VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Indonesian martial arts ( Pencak Silat )athlete Aji Bangkit Pamungkas advanced to the finals after beating Vietnamese rival Duy Tuyen Nguyen in the semifinals of the Asian Games 2018. Pamungkas won a landslide victory against Nguyen in the men`s 85 kg with a score of 5-0 during the bout held at the Taman Mini Martial Arts venue in East Jakarta on Sunday.

In the first round, Nguyen launched an aggressive attack and collected a higher point. However, in the run up to the end of the first round, Pamungkas succeeded in countering his rival`s attack and hit targets to collect points. The Indonesian athlete won the first round with a score of 6-8,7-4, 5-8,10-6 and 6-5.

In the second round, the fight went tough as the two rivals tried their respective strategies to attack each other for collecting points. Therefore, in the second round, they both collected points which are not far different, namely 8-8,2-1,4-3,4-5, and 5-5.

Yet, in the third round, the Vietnamese athlete directly launched a blindly attack that hit targets and happened to be victorious in first minutes. However, Pamungkas in the following several seconds, did his best to change and overcome the condition. He finally won the bout and advanced to the finals together with four other Indonesian martial arts athletes.

The Indonesian martial arts athletes who previously stepped into the finals are Komang Harik Adi Putra, Iqbal Candra Pratama, Abdul Malik and Wewey Wita. But other Indonesian fighter, Amri Rusdana, must surrendered to Mohd Fauzi Khalid after losing narrowly from the Malaysian fighter with a score of 2-3. Rusdana had to settle for winning the bronze medal, along with a Kyrgyzstan fighter, Daniiar Tokurov, who lost to a Vietnamese fighter, Dinh Nam Tran.