Three-time SEA Games silver medalist Nesthy Petecio was dealt a razor-thi 2-3 loss to top-ranked Yin Jun Hua in the opening round of the Women’s Featherweight bout in the 2018 Asian Games, Friday evening at the Jakarta International Expo Hall in Indonesia.
But it will go down as one of the nastiest judging calls in amateur boxing history.
Petecio, a 26-year-old native of Davao del Sur, was clearly the more aggressive fighter all throughout the bout. Though the scorecards will not show it, she connected in bunches against the renowned Chinese fighter.
However, her connections were not clean per se.
Every time Petecio went for combinations, Yin would simply turn her back as a punch to the back of her head would entail a penalty.
As the dust settled, two judges showed a card of 29-27 in favor of Yin. The next two judges scored it 29-27 and 30-26 respectively for Petecio.
The tiebreaker? A forced card that saw France’s Johany Maden hand the match to Yin.
“There’s really nothing much we can say,” ABAP secretary general Ed Picson told SPIN.ph. “We all saw what happened. It’s just so sad that at a time when boxing is fighting hard to retain its spot in the Olympics, something like this happens. It’s heartbreaking.
Joel Becho also fell out of contention after losing to Iran’s Sajjad Kazemzadeh Poshtiri in the welterweight division.
