Robeisy Ramirez Carrazana of Cuba captured the Olympic gold medal in the flyweight division on Sunday with a 17-14 decision win over Tugstsogt Nyambayar of Mongolia at the ExCel Arena in London.
Ramirez, who is only 18 years of age, qualified for the Olympics with his performance in last year’s World Championships, where he eventually lost to Russia’s Misha Aloian. He also won the Pan Am Games.
Ramirez was ahead at the end of the first round by he score of 6-5, and still had nothing stashed away when the third round began, as he has only ahead by a point after an even second round. But he got the edge from the judges in the third round and moved ahead by a 7-5 margin to account for the final score.
Ramirez won his first two bouts in the tournament rather easily; in fact, he took those two decisions by a combined margin of 24 points. He had difficulties in his third bout against Andrew Selby, who came into the competition ranked #1 by AIBA in the weight class.
Then it was a comfortable 20-10 win over Michael Conlan of Ireland in the semifinals before this gold medal-winning match.
The southpaw had to handle a lot of pressure that came from Nyambayar and had enough poise to deal with and come back with offense of his won, but the fight was not as clear-cut as many had anticipated. Nyambayar had defeated Aloian to make it to this point, and he was not going easily. He did eat some uppercuts and that made an impression on the judges in the final round.
For his overall performance, Ramirez certainly has to be considered a candidate for outstanding boxer of these Olympics.
