KENNETH EGAN and surprise packets Paddy Barnes and Eric Donovan provide an interesting blend of youth and experience in what will be all-out war for places in the top eight at the World Boxing Championships in Chicago.

KENNETH EGAN and welterweight Roy Sheahan are safely through their respective preliminaries and now Darren Sutherland can lead them into the last 16 — just one fight away from Olympic qualification — when he takes on Andranik Hakobyan (Armenia) in what will be his first bout at the world boxing championships in Chicago today.

KENNETH EGAN and Roy Sheahan take their first steps towards qualification for the 2008 Olympics at the world boxing championships in Chicago today.

John Joe Joyce bowed out of the AIBA World Championships and Olympic qualifiers at the University of Illinois in Chicago after he lost his preliminary round light welterweight clash to Hungary's Gyula Kate in the early hours of this morning.

WITH John Joe Joyce set to get the show on the road in the early hours of today Irish time, the Irish boxing team were last night perusing what High Performance Director, Gary Keegan, described as a ‘fair’ draw for the world championships in Chicago.