Moscow magic guarantees medals for Irish quartet
Mullingar bantamweight John Joe Nevin (Cavan BC) celebrated his 21st birthday with an emphatic 6-1 victory over Frenchman, Nourdine Aitihya, Donegal featherweight, Tyrone McCullough (Illies/GG), on his first major assignment in an Irish vest, outpointed Piotr Apostol (Moldova) 13-2 while experienced Athy lightweight, Eric Donovan (St Michaels BC) dished out a 10-2 beating to the Ukranian, Dimitry Bulenkov. There was a huge disappointment for the young Mayo man, Ray Moylette (St Annes, Westport) who lost to David Muellar from Germany in the worst possible fashion. Moylette, who won a world youths title in Mexico only two years ago, came from 2-0 down in the first round to lead 4-2 before Muellar came back courtesy of some interesting scoring to lead 5-4 and when Moylette tied it 5-5 at the end of the contest the verdict went to countback. But even the countback could not separate them and the decision was handed over to the judges who gave their verdict to the German leaving the Irish team manager, Des Donnelly, scratching his head. “Ray was 4-2 up with a few seconds to go and suddenly he ended up 5-4 down,” he said. “Then he came back with a point to leave it 5-5. It will be interesting to see where the punches came from to level the score when we look at the scoresheet.”
John Joe Nevin, a bronze medallist at last year’s world championships in Milan, was oozing confidence after his 6-1 win over Nourdine Aitihya. “I box like’s it’s in my own back garden and let them come to fight me – it’s not me coming to fight them,” he said. “They have to beat me it’s not that I have to beat them. I have a quarter-final on Wednesday and it is not bad to get into the last eight in Europe. Hopefully the performance will go right again and I’ll bring back another medal.”
Eric Donovan said he felt so good he could have gone a few more rounds against Dimitry Bulenkov. “There was a great tempo in the fight – a good pace – I knew I had to stick to my plan,” he said.
“My plan – the tactics going in – was to feint, feint, feint, keep him thinking and don’t let him go flat footed for a second. It was 0-0 for a while in the first round. The referee obviously stopped the two of us and warned us. He said ‘listen lads, you have to fight here’ but I’m long enough in the tooth to know that he is not going to disqualify the two of us. If Bulenkov wasn’t boxing I wasn’t boxing so it was a game of cat and mouse for a while. We were trying to make each other fall into the trap but, fortunately, it worked in my favour. He actually came in then and I got the point up on him and it was easy pickings from there because he got frustrated and he chased the fight. I had him in the palm of my hand then. I sparred him at the training camp in Kiev but we only did two rounds. It was enough. He wasn’t showing too much and I wasn’t showing much either. That’s the kind of sparring going on in the Ukraine. Everyone was cautious of each other, nobody wanted to show their full hand.”
Team Manager Des Donnelly was delighted with the fact that seven of the nine boxers have made it through to the quarter finals. “Today was very, very good,” he said. “Eric Donovan was terrific yesterday but today he was exceptional. He’s got the qualities to be a world class boxer. John Joe Nevin, this was his 21st birthday, he got a good present. A very clever boxer, good defender, picks his shots. Tyrone McCullough, a young lad, first major competition, did exceptionally well.”
Today Olympic silver medallist, Kenneth Egan, meets Ainar Karlson (Estonia) for a light heavyweight medal, Paulstown southpaw, Darren O’Neill, will also be boxing for a medal when he touches gloves with Ukranian middleweight, Sergey Derevyanchenko, while Olympic bronze medallist, Paddy Barnes gets his chance to add a European medal to his collection. Young Tyrone McCullough will also be back in action boxing for his first major medal.
