Box­ing pun­dits would say T&T's Aaron Prince was the cause of his own demise. And it might well be so.

The T&T mid­dleweight box­er in his de­but fight of the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan ear­ly on Mon­day morn­ing, was beat­en by Slo­va­kia's An­drej Cse­mez 4-0 in a unan­i­mous de­ci­sion.

Prince's de­ci­sion to em­ploy a de­fen­sive strat­e­gy in the open­ing round proved to be noth­ing but an in­vi­ta­tion to treat, which Cse­mez du­ly ac­cept­ed, pound­ing away at his 35-year-old op­po­nent.

Judges ticked away as the T&T box­er, af­ter wait­ing for more than a decade to en­ter the Olympic box­ing ring, was fac­ing a bap­tism of fire.

Then came the defin­ing mo­ment of the round when a pow­er­ful right punch by Cse­mez sent Prince's gloves to the can­vas, a de­vel­op­ment that con­sti­tut­ed a knock­out.

Coach Rawl­son Dop­well and Man­ag­er Reynold Cox sought to change Prince's ap­proach in the sec­ond and third rounds, a de­ci­sion that led to Prince scor­ing points in spurts. Cse­mez how­ev­er, did not make things easy for Prince, and elud­ed the Trinida­di­an's fierce swipes, while tag­ging him at the same time, with a dis­play of lat­er­al move­ment and jabs, while land­ing the big punch­es when he could have.

The Slo­va­kian was al­so guilty of ex­ces­sive hold­ing as Prince charged, but in the end, one judge ruled the con­test a tie, while four oth­ers ruled in favour of the Slo­va­kian.

Cox, af­ter the bout, said his fight­er did not ex­e­cute prop­er­ly on their strat­e­gy.

Prince too re­spond­ed to the fight, say­ing: "My mo­ti­va­tion has not di­min­ished one bit. I am 35 years old and my con­di­tion is on par with the best ath­letes in the world. I've been asked this ques­tion many times, will I go to an­oth­er Olympics. That fight made that de­ci­sion for me be­cause I want­ed a podi­um fin­ish, I didn't get it this time around. Had he (Cse­mez) not been al­lowed to hold on so much, he would have been down. So Paris 2024, look out."