Cuban boxer La Cruz seeks more glory at World Boxing Championships in Liverpool

HAVANA, Cuba, Sep 5 (ACN) Two-time Olympic champion (Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020) and five-time world champion Julio Cesar La Cruz (+90 kg) will face Azerbaijan's Mahammad Abdullayev today, third in the world at Belgrade 2021 and Tashkent 2023, on the second day of the Liverpool 2025 World Boxing Championships.

The Olympic-format world boxing championship began on Thursday with 60 bouts in two sessions, held at the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool, England.

This Friday, 64 more bouts will be contested in two sessions, with action in two rings at once.

Cuba enjoyed a spectacular performance in the tournament's debut with Luis Enrique Vinent's (60 kg) 5-0 unanimous decision victory over Croatian Vide Parkacin, but suffered a pair of losses to Jorge Cuellar (70 kg) and Nelson Williams (90 kg).

Cuellar, a bronze medalist at the 2023 San Salvador Central American and Caribbean Games, fell 4-1 to Sweden's Kevin Scott in the morning session, a bout stopped in the second round due to a head clash that caused an injury.

For his part, Williams lost in an evenly matched bout in the afternoon to Turkey's Emrah Yasar.

Paris 2024 Olympic champion Erislandy Alvarez (65 kg), also a silver medalist at Tashkent 2023, and the then-tanned Alejandro Claro (50 kg) were byes in the draw, as they were the number one seed in their respective weight classes.

Rolando Martinez (55 kg) and Jorge Soto (80 kg) are also participating in the Caribbean island team .

The world championship in the United Kingdom brings together more than 500 fighters from 66 countries on five continents, grouped into 10 weight classes, both men and women.

This is the first global competition organized by World Boxing, the new entity endorsed by the International Olympic Committee, replacing the International Boxing Association.

A total of 118 national Olympic committees are now part of World Boxing, which with this tournament—the first to host the men's and women's versions of the world championship in a single event—is taking the first steps on the road to the upcoming Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028.