By Jake Donovan

As Tropical Storm Fay wreaks havoc in Cuba and rapidly charging towards Southeast Florida, the Cuban Olympic boxing team has rained down on its competition in East Asia, racking up one blowout after another. 

The slaughter was momentarily stalled Monday afternoon in Beijing, after Team Cuba suffered its first loss in the quarterfinals. Idel Torriente’s heartbreaking 16-14 loss to Azerbaijan’s Shahin Imranov in their featherweight quarterfinal was Cuba’s first in the round after having sent four straight to the semi-finals.

That was the lone bad news for Team Cuba. All told, going 1-1 on the day isn’t all bad, considering they might’ve stumbled upon their bantamweight of the future.

For years, Yankiel Leon was forced to toil in the shadows of Guillermo Rigondeaux, the two-time Olympic Gold medalist who wreaked havoc on bantamweights around the world. Leon knew this better than anyone else, having lost eight straight times to his countryman before stumbling upon a window of opportunity, after Rigondeaux was banished from the team after a failed defection attempt left him in unfavorable view with the Cuban government.

Fight by fight, Leon is helping remove the massive void left behind, tearing through the 2008 Games no matter whom they put in front of him. The latest to fall was Thailand’s Worapoj Petchkoom, who found himself on the wrong end of a 10-2 rout in the day’s opening bout.

Leon advances to the medal round and will next face Bruno Julie of Mauritius, who scored a minor upset with his 13-9 win over Hector Manzanilla of Venezuela.

Awaiting the winner of that match will be the last man standing on the other side of a very strong bantamweight bracket.

Veaceslav Gojan, who advanced to the quarterfinals after a route of China’s Gu Yu, is now in the semi-finals after yet another lopsided victory, easily turning away the challenge of India’s Akhil Kumar by a 10-3 margin.

Up next for Gojan is Mongolia’s Badar-Uugan Enkhbatyn, who had his way with Khumiso Ikgopoleng of Botswana in a 15-2 win that would serve as the evening’s most lopsided bout.

Super heavyweight Zhaliel Zhang scored a massive upset in a 12-2 win over Kazakhstan’s Ruslan Mrysatayev. But the win actually served as saving grace for the home team after Yang Li found himself to be no match for the man heavily favored to grab the gold in the featherweight bracket. That would be none other than Ukraine’s Vasyl Lomachenko, who abused the Chinaman in a bout that was even less competitive than the 12-3 score.

Lomachenko was determined to become the odds-on favorite at featherweight after two-time Gold medalist Alexei Tishchenko of Russia, regarded by many as the best amateur fighter in the world, opted to move up to lightweight for this year’s competition, where he remains a strong favorite even amongst a strong remaining Elite Eight.

Paling in comparison is the overall crop of fighters in a featherweight division littered with Tishchenko leftovers. Lomachenko was already considered the best of the rest, but his road to gold became that much clearer with Torriente’s departure.

Still, formidable challenges lie ahead, beginning with Friday’s semi-final match against Yakup Kılıç of Turkey, who registered an impressive 13-6 win over Algeria’s Abdelkader Chadi.

On the other side of the bracket, Imranov’s aforementioned upset of Torriente now leads to a head-to-head match with French featherweight Khedafi Djelkhir, who scored a 14-9 win over Mexico’s Arturo Santos-Reyes.

Zhang’s surprisingly strong showing against Mrystatayev included two knockdowns in a complete rout of the Kazzkhstan super heavyweight. While guaranteed a medal, it’s highly unlikely that the towering Chinese southpaw goes any further – not unless he can bottle his quarterfinals performance and hope the familiar face awaiting him in the semi-finals forgets to bring his A-game.

Vyacheslav Glazkov of Ukraine is in a unique position, having previously faced every remaining Olympic super heavyweight. Among his 2-1 record among the other three semi-finalists is a 21-11 win over Zhang in last year’s World Amateur Championship tournament.

He now has a chance to duplicate, thanks to his 10-4 win over Algeria’s Newfel Ouatah in the quarterfinals. Though regarded as an amateur boxing powerhouse, Team Ukraine is guaranteed only two medals. In this case, it’s quantity over quality, with Glazkov and Lomachenko both heavily favored to advance to the finals.

Should Glakzov make it to the Gold medal round, waiting him will be another rematch regardless of who comes out on top of the bottom-half super heavyweight bracket finals between reigning world amateur super heavyweight champion Roberto Cammarelle and David Price of Great Britain.

It will be the third officially scheduled meeting between the two, with Cammarelle currently enjoying a 2-0 lead. One of the wins came on a technicality, as Price suffered a hand injury that prevented from further competing in the World Amateur Championships last year, resulting in a walkover win for Cammarelle.

It was in that same tournament that Cammarelle, an Italian southpaw who captured Olympic Bronze in the 2004 Games, defeated Glakzov, in the Gold medal round to win the super heavyweight title. 

He is now one fight away from contending for Olympic Gold, though will need a better performance than his sluggish showing against Colombia’s Oscar Rivas. Cammarelle managed a 9-5 win, but not in the type of fight that screams “Gold medal favorite.”

The performance looked even less impressive about ten minutes later, after David Price scored his second consecutive stoppage in as many Olympic bouts.

The win doesn’t come without an asterisk, however, as the fight ended after the first round, when it was discovered that Jaroslavas Jakšto of Lithuania suffered a leg injury and could no longer continue.

Price was up 3-1 at the time of the stoppage, the lone bout of the quarterfinals thus far to not go the distance. His Olympic journey thus far has lasted a total of just over four minutes.

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