THE SEOUL GAMES / DAY 9 : Boxing : Carbajal, Ellis Get Victories for U.S.
SEOUL — The United States won its 9th and 10th straight bouts Sunday at the Olympic boxing tournament, won them with almost ridiculous ease. And the United States is beginning to talk about gold medals.
Light-flyweight Michael Carbajal and lightweight Romallis Ellis stopped their opponents, raising the Americans’ record to 11-2.
“Are we lookin’ good, or what?†asked super-heavyweight Riddick Bowe, who will make his debut Monday.
Said a smiling Coach Ken Adams: “We’re rollin’, but we’re not there yet,†after Ellis had hit the lucky American number--1 minute 44 seconds--for the third time. U.S. boxers have stopped three opponents in 1 minute 44 seconds, twice in the first round and Ellis in the second.
The U.S. team has been so dominant, in fact, it may have proven that some sort of qualifying standards should be established for getting into the Olympic tournament.
The Americans have outclassed more than half of their opponents and the one-sided bouts are causing some to wonder how high the risk of serious injury in the Olympics should be.
The Soviets team is also on a roll. Lightweight Konstantine Tsziou lost a 3-2 decision Sunday to East Germany’s Andreas Zueloh but that lowered the Soviet record only to 15-2.
With the tournament more than half over, the Americans were allowing themselves to at last look ahead to the gold-medal bouts Oct. 1-2.
On Sunday, Carbajal outclassed his Vietnamese opponent, Hien Dang Hieu, who was down once and had two other standing-eight counts, automatically ending the bout at 1:54 of the first round.
Afterward, Tom Coulter, U.S. assistant coach, said he didn’t know whether the Phoenix light-flyweight is a boxer or a long-distance runner.
“I told Michael he should get a college cross-country scholarship after the Olympics, instead of turning pro,†Coulter said.
“In training camp, he finished first, every time, in every training run, whether it was 1-mile runs, 220s, wind sprints or hill climbs. He can click off 5:15 miles like nothing. He’s one of the most disciplined kids we have.â€
Carbajal next will fight Canadian Scott Olson in Tuesday’s quarterfinals. It will be a rubber match. Carbajal lost to Olson in 1986, 2-1, but then beat him by the same score Aug. 13 in a USA-Canada dual meet.
Carbajal, not known as a puncher, landed a hard left hook to Hieu’s jaw inside of 1 minute and the Vietnamese crumpled to the deck.
“That was the punch that won it,†Carbajal said. “I didn’t have a doubt after that. It was right on the chin.â€
In the other bout, Ellis took a worse beating from Adams after the first round than he had from Kassim Traore of Mali.
“Romallis was throwing one punch at a time, when I’d told him I wanted him to go bang-bang-bang,†Adams said.
“I gave him a pretty good thrashing in the corner.â€
Traore was strong and agile but poorly conditioned and he drew a standing-eight count in the first round. When Ellis hit him with five unanswered punches in the second, the referee, Abdul Hani of Iraq, stopped it.
U.S. light-middleweight Roy Jones had given the Americans a 7-bout winning streak Saturday night when he slam-dunked Malawi’s Mtendere Makalamba.
Five seconds into the bout, Jones seemed to frighten Makalamba when he just missed Makalamba’s chin with a long right hand.
Makalamba backed up for 1 1/2 minutes, with Jones finally stopping him at, you guessed it, 1:44 of the first round.
“The coaches told me not to waste time with bums,†Jones said afterward, as Adams winced.
“I could see in 10 seconds he had no boxing skills, so I decided to get him out of there quick.â€
Jones was booed loudly by the South Koreans in the crowd, but he shrugged it off afterward.
“For every one of them booing, I figure there are 10,000 at home who like me,†he said.
Adams is smiling a lot these days, but he’s offering no predictions.
“This team has got a lot of momentum going for it now,†he said. “We’re going to get some gold here, but no predictions yet.â€
The continuing American theme in these bouts has been conditioning, achieved from what the coaching staff describes as a new, sophisticated training regimen introduced during the team’s 3-week training camp at Ft. Huachuca, Ariz.
“Ft. Huachuca is at about 5,000 feet to begin with, and we had the kids runing up another 1,500-feet, up a dirt road, to the top of Reservoir Hill,†assistant Hank Johnson said.
The intervention of a U.S. judge may have prevented another incident at the boxing tournament Saturday night.
South Korean light-middleweight Park Si Hun was facing a possible disqualification in his bout against Sudan’s Abdalla Ramadan. Park had hit Ramadan on the hip twice in the bout without drawing cautions from Australian referee Ron Gregor.
When Ramadan indicated he couldn’t continue because of a hip or lower back injury, Gregor sent Park to a neutral corner and began polling the five judges, asking whether the hip blows were disqualifying fouls. At that point, U.S. judge Elmo Adolph was seen shouting at Gregor.
“It was a case of an inexperienced referee getting tangled up in procedures,†Adolph said. “When I got his attention, I told him the blows were fouls but not flagrant. For a DQ, they have to be flagrant. Also, he hadn’t even cautioned the kid for the low blows.â€
Go beyond the scoreboard
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