As the WBC Boxing Grand Prix marched on Wednesday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, middleweights Carlos Sinisterra and Ephrem Bariko stole the show – and Sinisterra walked away with a third-round knockout win to move on to the 160lbs tournament semifinals.
France’s Bariko, now 12-1 (6 KOs), got the best of the action over the first two rounds at Cool Arena, and he continued to show his technical acumen early in the third. But Colombia’s Sinisterra, 13-1 (10 KOs), spun the fight momentum almost instantly, cornering Nariko and firing away until the stoppage came.
Sinisterra will face Canada’s Derek Pomerleau, 14-0 (11 KOs), who took a second-round stoppage over Ukraine’s Dmytro Rybalko on Wednesday, when the Grand Prix resumes in October.
“We saw a compilation of great talent from all over the world. The boxers that fought tonight will be local heroes when they come back home,” said WBC President and tournament organizer Mauricio Sulaiman. “This is something that just keeps getting better. I can’t wait for the Semifinals in October, and then the Grand Finale in December.”
Joining Sinisterra and Pomerleau back in Riyadh this fall will be Italy’s Muhamet Qamili, who authored the upset of the night in a win over the United States’ Troy Nash Jnr in the featherweight bracket.
The outcome was determined by the WBC’s enhanced scoring system, which allows judges to gauge the decisiveness of each fighter’s performance in each round as a tiebreaker in the event of a draw. So when the scorecards were announced as 58-56 for Nash, 58-56 for Qamili and 57-57, the Grand Prix scoring system was enforced: Two judges saw it 5-4 and 4-2 in favor of Qamili, 17-0 (7 KOs), who dropped to his knees after having his hand raised in the ring.
“Troy Nash is a future superstar,” Sulaiman said of the 20-year-old Nash, now 5-1 (1 KO). “It was his [sixth] fight, and his opponent was very tough in a close fight. He will learn and come out better from it.”
Additionally, Argentina’s Kevin Ramírez, 11-0-1 (4 KOs) won a unanimous decision over Poland’s Piotr Lacz, 14-1-0 (10 KOs), in the heavyweight bracket.
Ramirez, who typically fights at cruiserweight, continues his steady climb through the bracket despite being consistently outweighed by his Gran Prix competition. He will face Team USA’s Dante Stone, who weighed in at 257.9 pounds for his quarterfinal fight – Ramirez checked in at 204.0 for his – in the semis.
The WBC said it will announce the October date for the Grand Prix semifinals in the coming weeks.
