Hussamudin, Deepak, Nishant sign off with bronze in boxing

TASHKENT: Deepak Bhoria (51kg), Mohammad Hussamudin (57kg) and Nishant Dev (71kg) signed off with bronze medals at the World Boxing Championships, wrapping up India’s best-ever show at the marquee event here on Friday.

It was heartbreak for Hussamudin as the Nizamabad boxer was forced to withdraw due to a knee injury about an hour before his semifinal bout.

But Deepak and Nishant gave a good account of themselves, stretching their more experienced and revered opponents in their respective semifinal bouts.

Deepak’s phenomenal campaign came to an end as he went down fighting to two-time World Championships bronze medallist France’s Bilal Bennama 3-4 in a close contest which went into bout review.

Nishant’s semifinal also went to bout review with the judges ruling in favour of the 2022 Asian champion and 2018 Asian Games silver medallist Aslanbek Shymbergenov of Kazakhstan.

The fact that all three medals come in Olympic categories bode well for India heading into the Asian Games, which is the first qualifying event for the Paris Olympics.