If there was a point to unlock a host country's advantage, it's this match.
Aira Villegas played her cards right, but France's Wassila Lkhadiri did her best as well.
This match was a brawl!
Villegas threw a lot of hooks and haymakers but she also clinched when Lkhadiri tried to impose her will. This is a dangerous play because this is also asking for the refs to help her get rid of Lkhadiri's pit bull-like gameplay.
The Estonian, Bulgarian, and Argentinian judges scored it for Villegas. For some reason, the Iranian and Indonesian judges had it for the French fighter.
Cute.
Leave it to the South American country to make an unbiased decision.
That said, it's nice that the French people are great fans. Yes, we all know about the controversies regarding the living arrangements and the pollution problems, but they appreciated the back-and-forth of the match. In the first two rounds, you can hear them singing and cheering but in the third round, it felt like they were nervous spectators.
When the verdict was called, the mood wasn't as bleak as the one with Petecio. Of course, they are disappointed, but at least they knew the match could have gone either way.
After the shock defeat of Carlo Paalam, I was expecting the worst.
Anyway, this sets up a semifinal match between Villegas and Turkey's Buse Naz Cakiroglu. Cakiroglu missed the 2023 IBA Championships but won a gold medal as a flyweight in the 2024 European Championships.
And oh yeah, the 2023 IBA Championships have a light flyweight and flyweight division. This is important because Aira Villegas competed and lost in the round of 32 part of the light flyweight division. Lkhadiri was able to finish with a bronze medal.
Cakiroglu won gold in the light flyweight division of the 2022 IBA Championships.
Meanwhile, on the other bracket, China's Wu Yu is set to face Kazakhstan's Nazym Kyzaibay. Wu Yu won the gold medal in the 2023 IBA Championships as a flyweight. Meanwhile, the 30-year-old Kazakh has won gold in the World and Asian Championships but her last major win was winning the bronze in the 2022 Asian Championship.
As far as credentials, Aira Villegas is the underdog considering that up until this point, her biggest win is a bronze medal in the 2019 SEA Games.
While yeah, she is set to get a podium finish, she needs to win her last two fights to claim her spot for more greatness. By beating their opponents in this type of atmosphere, Villegas and Nesthy Petecio have shown that they can come out on top despite a hostile crowd.
The difference between Petecio and Villegas is that both are exciting fighters but Villegas is more wily. Now this is not a bad thing because she was never considered a dirty fighter, but she has to do more to win against Cakiroglu.
Villegas is two wins away from achieving similar glory as that of Diaz and Yulo.
I know she's getting a lot of things with her victory but there are a lot of better things once she wins the gold medal.