Boxer Wright now looks to Thailand to punch her Olympic ticket

The Olympic qualifying boxing match between St. Davids resident McKenzie Wright and Aira Villegas of The Philippines couldn’t have been much closer. 

After three rounds, though, three of the five judges scored the match 3-2 in favour of Villegas, knocking the 33-year-old Wright out of the round of 32 in Busto Arsizio, Italy and ending her most recent chance to earn a spot at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics. 

Both Wright and her 28-year-old opponent earned a bye through the first round of the competition, for which 64 women from around the world qualified in the 50 kg weight class.  

Wright took the first round of Friday’s fight, a close one with a lot of clutching from both boxers. The lack of space between them meant that neither fighter landed many clean punches. The judges scored that round 3-2 in favour of the Canadian. 

It continued to be a close fight in the second round, though Villegas seemed to have adjusted somewhat with her approach and was able to land the hardest punch of the middle three minutes, a left cross to Wright’s sternum. That seemed to be enough to impress the judges, who scored it 4-1 in favour of Villegas. 

Both came out aggressively in the final round. After trading punches to each other’s body back and forth for the first 80 seconds, Wright put together probably the best combination of the match, a right uppercut followed by a strong left hook. 

Villegas tried in vain to attack the rest of the way but couldn’t land anything too impressive. When the final bell rang, Wright seemed to be sure she was moving on. But the judges felt otherwise. 

Wright earned the right to fight in Italy after topping the field at Boxing Canada’s 2023 Olympic Team Trials in Montreal in December. That was after a disappointing loss in the semi-finals at October’s Pan Am Games in Santiago, Chile. A top-four finish in Italy would have given her a berth in Paris this summer.

On her Instagram account Friday, Wright expressed her disappointment in the latest setback in her Olympic quest..

“Nothing hurts like boxing,” she wrote. “Today was a new one for me. I was able to win two out of the three rounds but based on a scoring technicality it still wasn’t enough. This is as close as it gets at the highest level of boxing in the world.”

Then she turned her attention to her next and final chance to qualify for Paris.

“I am happy with my performance and have another shot to qualify. Thanks for the support, everyone, we keep it going,” Wright wrote.

Wright will be heading to Bangkok Thailand from May 23 to June 3 for the final international qualifying tournament.