Zou Shiming, China's biggest boxing gold hopeful in light flyweight (48kg), on Wednesday danced himself through his first fight at the Beijing Olympics.
Zou used his quick footwork, fast movement to avoid fierce attacks from his Venezuelan opponent Eduard Bermudez Salas, and launched accurate punches at his violent rival.
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Zou Shiming (L)defeated Venezuelan Eduard Bermudez Salas during Men's light flyweight (48kg) round of 16 at the Beijing Olympic Games boxing event in Beijing, China, Aug 13, 2008.
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He scored 2-0, 4-0 and 2-0 at the first three rounds, without letting Salas earning one shot. In the last round, Zou obviously wanted to save energy for his following competitions, so he danced his famous "foxy dance" to move quickly and wide around the ring to avoid the Venezuelan attacks who obviously wanted to score more. With a score of 11-2, Zou finished his Olympic debut with much ease.
Zou told Xinhua after the match that he won this game pretty easily. "My opponent was acutally strong, but he's not used to my way of fighting." said Zhou. "He wanted to throw more punches at me to catch up with the scores, and during the fight, he showed his rips. So I hit his rips."
Zou, double champion of the 2005 and 2007 World Championships, will encounter the third, French Nordine Oubaali in his next bout. Zou said he would study Oubaali's tape carefully so as to make effective counter-attack tactics.
Bearing much hope to grab China's first boxing gold at this Olympics, Zou said he felt a bit of pressure before this fight, but when he stood in the ring, hearing the deafening cheering from the boisterous crowd, he forgot his nervousness completely and only felt excited and honored.
"I missed my gold at the Athen's Olympics, this time I'm confident that I won't miss it again," he said. "But as we have to eat a meal one bit after another, I have to get my gold winning one fight after another."