JAKARTA, Aug 27 — "Malaysia was openly robbed of a gold medal” that was the reaction of the Malaysian National Silat Federation (Pesaka) secretary-general Datuk Megat Zulkarnain Omardin after the controversial match in the Putra Class E final at the 2018 Asian Games today.

In the fight at Pencak Silat Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, national silat champion, Mohd Al Jufferi Jamari lost to Indonesian exponent, Komang Harik Adi Putra after leaving the ring in protest of the biased decisions by the jury.

Megat Zulkarnain told Malaysian and local media that he placed the defeat of the 2016 world champion and 2017 KL SEA Games gold medallist squarely on several members of the match jury.

"I expected dirty play and yesterday I ordered the coach to protest if the jury was from South Korea and Laos but we overlooked that which resulted in them being seated as jury today.

"We can see the attacks by Al Jufferi in front of them were not awarded points while his opponent (Komang) were given points. In the end we saw Al Jufferi being robbed of a gold medal,” he said.

He was upset to see the situation as the fight progressed and later ordered Al Jufferi to leave the ring as a sign a protest.

"I am taking full responsibility for asking Al Jufferi to walk out of the ring as I believe he would not be favoured for a win,” he added.

Therefore he stressed that he would look into the matter with all other competing countries before deciding on taking any action.       

In the final, Al Jufferi began slowly when he trailed 1-4 in the first round but bounced back to lead 3-2 at the end of the second round.

However, the controversy began when the strikes and kicks by Al Jufferi were not counted while points were awarded to the host exponent causing Al Jufferi to walk out of the ring. — Bernama