session and Bakhodir Jalolov vs. Satish Kumar & Mourad Aliev vs. Frazier Clarke in the other, both taking place an hour after the welter semis on Monday night/Sunday morning. Semis once set will be at 3pm local time on Wednesday so 2am for us late Tuesday.
5. Feather quarters - Lázaro Álvarez vs. Chatchai-decha Butdee, 5:30pm Tokyo so 4:30am EST on Sunday...and then six hours before that, at 10:30pm on Saturday night, will be Kurt Walker vs. Duke Ragan, with the Irish fighter (Walker being the one that upset Mirazizbek Mirzakhalilov, considered the co-favorite with Álvarez heading in). Semis once set will be spread 8.5 hours apart on Tuesday at 11:30am and 6pm local time, so 10:30pm on the previous Monday and 5am early Tuesday for us.

There's some other potentially good stuff to come and talented boxers to keep an eye on but the seeding for those important medal stages is still yet to really coalesce in the divisions I didn't mention. And that doesn't even get into the women...

But if you want to just pare down to essentials, stick with the above - or even just the semis (and wait for the SF to be set for later in the week for the divisions that have their QF pending).