Canterbury's Gary Lawson and Andrew Curtain survived a scare against Naenae duo Cory Carroll and Dwayne Cameron, recovering from 1-10 down before claiming a 19-12 win and a place in the last 16 of the pairs.
It was their second comeback win at the men's national championships in Wellington, after
also trailing Dunedin's Jim and Terry Scott in the previous round.
They join two other highly favoured teams, Rowan Brassey and Jamie Hill, from Avondale, and Paul Girdler from St Johns Park with Wakari's Steve Beel, in the last 16.
All three are in the top half of the draw so there are some mouth-watering matches in prospect today because only one of them can make tomorrow morning's final.
Brassey and Hill have a hard first-up match at 8.30am against Marlborough's Andre Smith and Lloyd Gallop, who came through a tough section of the draw with a 19-15 win over Mt Maunganui's Chris Smith and Robbie Aitken, backed up by a 21-7 victory over Shayne Sincock and Kelvin Scott of Canterbury.
Girdler plays Naenae's Terry Lynch, a win likely to set up an epic battle, with Brassey.
Lawson is in the next quarter of the draw, facing Reynolds and Love, a win would take them through to play either Ray Jacobs and youngster Kelvin Budge, or Auckland father-and-son combination Nick and Neven Grgicevich.
The stage would then be set for Lawson to play either Brassey or Girdler in the semi-final.
In the bottom half of the draw Island Bay's Mike Solomon and Carl Muollo play Creighton and Austin of Naenae, the winners take on either the Havelock/Takahanga pair of Paget and Riddell or Carlton's Petar Sain and Wally Marsic for a semifinal berth.
Neville Turnbull of Levin with Te Puke's Clive Phillips have drawn defending champions Grant Wakefield and Brendon Gibson, of Johnsonville.
