Fourth seed Shiva Thapa (60kg) advanced to the Asian Boxing Championship quarterfinals with a hard-fought victory on Tuesday, PTI reported.

Shiva, a World Championships bronze-medallist and a two- time medallist at the Asian meet, edged past Kyrgyzstan’s Omurbek Malabekov in a split verdict to make the last-eight stage.

Shiva will face Chinese Taipei’s Chu-En Lai in the quarter-finals on Wednesday.

Sumit Sangwan (91kg), a former gold-medallist at the Asian Olympic Qualifiers, also qualified for the quarter-final stage. He defeated Mongolia’s Erdenebayar Sandagsuren in his last-16 bout late last night. Up ahead for Sumit is third-seeded Chinese Fengkai Yu.

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Shiva managed to get the better of Omurbek by landing most of the few clean punches in the bout.

Both the boxers played the waiting game for a major part of the contest but the former Asian champion from India was a shade ahead of his rival in capitalising on the opportunities he got.

Omurbek, despite his long reach, struggled to connect cleanly and even ended up sustaining a cut above his left eye.

Vikas Krishan (75kg), Gaurav Bidhuri (56kg) and Amit Phangal (49kg) are the other Indian boxers to have entered the quarters so far.

The tournament is a qualifier for the August-September World Championships in Hamburg, Germany. The top-six in each of the 10 weight categories in this tournament will make the cut for the big event.