Ali gives Iraq fighting chance
ATHENS -- The back of his shirt told the story last night at the Peristeri Olympic Boxing Hall.
"Iraq is back!" it said across the thin shoulders of Najah Ali as he entered the ring to face a North Korean light flyweight named Hyok Ju Kwak. By the time Ali was done, Iraq was back because he was coming back.
Coming back Saturday night to fight in the second round of the Olympic Games boxing competition barely two months after needing a wild-card exemption just to get here.
Ali had promised a day earlier that he would win. How, he did not quite know. But Ali didn't care that his opponent was 4 inches taller or that he himself had less than a half-dozen international fights while most of the other competitors were vastly more experienced. All he cared about was that he had a chance to fight for his country in the Olympics, something no one had done in 16 years.
But Najah Ali was not here simply to fight.
"I'm here for winning," he said, his smile beaming after pounding out a one-sided 21-7 decision over Kwak as the crowd roared its approval of the 106-pound symbol of a rebuilding nation.
In his corner was Maurice "Termite" Watkins, a former world title contender from Texas who coaches the Iraqi team he helped create more than a year ago after arriving in Iraq to work as an exterminator. Next to Watkins stood Basheer Abdullah, the head coach of the US team who welcomed Ali several months ago and allowed him to train with his boxers for six weeks to prepare for the Games.
It was a coalition of two Americans and one Iraqi working together for this moment. A moment many outsiders thought would never happen until Ali started firing leather so fast it looked like an explosion at a saddle factory.
"I'm so excited," he said after his first win in international competition outside an Arab state. "I'm so happy. I'll fight harder and harder. All of the people of Iraq are looking toward me. I'm a symbol for the people. I'm very normal. I want the world to see we're all normal."
It was a proud moment for Abdullah, too. As he stood in Ali's corner as the fighter's hand was raised, Abdullah waved a towel over his head. It was a moment of celebration, but Abdullah also had a moment of despair earlier in the day when the youngest fighter in the competition, America's 106-pound entrant, Rau'Shee Warren, was outclassed by far more experienced Zou Shimming of China.
Zou, the silver medalist at last year's world championships, baffled and bluffed the 17-year-old Warren during a 22-9 victory in which he took away the young American's speed advantage by tying him up on the inside and scoring with a punch at a time before smothering him.
Warren seemed to know he didn't want to be in close with Zou, but he had no idea how to avoid it, a function more of his youth than any disparity in skills. When it was over, Warren's face began to crack, and after he left the ring he turned and wept on the shoulder of his mother, Paulette, just a kid with a broken dream.
Warren became the first American to lose, but that defeat was soon avenged by heavyweight Devin Vargas, who overcame his own nervousness to overwhelm Morocco's Rachid El Haddak, 27-7, in a contest that was stopped in the third round after he'd piled up a 20-point lead.
"Waiting for the curtain to open so I could go out, I felt like I was going up in a roller coaster so I started yelling," Vargas said. "I was trying to enjoy it."
Vargas was not as nervous as El Haddak, however. The Moroccan seemed unsure of himself from the start, especially after Vargas strafed him a few times with his jab and straight right hands behind it.
"He looked a little nervous," Vargas acknowledged. "At the weigh-in he was shadow boxing and he looked like a novice, so they told me to go out and give him a jolt in a hurry."
Vargas did and advanced to Sunday's quarterfinals against Belarus's Viktar Zuyev.
