Irish heavyweight John Sweeney has beaten Serbian Branko Srdic at the World Boxing Championships in Chicago, after the referee stopped the contest near the end of round four.

Heavyweight John Sweeney produced one of the best performances of his career to advance to the last 16 of the 2007 World Championships and Olympic qualifiers following a round four stoppage of Serbian Branco Srdic at the University of Illinois in Chicago in the early hours of this morning.

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.

ERIC DONOVAN kept Irish spirits on a high with an emphatic if not sensational 33-17 victory over a highly-rated Hungarian lightweight, Miklos Varga, at the World Boxing Championships in Chicago last night.

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.