JAKARTA - Rogen Ladon was hoping to follow the footsteps of Rey Saludar who won the gold medal in the flyweight division at the 2010 Asian Games. However, Ladon's fight got cut short and he had to settle for a silver after he suffered a deep gash over his left eye due to a head butt in the second round of his match against Jarusbek Latipov of Uzbekistan in their flyweight final of the boxing competition of the 2018 Asian Games.
Ladon fought well in the first round as he connected with stiff jab-straight combinations. While the Filipino fighter was piling on points from the outside, Latipov was largely inactive. He mostly threw his punches when the two were on a clinch.
Early in the second round, Ladon went for an attack when the two fighters clashed heads. The referee asked the help of the ringside physician who advised her to stop the bout.
There was some confusion at the venue regarding the real result of the match as the announcer said it was a win via referee stoppage, which would have been the case if the cut was opened by a punch but the official outcome on the website was a victory by split decision for Latipov.
Judges from Australia, Tunisia, and Iran scored the first round for Latipov while the judges from Indonesia and Sri Lanka sided with Ladon. In the second, they were forced to give out a decision even if there was barely any action in round as it was stopped after 22 seconds. Latipov was backed down by Ladon's initial attack but four of the judges scored it for him anyway.
Latipov won via scores of 20-18 thrice while one judge had it 20-18 for Ladon and the other scored it even 19-19.
It was a frustrating ending to the campaign of Philippine boxing in the 2018 Asian Games. After five of the boxers were eliminated in their first bouts, the three survivors came out on the losing end of tough decisions from the judges.
The final medal tally for the boxing delegation was a silver from Ladon and two bronzes from light flyweight Carlo Paalam and middleweight Eumir Marcial.