The official draw has taken place for the 2013 AIBA World Boxing Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan. 457 boxers from 100 nations have successfully made weight and been drawn for the competition which kicks-off this week.
The hall was a veritable sea of color with a hundred different team tracksuits on display and there was a palpable level of excitement, or perhaps even nervousness in the air. The draw was presided over by AIBA President Dr Ching-Kuo Wu and orchestrated by Mr Helmut Ranze, Supervisor of the competition with the assistance of Swiss Timing, the official timing/scoring company of AIBA and the IOC, who used an advanced computer system to randomly select the boxers once the seeding had been accounted for.
There are a few interesting looking brackets even at this early stage. For instance in the Heavyweight (91kg) category which starts tomorrow, London 2012 Olympic Bronze medallist Teymur Mammadov from Azerbaijan has been put in the same bracket as Cuba’s London Olympian Erislandy Savon, who has slimmed down from Super Heavyweight (91+kg) for this year’s edition.
Savon came 5th in the last World Championships in Baku (2011) and will be hungry for a medal after narrowly missing out last time. In the same bracket is Algeria’s Olympic and World Series of Boxing (WSB) veteran Chouaib Bouloudinats, who is more than capable of creating an upset. Potentially, Savon could face Bouloudinats as early as the second round and the winner could then compete against Mammadov in the quarter-finals. This means of course that only one of these three fantastic boxers is theoretically able to get a medal.
The opening day of the tournament also sees the Flyweights (52kg) take to the ring. Mexico Guerreros’ WSB star Elias Emigdio is on the same half of the draw as Italy’s tough Vincenzo Picardi although both have byes in the opening round meaning that they will not have their first bouts until Friday October 18th.
Check out more information on the 2013 World Boxing Championships at AIBA’s official event page.
