BOXING:A RECORD ninth Irish title over all and an unmatched seven light heavyweight belts, what more could Ken Egan do last night to illuminate the National Stadium.
The Neilstown fighter, amateur boxing’s leading light since his silver medal win in Beijing last summer, left yet another mark on the sport in his 9-5 defeat of World Youth bronze medallist Thomas McCarthy in front of a capacity 2,000 crowd.
The 27-year-old was controlled and precise as he moved the teenage fighter around the ring, building from a slow start to ultimately dominate the fight. Egan was a modest 2-0 up after the first round and smouldering rather than tearing up his callow Oliver Plunkett BC opponent.
The younger man was game and willing, but Egan’s experience told as he marched him around the ring into the corners, going 6-2 ahead after the second round and finally winning 9-5 with both fighters warned by the referee during the bout.
It was far from vintage Egan and he knew it, but more than adequate to set the new benchmark in just his second competitive fight since coming home from China.
He now builds up for next week’s international against America, who are reputedly travelling with their Olympic team. He has also the bout on the under card of Bernard Dunne’s professional World Championship Challenge in the O2 Arena on March 22nd to consider, where women’s World Champion Katie Taylor is also scheduled to appear.
Egan is still hoping to attract Xiaoping Zhang to Dublin, the Chinese fighter who beat him to the gold medal in the Olympic final.
“I’m still a bit stale there but working away,” said Egan afterwards. “The big one now is in March and I’m hoping it’s going to be the Chinese guy. We’re still not sure about that yet. But he’s (McCarthy) a good lad. He boxed well tonight. I always knew he had a bit of a talent from when he went to the world juniors.”
The shock of the night, however, was reserved for another Olympian – John Joe Joyce. The Beijing graduate from the St Michael’s Club in Athy met Crumlin’s Philip Sutcliffe in the 64Kg class. The Olympic quarter-finalist, seeking his third successive title, was caught with a left and put down in the first round and simply didn’t recover.
Sutcliffe was almost as surprised as the rest of the crowd as Joyce looked in terrible difficulty when he returned to his feet. Another flurry and it was clear the champion had been badly rattled and it was then that the referee stepped in to stop the contest.
The other surprises of the night were 18-year-old southpaw Declan Geraghty’s 8-7 win over the four times champion Conor Ahern at flyweight, and Carl Frampton’s defeat of four times champion David Oliver Joyce (at whose wedding Frampton was recently guest of honour) at featherweight.
Bantamweight John Joe Nevin put on the gala performance of the evening. The Olympian and European Union gold medallist earned his second title as he picked off the younger Ryan Lindberg at will.
Nevin’s balance, punching power and feint occasionally drew gasps from the crowd as he worked from a 5-0 score after the first round to take Lindberg on a rather steep learning curve, finally winning 15-1 in the ascendant.
“If I’d boxed in the Olympics like that who knows what would have happened,” said Nevin afterwards. How right he was.
A pragmatic decision was taken by the brothers Joe and David Joyce in the 91kg+ division, when 18-year-old Joe granted David the super heavyweight title.
Acknowledging that boxing is not quite the same as tennis the brothers from Moate did not consider it a good idea to follow in the footsteps of tennis sisters Serena and Venus Williams, who have played each other in no fewer than seven Grand Slam finals, including three times at Wimbledon.
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