Alex McClintock hands me the final leg of the Round of 16, Australian rule football style. Three weight classes wrap up this round, with two of them featuring gold medal-worthy match-ups. It’s like in the NBA, when one conference is so much better than the other that the (for example) Western Conference champion is strongly viewed as the overall league champion in waiting.
There are only so many pictures of roving unofficial preview mascot Errol Spence, Jr. to run, so here’s Errol Flynn instead.
All of this action takes place Saturday. Good news for those in the United States who are frustrated with the delayed/unreliable NBC website stream, too — both sessions will be simulcast on CNBC.
Light Flyweight 49kg/108lb
Reigning 2008 gold medalist Zou Shiming got a bye in the Round of 32, which in most tournament sports would still likely mean a relatively easy match-up in the second round. Nope. Instead, he gets fellow gold medal contender Yosbany Veitia Soto, who is coming off a blowout first round victory. The other top match-up pits Russian David Ayrapetyan against Puerto Rican Jantony Ortiz Marcano. Ayrapetyan is coming off a bye himself, while Ortiz secured a big first round win that wasn’t considered as big a win as it was scored. The only contestant from boxing-mad Philippines, Mark Barriga, fights Birzhan Zhakypov of Kazakhstan.
Light Welterweight 64kg/141lb
Here’s your other gold-medal-worthy-bout-in-the-second-round: 2011 International Amateur Boxing Association 2011 champ Everton Don Santos Lopes of Brazil makes his London 2012 debut against Roniel Iglesias Sotolongo, who won bronze in the last Games and is now more seasoned, and, naturally, won his first round bout big. Rough. Also worth putting your peepers on: Medal hopefuls Denys Berinchyk and Sweden’s Anthony Yigit facing one another, although Yigit had a bit of a tough go of in the Round of 32.
Light Heavyweight 81kg/178.5lb
This weight class was expected to be one of the more competitive of the 2012 Olympics, and the Round of 32 bore that out, with very few cakewalks. Julio La Cruz Peraza is the formidable reigning 2011 AIBA champ, and his opponent in the Round of 16 isn’t a gold medal hopeful, but he’s a dangerous type — Jordan’s Ihab Almatbouli, the only representative of his nation and someone who performed well in the Round of 32. There’s so much parity here it’s hard to separate out the next tier, Might as well watch whatever light heavyweight match-up you can.
