Irish camp fume at Nolan’s controversial exit

Irish welterweight Adam Nolan controversially crashed out of the AIBA World Elite Championships at the last-64 stage despite ending up with more points than his opponent yesterday.

The Bray BC southpaw dropped a split decision to France’s Souleymane Cissokho following three tight rounds in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

The Brazilian judge scored all three rounds 10-9,10-9,10-9 to Nolan, but the Azerbaijani and Danish judges leaned in favour of Cissokho (9-10,10-9,9-10) and (10-9,9-10,9-10).

The Danish and Azeri adjudicators did mark one round each to Nolan, but two each to Cissokho who advanced on a 30-27, 28-29, 28-29 split decision.

Under the rules of the scoring system, if at least two of the three judges score in favour of a boxer he wins the fight.

However, when all the scores were totted up, Nolan, who works as a Garda in Bray, had 86 points and Cissokho 85.

Nolan’s Irish team-mate Paddy Barnes, shooting straight from the hip on Twitter, didn’t pull any punches in his assessment of the decision.

He wrote: “Just watched Adam Nolan get robbed of victory after beating the French man around the ring, disgraceful and embarrassing.”

Irish head coach Billy Walsh, who was working Nolan’s corner with Zuar Antia yesterday, also expressed disappointment with the outcome.

“He started off well and clearly won the first round. I felt that he didn’t lose the second round and he didn’t lose the last round so we thought we would have come out on top. One of the judges gave us three, but unfortunately we lost out which is disappointing to us all.”

No Irish boxers will be between the ropes today, but Team Ireland are facing a busy day tomorrow with three fighters in last-32 action in Central Asia.

Two-time Olympic bronze medalist Barnes, who has moved up from light-fly to fly for Almaty, faces Serbia’s Milos Baltic in his first fight at the Championships.

Tommy McCarthy and Ray Moylette, who have both won one fight each in Kazakhstan this week, meet Canada’s Samir El-Mais and Kyrgystan’s Ermek Sakenov.

AIBA World Elite Men’s Championships Almaty, Kazakhstan

(Last 64): 69kg Adam Nolan (Ireland) lost to Souleymane Cissokho (France) 1-2

Today: (Last 32): 52kg: Paddy Barnes (Ireland) v Milos Baltic (Serbia)

64kg: Ray Moylette (Ireland) v Ermek Sakenov (Kyrgystan)

91kg: Tommy McCarthy (Ireland) v Samir El-Mais (Canada)