Two teams from Australia, two from China and one each from Indonesia, Iran, Qatar and Thailand advanced to the men’s quarterfinals in Shangluo. The last eight of the tournament include the top seven seeds in the bracket and 16th-seeded Abolhassan Khakizadeh & AmirAli GhalehNovi of Iran.
In Friday’s quarterfinals, Abolhassan & GhalehNovi produced a hard-fought 2-0 (21-17, 23-21) upset of 10th-seeded Kai Kurokawa & Ryuichi Adachi of Japan, thus becoming the lowest seeded duo to push through to the quarterfinals.
In the only three-setter of the eighthfinals and the longest match of the men’s tournament so far, seventh-seeded Pithak Tipjan & Wachirawit Muadpha of Thailand squeezed out a 58-minute 2-1 (21-17, 20-22, 15-11) victory over another Iranian pair, Abbas Pourasgari & Alireza Aghajanighasab.
In the other six eighthfinals on Friday, bracket leaders Wu Jiaxin & Zhou Chaowei of China mastered a 2-0 (21-11, 21-15) shutout of 22nd-seeded Jad Abi Karam & Hadi El Chabib of Lebanon, who had successfully passed through the sixteenthfinal round earlier in the day, second-seeded Qatari stars Cherif Younousse & Ahmed Tijan hammered out a 2-0 (21-12, 21-13) sweep of their encounter with Kazakhstan’s Sergey Bogatu & Kirill Gurin, who also survived the first knockout round, third-seeded Mark Nicolaidis & Izac Carracher of Australia produced a 2-0 (21-14, 21-14) win over Thailand’s Netitorn Muneekul & Poravid Taovato, fourth-seeded Aussies Thomas Hodges & Ben Hood took out Kazakhstan’s Dmitriy Yakovlev & Abdulmajid Mokhammad in a convincing 2-0 (21-10, 21-11) straight-setter, fifth-seeded Bintang Akbar & Sofyan Rachman Efendi of Indonesia edged New Zealand’s Sam O'Dea & Ben O'Dea by 2-0 (21-18, 23-21), and sixth-seeded Wang Yanwei & Du Hongjun of China achieved a 2-0 (21-15, 21-9) victory over Japan’s Takumi Takahashi & Jumpei Ikeda.
