KARACHI: Pakistan’s leading boxer Awais Ali Khan was drawn with Australia’s Clay Waterman in the preliminaries of the light heavyweight competitions as draws of the AIBA World Boxing Championship were held in Hamburg, Germany on Thursday. Awais-Clay bout would be held on Saturday (tomorrow). Attock-born Awais is the only Pakistani boxer participating in the global event in which 280 leading fighters from around the world are set to begin their title quest from Friday (today). Clay is a young fighter, having won the Oceania Confederation Boxing Championship held at his home backyard in the Gold Coast this year.The Queensland-born fighter is also the reigning champion of the Australian domestic competitions. Awais’ coach Arshad Hussain told ‘The News’ from Hamburg after the draws that his fighter was ready for the battle against Clay. “Awais has done hard training and his morale is very high. I hope he will make a fine start by beating the Australian in his opening bout,” said Arshad, also an AIBA 3-star coach. “I have seen Clay training in the ring and he is a fit boy and it would be a good fight,” Arshad was quick to add.Awais qualified for the World Championship after defeating Manish Panwar of India in the box-off fight in the Asian Championship held in Tashkent in April. Awais had lost to Yerik Alzhanov of Kazakhstan in the quarter-finals of the continental event.Earlier in the pre-quarter-finals he had ousted Alyazouri of Jordon 5-0 in an enthralling fight. The winner of Awais-Clay fight will face Yerik Alzanov of Kazakhstan in the pre-quarter-finals on Monday.The competitions would last till September 2. A handful of world and Olympic champions are also part of the competitions.
