• Submitted by: manso
• Sports
• 10 / 09 / 2011

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2011.10.08 - 13:36:22. radiorebelde.icrt.cu. Havana, Cuba.-Cuba now has two new World Champions in Boxing.  Cuban boxers Lazaro Alvarez and Julio Cesar la Cruz became world champions after winning their respective bouts in the finals of the Baku 2011 World Championships.

Cuba's team captain, Julio la Cruz proved to be in great shape though the whole tournament, and with excellent footwork and straight punches sorted difficult hurdles, including defending Champion Egor Mekhontsev from Russia in semi-finals.

For the world title la Cruz faced Kazakh Adilbek Niyazymbetov and in the first the scored showed a balanced combat but the Cuban turned up the heat. He finally won the light heavyweight final by 17:13.

Cuba's rising power, former AIBA Cadet World Championships silver medallist, Lazaro Alvarez, 20, newcomer in the Cuban national elite team faced the European Champion, English Luke Campbell in the bantamweight final. Lavarez Cuban dominated the first round before raising his advantage in the second three minutes. The Caribbean youngster finally won the tactical bout by 14:10.

The third Cuban representative was Pan-American Champion Yasnier Toledo in the lightweight division, but was defeated 17-12 by Olympic and World Champion Ukrainian Vasyl Lomachenko. Toledo was knocked down in the first round and fought bravely to no avail to a clearly superior rival.

Cuba followed Ukraine in the amount of world titles 4-2, and Brazil, China. England and Russia won one a piece. This Cuban performance 2-1-4 shows a slight recovery compared to Italy 2009 where it won only one gold medal.(ACN)