Nesthy Petecio erased a tentative start with power shots in the last two rounds to fashion out a dominant 5-0 win over Congo’s Marcelat Sakobi Matshu on Saturday to easily advance to the Round of 16 in the women’s featherweight division of the Summer Olympic Games’ boxing competitions at the Kokugikan Arena.
After a shaky first round, Petecio went to work starting in the second, using her lateral movements to create clear angles, where she landed her power blows.
The game-plan continued in the third, including heavy combinations midway, mixed by a defensive effort in the end to seal the win (30-27, 30-27, 29-28, 30-27, 30-27).
The breezy victory, however, was just the calm before the storm as she takes on a tornado of a foe in the Final 16 in Chinese Taipei’s Lin Yu-Ting of Chinese Taipei, a former world champion and the top seed in the 54 to 57-kg division here.
Game time is on Monday, July 26 at 12:39 p.m., Philippine time.
The 25-year-old Lin was the women's bantamweight champion in the 2018 World Championships in New Delhi, India.
A year later, Lin climbed to the heavier featherweight division and immediately made an impact with a third-place finish in the 2019 World Championships in Ulan-Ude, Russia, where Petecio was the champion in the same division.
The Taiwanese, however, was the featherweight titlist in the same year in the Asian Championships, where Petecio only finished ninth.
The 29-year-old Davao del Sur native Petecio is coming off an extensive training camp in Thailand with fellow boxing Olympians Irish Magno and Carlo Paalam.
Meanwhile, world’s no. 25 Magno takes on 17th-ranked Christine Ongare of Kenya in the preliminary round of the women’s flyweight division on Sunday.
Ongare was the first female Kenyan boxer to win a Commonwealth Games medal in the sport, when she claimed bronze in the flyweight category at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, QLD, Australia.
On Monday, flyweight no. 25 Carlo Paalam battles 25-year-old Irishman Brendan Irvine, ranked no. 32.
Eumir Marcial, by virtue of his being seeded no. 3 here, drew a bye.
Needing only two wins to clinch a bronze medal and four to secure gold, the middleweight Marcial will fight the winner of the bout between Algeria’s Younes Nemouchi and Ugandan Kavuma David Ssemujju.
