BY JONAS TERRADO
Eumir Felix Marcial and Nesthy Petecio capped off the Philippines’ gold medal harvest in 30th Southeast Asian Games boxing competitions with smashing wins Monday night at the PICC Forum.
Marcial needed just 71 seconds to score a knockout win over Vietnam’s Manh Cuong Nguyen and rule the men’s middleweight category while Petecio finally bagged her first SEAG gold with a unanimous decision victory over Myanmar’s Nwe Ni Oo in the women’s featherweight class.
Charly Suarez and Riza Pasuit also won their final bout to give the Philippines seven boxing golds, edging arch rival Thailand which produced five.
Suarez defeated Thailand’s Khunatip Pidnuch via unanimous decision to take the men’s lightweight gold while Pasuit beat Sudaporn Seesondee, also of Thailand, with a majority decision victory.
Marcial bagged his second straight gold in the biennial meet as he gave Nguyen a standing eight count with a left straight before delivering a solid left that sent the Vietnamese kneeling to the canvass.
Nguyen refused to answer the count, forcing Japanese referee Riich Igarashi to stop the fight.
Petecio, meanwhile, earned the nod of all five judges with scores of 30-24, 30-26, 30-27, 30-24, 30-24 to end her shortcomings in the meet.
The world champion also avenged her defeat to the same Burmese fighter in the finals of the same division in the 2013 Nay Pyi Taw Games. Petecio also settled silver as a bantamweight in the 2015 Singapore edition.
