Boxing:John Joe Nevin was denied a place in a World Championships final in Baku this morning, but only by dint of a countback. Nevin's bantamweight semi-final with Luke Campbell finished all-square with the English fighter given the decision by the judges.
Campbell, a rangy, awkward opponent, barely laid a glove on the Irish fighter in the first 90 seconds, but was able to pick him off as the round progressed with a number of scoring shots while his superior reach helped him to open a narrow 4-3 lead.
Again, there was little to choose between them in the second round, but when Nevin did manage to get past Campbell’s jab he did enough to impress the ringside judges and by the time the bell sounded he had drawn level at 9-9.
And the Cavan man looked to have done enough in the final round, going to the body at the behest of his corner but despite connecting on numerous occasions, those shots failed to score and at 12-12 the result went to the dreaded countback.
Nevin progressed to these semi-finals on a countback, shading Mongolian Otgondalal Dorjnyambuu an 18-18 draw, so can have few complaints about the system. But on this occasion he was on the wrong end of the result with Campbell advancing to the decider.
“I definitely thought I’d won the last round and so did my corner,” a bitterly disappointed Nevin said after the fight. “I don’t know where they came up with 12-all. I’m devastated now, especially having beaten him before but I’ll be back and I’ll get him again.”
Nevin faced Campbell in the semi-finals of the EU Championships in 2009, winning 13-2 in Denmark, and approached today’s fight with the same tactics in mind.
“He’s a tall fighter, he knew if I came to him he’d pick me off. He knew I picked him off well the last time when I beat him 13-2 and he didn’t want to come so it was a bit of cat and mouse in there.
“This game can be cruel. I don’t know how I lost the fight but that’s the sport, every dog has his day.”
Roy Sheehan’s hopes a receiving a place at next year’s Olympics, where he would join Nevin, Darren O’Neill and Michael Conlan, came to nothing this evening as Egidijus Kavaliauskas was beaten by Sapiyev Serik of Kazakhstan in their welterweight semi-final.
Sheehan was beaten by Kavaliauskas in the last-16 but would have qualified for the Olympics had the Lithuanian made it to the decider. Kavaliauskas was 8-2 behind on the scorecards when he retired in the first round. Serik will now meet the Ukraine’s Taras Shelestyuk in the final.