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| PSC chairman Dickie Bachmann thought Carlo Paalam should have won against Charlie Senior. Reuters (file photo) |
MANILA--Philippine Sports Commission chairman Dickie Bachmann agreed with many Filipino boxing fans' sentiments that Carlo Paalam may have done enough to beat Australian opponent Charlie Senior in the Paris Olympics boxing quarterfinals.
Speaking in a rare Thursday edition of the Philippine Sportswriters Association Forum at the PSC Conference Room inside the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex, the former basketball star thought Paalam should have won against Senior in the bout that had become controversial due to how the results were revealed.
"In my two cents, when I was watching, I felt that Paalam should be a medalist," Bachmann said.
Had Paalam, the 2021 Tokyo Olympics silver medalist, won against Senior, he would have assured himself of a medal in Paris.
The match literally boiled down to how one judge would score the bout, especially the final round, and Ben McGarrigle, the deciding juror, gave Round 3 and ultimately the match to Senior to the dismay of the Filipino fans.
Paalam himself said in a statement that he thought the judges got it wrong.
Although he did not say much about what he thought about the judging, Bachmann said that scoring a bout can be tricky.
"Boxing is tricky because it's not really under their control. We have judges," Bachmann further said.
He added that Aira Villegas and Nesthy Petecio could have won a higher prize in their own divisions.
Villegas was manhandled in the semifinals by Turkish opponent Buse Naz Cakiroglu, but many Filipino fans thought Villegas scored a knockdown in the second round, which referee Wade Peterson just ruled as a slip.
Petecio, on the other hand, fell to Julia Szeremata in a huge semifinal upset that saw the Polish pug turning things around in the last two rounds.
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