Beijing: Thai ex-playboy Manus Boonjumnong lost his Olympic title in a blizzard of Dominican punching on Saturday as an emotional Somjit Jongjohor finally ended his long search for gold.
Light welterweight Manus was demolished 12-4 by the whirlwind Felix Diaz, taking a standing eight count in the third round as he failed to cope with repeated close-quarter onslaughts.
"Usually when I punch the score registers but I don't know what happened tonight," said Manus, who is likely now to become Thailand's first professional.
"I punched a lot but the score didn't register."
Earlier Somjit held aloft a picture of King Bhumibol Adulyadej after he erased 12 years of Olympic heartache by sealing the flyweight gold medal.
The 2007 world silver-medallist bowed to the crowd and paraded the king's portrait from the Workers Gymnasium arena after easily dispatching Cuba's Andris Laffita in the final.
"I wanted to win for the Thai people who have been supporting me for the past four years," said Somjit, 33.
"I went through so much. It hurt so much but I kept trying. I'm sure today people in the south of Thailand will be very happy."
Somjit suffered a huge disappointment in Athens when he lost to Cuban favourite and eventual champion Yuriokis Gamboa despite taking a three-point lead into the final round.
He had earlier missed qualification for Sydney 2000 and watched as his training partner Wijan Ponlid went on to take gold. Somjit made no mistake on Saturday, taking an early lead and landing some crunching blows to win 8-2.
He choked back tears as he described his difficult journey to Olympic glory.
"For the past 12 years I've been through so many obstacles," he said. "If I didn't go through those challenges then I'd just be a normal boxer."
Manus, 28, is known for a louche past which saw him fritter away $600,000 in prize money on partying and gambling after he claimed gold in Athens.
But he returned to win the Asian Games gold medal, then entered a Buddhist monastery and appears here a reformed character.
Ukraine's Vasyl Lomachenko won the Olympic featherweight gold on Saturday, stopping France's Khedafi Djelkhir in the first round.
Djelkhir was totally out-gunned from the start and took three standing counts before the referee waved off the contest.
Lomachenko, a world silver medallist last year, jumped on his opponent from the off and Djelkhir couldn't stop the blows raining down on his head.
He was down 9-1 when the referee put him out of his misery.
Turkey's Yakup Kilic and Shahin Imranov of Azerbaijan won the bronze medals.
Britain's James Degale won the Olympic boxing middleweight title with a 16-14 victory over Emilio Correa of Cuba.
But the Briton was roundly jeered after the bout by a pro-Cuba crowd who felt that Correa had been hard done by.
He was 6-1 down after the first round after copping a two-point penalty and despite dominating the second he found himself further down at 10-4.
Correa, who was trying to emulate his father who won gold at welterweight in 1972 in Munich, kept pushing in the third and closed things up to 12-10 after Degale was penalised for holding.
But the Briton's counter-punching impressed the judges more than Correa's aggression and punch output -- although there was no doubt who the crowd thought should have won.
Correa's defeat was the second for Cubans in the finals as Laffita lost to Somjit at flyweight.
Ireland's Darren Sutherland and Vijender Kumar of India took the bronze medals.
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