The Path to Gold is Set for the 2012 U.S. Olympic Boxing Team in London
(LONDON, ENGLAND) – The path to gold was set on
Friday for the 12 members of the 2012 U.S. Olympic Boxing Team at the official
event draw on Friday at the ExCel Centre in London. The brackets in the 13 Olympic weight classes were drawn in
front of representatives from all of the participating nations. Three U.S.
boxers received first round byes with the remaining nine American athletes learning
the identity of their opening day opponents.
The
women’s draw was done first and both flyweight Marlen Esparza (Houston, Texas) and middleweight Claressa Shields (Flint, Mich.)
received byes in their opening round bouts. Lightweight Queen Underwood (Seattle, Wash.) will face home nation boxer Natasha Jones of Great Britain in her Olympic Games opener on August
5. Esparza will take on the winner of a first round contest between Brazil and
Venezuela when she takes the ring for quarterfinal action on August 6 while
Shields battles the victor of a showdown between Australia and Sweden on the
same date.
Three-time
Olympian Rau’shee Warren (Cincinnati,
Ohio) was the lone U.S. boxer to be seeded in the 2012 Olympic Games and as the
number three seed, he received a first round bye as well. Warren will take the
ring for the third time in Olympic action in a second round bout against the
winner of France and Afghanistan on August 3.
Bantamweight Joseph Diaz, Jr. (S. El Monte,
Calif.) and middleweight Terrell Gausha (Cleveland,
Ohio) open action for Team USA on Saturday with Diaz taking on on Ukraine’s Pavlo
Ishchenko and Gausha battling Armenia’s Andranik
Hakobyan.
Lightweight Jose Ramirez (Avenal, Calif.) and
welterweight Errol Spence (Desoto,
Texas) will compete on Sunday in their first round contests. Ramirez will face
France’s Rachid Azzedine on Sunday while Spence takes on Brazil’s Myke Carvalho de Ribeiro.
Light
heavyweight Marcus Browne (Staten
Island, N.Y.) will be the lone U.S. boxer in Monday’s action, challenging
Australia’s Damien Hooper in his
Olympic debut.
There
will only be one U.S. boxer competing on Tuesday as well with light
welterweight Jamel Herring (Coram,
N.Y.) facing off with Kazakhstan’s Daniyar
Yeleussinov in the first round.
The two
heavyweights will be the final male boxers to compete and both will challenge
Russian opponents when they take the ring on Wednesday, August 1. Heavyweight Michael Hunter (Las Vegas, Nev.) will
battle Russia’s Tervel Pulev while
super heavyweight Dominic Breazeale (Alhambra,
Calif.) faces Magomed Omarov.
The 2012
Olympic Games are a single elimination tournament and all of the 2012 Olympic
Games brackets can be found on www.aiba.org.
USA Boxing, as the
national governing body for Olympic-style boxing, is the United States’ member
organization of the International Amateur Boxing Association (AIBA) and a
member of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC).
Ticket
information to be announced shortly.
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