Lovlina, who won a bronze at the World championships in November, entered the quarterfinals with a walkover as pugilists from Haryana and Kerala impressed in the women’s National boxing championships here on Thursday.
Four Kerala boxers — Divya Ganesh (69kg), Indira K.A. (75kg), Anaswara P.M. (81+kg) and Fousiya A.T. (81kg) — entered the quarterfinals along with four boxers from Haryana while three pugilists from Railways, two each from Delhi, Punjab, Chandigarh and All India Police and one from Rajasthan also made it.
Fousiya got a walkover from AIP’s Neha Jhadav, Divya beat Tamil Nadu’s S. Preethi 5-0 while Indira got past Gujarat’s Riya Upadhyay. Anaswara won on points (5-0) against Maharashtra’s Shayaan Pathan.
For Haryana, 2017 World youth championship bronze medallist Anupama was the lone boxer who benefited from a walkover from Ravi Chandrika Balga of Andhra Pradesh while Nisha, Nupur and Pooja Rani showed their superiority in the ring.
Lovlina got a walkover from Andhra Pradesh’s Marathamma Saitivada in the welter class (69 kg) pre-quarterfinals. The 21-year-old Assamese will enter the ring for the first time when she takes on Mithrem Jagirdar of Gujarat, who stopped Delhi’s Anjali.
But the best bouts of the day were witnessed in the middleweight class where Railways’ Neetu beat AIP’s Kalawanti with a split verdict (3-2). Avneet Kaur of Chandigarh got past Delhi’s Shalakha Sansanwal by a similar margin.