‘Box-off’ was not a tool to select squad

WHEN the high octane meeting of the IABA’s Boxing Council ended on Saturday at the National Stadium one was left wondering how the paranoia had been allowed to fester during the previous week’s tournament in Dublin.

IABA president Tommy Murphy insisted that the event was never intended to be a box-off for the world championships. All along we should just have called it by its proper name — The Un-Seeded Open Elite Championships.

It proved the calm after the storm as delegates emerged from the three-hour meeting which ratified nine of the 10 boxers put forward by High Performance chiefs for places on the Ireland team for next month’s world championships in Azerbaijan.

One of Ireland’s two newly crowned European champions, Ray Moylette, will box national champion Ross Hickey for the light-welterweight slot in the squad and that decision — coming on the back of a 15-10 vote — had merit.

Hickey, a former lightweight champion who won a bronze medal at the European championships in 2008, underscored his challenge for a place by winning last week’s ‘tournament’ and the fact that he had to miss the European championships on account of his commitments with the Defence Forces reinforced his claims.

Moylette’s supporters pointed out that, as European champion, he would be seeded for the world championships, where the top eight boxers in each division will gain qualification for next year’s Olympic Games.

The fact that Moylette and Hickey had never fought was obviously another factor taken into account.

After losing two light finals to Eric Donovan, Hickey, from Grangecon, won his first title in 2008 and then won a bronze medal at the European championships in Liverpool.

This year he stepped up to light-welterweight and went on to beat former champion Philip Sutcliffe in the final. A year earlier, Moylette had stripped Sutcliffe of his title in a thriller but this year the former world youths champion was beaten by James McDonagh (Dockers) 5-3 in his first contest.

Pat Ryan, a member of the Central Council and also a coach with the High Performance Programme, felt Saturday’s meeting went particularly well given the controversy leading up to it and described the decision to box-off for the light-welterweight place as fair.

“The business was conducted in an orderly fashion and everything that needed to be done was done,” he said.

“The box-off between Ray Moylette and Ross Hickey was the fairest outcome, because whoever goes to the world championships needs to know that he goes as our number one light welterweight — that will be important to his confidence.”

Both Moylette and Hickey are part of Billy Walsh’s 16-strong squad currently at a training camp in Assisi, Italy, along with teams from Italy, Azerbaijan and Ukraine.

IABA president Murphy, was on holiday and missed the controversy surrounding the tournament, which apparently was what it was originally deemed to be — a competition to ‘help select’ the team for the world championships in Baku.

“The phrase ‘box-off’ should have never been used,” he said after he emerged from Saturday’s meeting. “It was never a box-off. This was a tournament to see how some boxers were progressing. I am happy with what happened at the meeting. I thought it was going to be a harder meeting than it turned out to be.”

He defended the decision to send 16 boxers to the Assisi training camp, even though some of those will not travel to Baku.

“A number of lads were carrying knocks so we decided to send possible replacements,” he said.

Meanwhile, Con Sheehan’s coach Martin Fennessy insists the Clonmel man’s decision to move up to super heavyweight had nothing to do with Kenny Egan’s desire to move up to heavyweight

“Connie had to move up,” he said. “He just could not make the weight any more and his efforts to make 91kg was impeding his physical development. Just imagine how it would be if he qualified for the Olympic Games at heavyweight and then could not make the weight next year.”

IRELAND: Light-flyweight: Paddy Barnes (Holy Family GG, Belfast); Flyweight: Michael Conlon (St John Bosco, Belfast); Bantamweight: John Joe Nevin (Cavan); Lightweight: David Oliver Joyce (St Michael’s Athy); Light-welterweight: Box-Off between Ray Moylette (St Anne’s, Westport) and Ross Hickey (Grangecon) on September 2.

Welterweight: Roy Sheehan (St Michael’s Athy); Middleweight: Darren O’Neill (Paulstown, Kilkenny); Light-Heavyweight: Joe Ward (Moate, Co Westmeath); Heavyweight: Ken Egan (Neilstown, Dublin); Super-heavyweight: Con Sheehan (Clonmel).