KUALA LUMPUR: Men's doubles ace Aaron Chia insists he and Soh Wooi Yik are more comfortable with the underdog tag as they aim to improve on their bronze medal from Tokyo three years ago at the Paris Olympics.
The world No. 5 narrowly missed securing a top-four position in the world rankings, and thus will not be seeded.
This means Aaron-Wooi Yik will have to face one of the world's top four pairs early in the competition, making their campaign a challenging one from the start.
The current world top four are No. 1 Liang Wei Keng-Wang Chang (China), No.2 Kim Astrup-Anders Skaarup Rasmussen (Denmark), No.3 Satwiksairaj Rankireddy-Chirag Shetty (India) and No.4 Kang Min Hyuk-Seo Seung Jae (South Korea).
However, Aaron believes there would not be much difference whether they are seeded or not, given the competitive nature of the men's doubles at the Olympics.
In fact, he said it might be better to go to the Games as underdogs, as it would relieve them of the pressure of being the favourites.
"Being non-seeded, I would say this is an advantage to us," said Aaron.
"The men's doubles event this time around is so competitive, so it will be those seeded pairs feeling the pressure even more.
"Also, most of them are actually making their Olympics debut."
Wei Keng-Wang Chang and Satwiksairaj-Chirag will be playing in their first Olympics, and it's the same for Seung Jae's partner, Min Hyuk.