Carlos Balderas' Olympic run ends in disappointment
RIO DE JANEIRO — Carlos Balderas spent a restless night on Thursday, having difficulty sleeping in advance of his quarterfinal fight in the Olympic lightweight division with top-seeded Cuban Lazaro Alvarez.
And after a competitive first round Friday which Balderas thought he may have won, he was unable to pick it up again and dropped a unanimous decision to the classy Cuban, ending his dream of an Olympic medal one victory short.
All three judges had it 30-27 for Alvarez
U.S. coach Billy Walsh said the gravity of the moment may have caught up to both Balderas and light flyweight Nico Hernandez, who lost his bout earlier Friday. Even more challenging for Balderas was the fact that he needed to defeat the world’s top-ranked light welterweight on the world’s biggest stage.
“We don’t see you guys but once every four years,” Walsh said to a pack of reporters.
“You know what I mean? You turn up at the door and everybody wants to speak to them and they’re getting messages from all over the country. He got caught up in that. They didn’t sleep well last night. I didn’t sleep because I was thinking about the fights and how we were going to beat them.
They didn’t sleep because they’re thinking about the fight, they’re anxious. Obviously, they were nervous. It’s a big occasion and the scope of the whole Olympic Games was getting to them. Three point six billion viewers watched London. Four million watched [Floyd] Mayweather and [Manny] Pacquiao and that was supposed to be the biggest.
“This is the biggest [expletive] show on Earth.”
Balderas, 19, wasn’t able to let his hands go over the final two rounds and that made it easy for Alvarez, who is the reigning amateur world champion and who took home a bronze in London in 2012
Balderas said he knew what he needed to do but his body wouldn’t respond. He said his feet felt heavy and his arms were tired and slow.
“I feel down because I knew I could have won this fight,” Balderas said. “He was nothing special. I started off really, really good in the first round, but my body was very tired for some reason. It wouldn’t wake up. My body was tired because my previous fight with Japan’s [Daisuke Narimatsu] took a lot out of me.
“In the warm-ups, my body felt very, very shut down. I exerted a lot of energy just trying to wake up. But no excuses. He beat me.”
With Balderas’ loss, the U.S. boxing team is now 6-3 in these Olympics. In addition to Balderas, Hernandez and middleweight Charles Conwell have been eliminated.
