Sport - Boxing   

One contest, three results

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE Sept. 12. Ever heard of a single match producing three results? It happened at the 50th senior National boxing tournament in Bangalore on Friday.

The opening bout in ring II was between two internationals Khemanand Belwal and junior world champion Balbir Singh. The match started off with Balbir landing a couple of punches and taking a lead in the first round.

Khemanand, meanwhile, was on the defensive and used the clinch to prevent Balbir from continuing the attack. Khemanand was twice cautioned by the referee for his questionable tactics.

In the second round Khemanand waded into the attack and with a series of punches that caught Balbir squarely gained the advantage on points. In the third round Balbir resorted to the same defensive tactics that Khemanand used and after the mandatory two warnings was declared disqualified.

This sparked off some high drama as Balbir lay flat on the mat and prevented the start of the next match.

He also prevented anyone from entering the ring. By now his brother-cum-coach Mahaveer Singh also joined in the fray and began to protest against the decision.

After much delay the boxer and his coach were cleared from the ring. Five minutes later the coach was back and began to abuse the officials in choicest Hindi expletives. After some water was doused on the coach he left the ring when assured that the technical committee would look into the result.

A while later the Delhi coach was called to the first ring and the official result sheet was sent with the judge signing it as a knock-out.

When the Chairman of the Ring Officials Commission, Col Muralidharan Raja, was asked about the second time changed decision he was taken aback and said the judge had made a mistake and that the result should have been referee stopped contest/outscored in the third round and thus the result was again changed.

So was Balbir disqualified, knocked out or did the referee stop the contest?

For those who were there it was all three with the final decision being rsc/os 3rd round. Meanwhile a couple of other boxers were not as fortunate as Balbir in having their disqualifications toned down to rsc/oc.

A senior coach said if a boxer is disqualified he does not get a certificate and thus gets into trouble with his employers. Rakesh Nautiyal of the Railways has reason to believe he was discriminated against as do a couple of other boxers whose results went down as dqs.

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