By Jake Donovan

Round of 16 middleweight action is only halfway complete, but it’s over as far as Shawn Estrada is concerned. The American was sent home after suffering an 11-5 loss to Great Britain’s James Degale in a lackluster performance.

It was an afternoon to forget for Estrada, who spent too much of the fight in search of counter opportunities that rarely presented itself. Both fighters threw up goose eggs in the first round, with the two-way no hitter carrying over into the early portions of the second round before Degale finally got on the board with two quick points.

Estrada found himself in a 3-1 hole after two rounds. It shouldn’t have been cause for panic, but wound up becoming an insurmountable deficit for the American.

“I was just trying to stay on the outside in the first two rounds,” Estrada would explain afterward, “but I didn’t follow my game plan.”

Degale stuck to his script, never allowing adversity to slow him down. Estrada pulled within one early in the third, but not before Degale would tack on two points in a manner of extends to jump out to a 5-2 lead.

The lead would remain three by rounds end, with Degale up 6-3 heading into what would become the final round of Estrada’s Olympic journey. He’d go out with a whimper, offering no sense of urgency, while Degale remained on the attack.

Estrada could do no better than fight on even terms for the first 90 seconds of the round, before Degale put the proverbial nail in the coffin. Three points down the stretch helped advance the final score to a tally more indicative of the competitive nature of the fight, with an 8-5 lead turning into an 11-5 victory for the Brit.

Whereas excuses and sour grapes followed the losing performances of teammates Rau’shee Warren and Raynell Williams, Estrada came to grips with his defeat, almost as complacent in the post-fight interview as he was in the ring.

“I was just trying to counter-punch, but I wasn’t following through with my punches,” said Estrada, who gives the American squad their second straight loss after having entered the weekend riding a three-fight winning streak.

Though some would classify it as an excuse, one point of validity offered by Estrada was the spacing of the fights between rounds. Whereas every other division had no more than three days downtime between fights, middleweight boxing action wound up serving as bookends between the start of the competition and the end of the round of 16.

“It’s hard,” Estrada admitted when asked of the difficulty in maintaining focus while going a week between fights. “You want to fight the next day or two. I had seven days off.”

Then again, so too did his opponent. To his credit, this fact wasn’t lost on Estrada.

“I don’t have any excuses. We fought in there, we were both warriors.

“This is not the end of the road for Shawn Estrada.”

It’s certainly not the end for Degale, who moves on to the quarterfinals. There he has a far more daunting task in front of him as he draws 2004 Olympic Gold medalist Bakhtiyar Artayev of Kazkahstan.

The two paths traveled toward their head-on collision couldn’t contrast any greater. While Degale drew a relative soft touch in Estrada, Artayev was pitted against reigning world amateur middleweight champion Matvey Korobov of Russia.

Artayev prevailed by a 10-7 margin in a bout where the points rewarded came from odd occasions – for instance, fighters slipping to the canvas in sequences where there were no landed punches of any kind.

But the right guy won in the end, even if Team Russia doesn’t want to hear it. The round of 16 hasn’t been too friendly for the Olympic super power, with five members of its boxing squad being shown the exit.

Alfonso Bianco of Venezuela could very well spend the rest of the Olympics facing familiar foes from last year’s World Amateur Championships. He advances to the quarterfinals after blowing past Dominican middleweight Argenis Nunez, 18-7.

Oddly enough, the one rematch he won’t get is perhaps the one he most wants. Bianco ran through last year’s tournament before falling short to Korobov in the finals. As mentioned earlier, Korobov has been eliminated from this year’s Games.

So long as Bianco keeps winning, he’ll see another rematch in the semi-finals regardless of who wins the Artayev-Degale quarterfinals pairing. In order to see the winner of that fight, Bianco will first have to get past Darren Sutherland of Ireland, who delivered the afternoon’s lone knockout in stopping Nabil Kassel of Algeria at 1:56 of round four.

The ending was merely adding insult to injury, as Sutherland controlled the action throughout. He enjoyed a commanding 24-14 lead late in the fight, before forcing a stoppage with just four seconds left in the contest.

Russian flyweight Georgy Balakshin made it to the quarterfinals in the 2004 Olympics before being eliminated by eventual Gold medalist and current red hot pro prospect Yuriorkis Gamboa. With the Cuban having long ago defected, very little stands in the way between Balakshin and Gold, as evidenced in his 12-4 win over Mirat Sarsembayev of Kazakhstan.

That’s not to say that present threats don’t currently exist. For starters, there’s his quarterfinals opponent, Jitende Kumar, one of the many members of Team India enjoying a dream run in racking up one upset after another.

The Indian flyweight added to their scrapbook with a 13-6 ousting of 2004 Olympian Tulashboy Doniyorov of Uzbekistan. The bout was tough to watch, with almost as much wrestling as there was boxing. Both fighters spent a considerable amount of time on the canvas, through takedowns and excessive clinching leading to shoves.

McWilliams Arroyo’s performance against Norbert Kalucza of Hungary was reminiscent of an old lyric from the late Big Pun – “Borinquens are like Mohicans Last of the Po' Ricans.” Arroyo is the last remaining member of the Puerto Rican boxing squad, thanks to his 14-5 win in advancing to the flyweight quarterfinals.

There, he will get a chance to avenge a 2005 loss to Andry Laffita, who becomes the seventh Cuban to advance after easily turning back the challenge of another familiar foe, Great Britain’s Khaleed Yafai in a 9-3 walkover.

Arroyo, whose twin brother McJoe Arroyo was ousted in the opening round of bantamweight competition, was only 19 when facing Laffita, then 27 years old. Now 22, Arroyo believes the playing field has been leveled as he strives to keep Puerto Rico’s diminishing medal hopes alive, with no greater means than to gain revenge over an old foe.

At McArroyo is the last Puerto Rican standing, Team Dominican Republic is now down to its last member following Juan Carlos Payano's 8-4 loss to Vincenzo Picardo of Italy.

Picardi heads to the quarterfinals, though in an uphill climb as he will face 30-year old Walid Cherif of Tunisia. A returning member from the 2004 Olympics, Cherif found himself in a nip-and-tuck affair with Lee Ok-Sung early on, but outscored the South Korean 7-2 in the final two rounds cruise to an 11-5 victory.

Ok-Sung made it to the round of 16 after his huge upset of heavily favored American flyweight Rau’shee Warren.  Lightning didn’t strike twice on his career, as the former world amateur flyweight champion sees his Olympic run come to a close.

Somjit Jongjohor insisted that we will move from fighter to coach immediately after the conclusion of this year’s Olympics. There’s still a little bit of fighting left, as the fly Thai cruised to the quarterfinals with a 10-2 win over Samir Mammadov of Azerbaijan.

Jongjohor qualified for the 2004 Games, but was matched against Yuriorkis Gamboa in the opening round. Nuff said.

The seeding is a bit kinder this time, as he now faces Tajikistan’s Anvar Yunosov in the quarterfinals. Yunosov advances after doubling up Brazil’s Robenilson Vieria, 12-6.

Falling behind on your Olympic boxing intake? Catch up by clicking on the following link for the complete archive of Boxingscene.com’s unmatched Olympic coverage:

BOXINGSCENE.COM 2008 OLYMPIC BOXING CATALOG

Jake Donovan is a voting member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. Comments/questions can be submitted to JakeNDaBox@gmail.com .