Chinese ace boxer, light flyweight (48kg) Zou Shiming embraced two good news on Wednesday, one by his own victory, one by his old rival Filipino Harry Tanamor's surprising defeat.

When encountering low-profiled Ghanan Manyo Plange, Tanamor, runner-up of the 2007 world championships, strangely didn't show his advantage. In fact, he was trailing his African opponent throughout the rounds. The Ghanan was surprisingly good at attacks and defense, giving Tanamor several good punches on the head, while Tanamor was unable to score from his attacker. At the last two rounds, Tanamor pull himself all out for a comeback, but the Ghanan's tight defense prevented him from scoring more than one point. Tanamor suffered a surprising lose of 3-6.

As the only qualified boxer to compete in this Olympics, Tanamor shoulders the Philippines' yearn for an Olympic medal, hopefully a gold. His early exit crushed the nation's gold dream.

However, for Zou Shiming, China's best hope for the first Olympic boxing gold, this was another good news. Zou earlier enjoyed a quite relaxed fight against Venezuelan Eduard Bermudez Salas with a large lead of ten points. After a cautious first round, Zou took control of the fight from the second round, and expanded his advantage till the last second.

Like Tanamor, Russian super heavyweight (+91kg) favorite Islam Timurziev, bronze-medalist of last year's world championships, also suffered an unexpected blow Wednesday night. After he was carelessly knocked down for the second time by British giant David Price during the second round, the referee gave him another standing count and ruled his defeat, which the Russian found it hard to accept.

In the heavyweight (91kg) fights, Chinese Nijiati Yushan failed to compete with rival Ukranian Oleksandr Usyk, showing a wide gap of attack and defense abilities between the two. Though fought fearlessly, Yushan suffered a major defeat of 4-23. He was so upset after the match that he refused to talk to reporters.

Other master-hands of the heavyweights had no problem of passing into the next round. World champion Italian Clemente Russo, runner-up Russian Rakhim Chakhkiev, third French John Mbumba, and Cuban Osmai Acosta Duarte all made their way into the last eight.

In super heavyweight competition, runner-up of 07 world championships Ukrainian Vyacheslav Glazkov and Cuban Robert Alfonso Acea offered the audience an excellent fight, with Glazkov finally outreached the Cuban by 5-3.

Chinese super heavyweight, world bronze medalist Zhang Zhilei won most easily today fighting Moroccan Mohamed Amanissi with 15-0. Much smaller than the two-meter tall Zhang, the Moroccan had to keep his defense pose all the time while trying to approach to Zhang to make sudden attacks, which was difficult, because Zhang wouldn't let him. Zhang will meet Kazakh Ruslan Myrsatayev in his quarterfinal bout, also with much hope to win.

World champion Italian Roberto Cammarelle crushed his Croatian challenger 13:1 with much ease to enter the last eight.

All ten Chinese boxers have made their debut at the Olympics, with seven approaching to the next round, three out.

(Xinhua News Agency August 14, 2008)