PORTLAOISE MIDDLEWEIGHT MICHAEL Nevin has doubled Ireland’s medal tally at the 2019 European Games, with at least two boxers now guaranteed to take domestic bronze at worst from Minsk. In a sensational boxing exhibition, the fashionable middleweight edged Turkey’s Guler Serhat, a former World Series of Boxing (WSB) competitor, on a 4-1 split to reach the semi-finals at 75kg. It’s a primary global medal at Senior Elite degree for Nevin, who has for years been touted as one of the most prodigiously talented boxers inside the USA.
The 21-year-antique is a 3-time European champion at underage degree, winning gold as a Schoolboy, Junior, and Youth and World Championships bronze inside the latter age category. However, he was selected for the Irish squad without Senior Elite champion Gabriel Dossen, who neglected out through injury. Having greater than taken advantage of his stroke of good fortune — or Dossen’s misfortune, depending on which way you have a look at it — Nevin is now fighting away from stamping his mark on the continent as a person.
Less than an hour before Nevin’s fulfillment, Bray mild-flyweight Regan Buckley secured Ireland’s first medal at this year’s Games when he reached the ultimate four at 49kg. Buckley beat Spain’s Martin Molina, a WSB veteran, on a 4-1 break-up decision to guarantee himself a minimum bronze in Minsk. The 22-year-old Vintage St. Teresa’s BC guy was sentenced to win using judges from Russia, Cuba, Korea, and Poland, with a Bosnian judge seeing the contest oppositely. “I’m over the moon, to be sincere with ya,” Buckley said. “It turned into a difficult-fought fight — the Spanish man came ahead an awful lot, and he was undoubtedly compact; he threw various punches, so I needed to cope with him from the doors. There had been instances when I needed to blend it up with him as well.
“But we did what we had to to get the win. It became an excellent contest. In the first round, I controlled the distance very well; I was catching him on the counter. I may have gotten into it a bit an excessive amount with him at the interior in the second round. And then the coaches informed me inside the third round to bring it back out to a boxing match. I operated off the jab in the final round, and I caught him with a few first-rate pictures, so I assume that’s what gave me the fight.