
Marvin Tabamo escaped his opening bout while Carlo Paalam and Junmilardo Ogayre yielded to their rivals in the 74th Strandja International Boxing Tournament in Sofia, Bulgaria Thursday, Feb. 23.
Tabamo, who earned an opening round bye in the men’s 51kg flyweight division, survived Serbia’s Omer Ametovic with a close 3-2 decision to book a quarterfinal berth.
Judges from Germany and Bulgaria gave Tabamo a 30-27 victory in the three-round fight, even as the judge from Poland also favored the Filipino pug, 29-28.
Danish and Kazakh judges, however, favored the Serbian boxer with 30-27 and 29-28 scores.
Tabamo’s victory set him up a meeting with Zhang Jiamao of China, who overwhelmed Germany’s Salah Ibrahim, 5-0.
Paalam and Ogayre, meanwhile, absorbed stinging defeats to their respective Uzbek foes to make an exit in their respective weight classes.
Despite showing high quality boxing, the Tokyo Olympics silver medalist Paalam fell short and bowed to Mirazizbek Mirzakhalilov, 5-0, in the men’s 54kg bantamweight quarters, while Ogayre yielded to Abdumalik Khalokov, 5-0, in the second round of the men’s 57kg featherweight class.
With the development, that left three Filipino boxers in contention in Europe’s oldest boxing competition.
They were Aira Villegas in the women’s 50kg light flyweight, Paul Julyfer Bascon in men’s 60kg lightweight and Tabamo.