Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 Featherweight Finals Preview
by Brian Taylor, USA Boxing
Today featherweight Duke Ragan (Cincinnati, Ohio) will look to become the first American featherweight Olympic gold medalist since Meldrick Taylor at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
Ragan’s impressive Olympic run that earned him a medal, adds him to a list of impressive Team USA featherweights including Taylor, Ricardo Juarez (2000 silver) and Floyd Mayweather Jr. (1996 bronze). However, Ragan will always be the first, and if not only for the foreseeable future, professional boxer to medal for USA Boxing to win an Olympic medal.
Ragan will have one final bout this evening against Russian Olympic Committee’s Albert Batyrgaziev, the second ranked boxer in the Boxing Task Force Rankings.
Batyrgaziev made it to the finals with victories over the Dominican Republic’s Alexy De La Cruz (5-0), Mongolia’s Tsendbaatar Erdenebat (3-2) and Cuba’s Lazaro Alvarez (3-2), while Ragan defeated France’s Samuel Kistohurry (3-2), Kazakhstan’s Serik Temirzhanov (5-0), Ireland’s Kurt Walker (3-2) and Ghana’s Samuel Takyi (4-1) to clinch his spot in the finals.
Click here to watch the American take to the ring at approximately 2:35 a.m. EST.