Ayoub Gadfa Claims He Is One Fight Away From Medals | Relief

Historically, Spain had important heavyweights. They were few, but in their time they were the standard.. Paulino Uzcudun, Jose Manuel Urten or Alfredo Evangelista are just a few examples. In recent years, there has been a great drought in the big weights. Gabriel Engema stands out in the professional arena (he was Anthony Joshua’s sparring partner), but at the amateur level there is a big vacuum. Understanding this, Rafa Lozano relied on his intuition.

At the beginning of 2016, the national coach met the heavyweight who had started training at the José Valenciano gym, having moved to Madrid from Marbella a few months earlier to study physical activity science. At that moment, Ayoub Gadfa was 18 years old and had only fought two times as a boxer. Nothing mattered. There was a connection between them. The Olympic medalist invited him to train with the national team at the High Performance Center, and the young man agreed. Until 2018, when he was given a permanent place in the national team, Gadfa did not appear in training regularly.

but the improvement was so obvious that eventually everything fell into place.

Lozano was bold enough to go for talent regardless of the results, just like Ayoub. He had to learn from defeats, and at heavyweight (over 92 kilograms) it is not easy at all. Punches and disappointments were his university in amateur boxing.. In Spain, there was no one in this category, so most of the experience came from competitions. In the same 2018, he began to stand out and beat two-time Olympic medalist Clemente Russo. Les was there and although he failed to qualify for Tokyo 2020, the results began to show in the next Olympic cycle.. Ayoub Gadfa, 25, is in his prime, as he showed by winning the European Championship in April and securing an even-money ticket to Paris 2024 in May.

Competing in the Olympic super heavyweight category is very difficult. There are only 16 fighters participating, so the selection is very large.. The advantage is that with two wins, boxers achieve a medal, although the path is obviously very difficult. He knows this and has learned it from the very beginning. In his first fight he had to dance with Kazakh Kamshybek Kunkayev, bronze in Tokyo and two-time silver at the World Championships.

. He was imposing, but so was Gadfa. The fight began with the Spaniard showing maturity. Kunkaev has the advantage on the left (he is left-handed), so Gadfa He moved, used the jab and followed up with his right hand, hitting the body. I didn’t want exchanges. He succeeded, but three judges gave the victory to the Kazakh.

The vision of the battle between the people who were supposed to administer justice made Gadfa push himself even harder. I get more work, but always with the premise of avoiding exchange. Kunkaev began to block his approach. I was not comfortable, although I was going to study Spanish. Ayub should not repeat himself to avoid the Kazakh’s counterattack. This affected him more and more. AndThis time he convinced him, and four judges gave him the victory.He won the fight on two cards, and the other two were a draw. Everything had to be decided in the last three minutes.

Realizing that he was losing, Kunkaev began to attack with hard hands, Ayub did not give up and responded to everyone. The fight became tangled at a short distance, both were tired and the tone was equal. Marbella was empty. As he approached the corner, the Spaniards asked him to raise his hands. Meanwhile, the Kazakh delegation looked at the ground in fear.

. They knew their team had lost. One of the undecided judges gave the victory in the decisive round to the Spaniard, and this was enough for his classification. The Andalusian will fight for a medal with the Armenian Davis Chaloyan Arm this Friday, August 2, at 22:24.