Walsh: John Joe must be wary of ‘hot head’ Kazakh

Following an impressive start to his second Olympic campaign on Saturday, bantamweight John Joe Nevin returns to the ExCel this afternoon (2pm) to take on Kanal Abutalipov (Kazakhstan) for a place in Sunday night’s quarter finals.

The Kazakh boxer scored a very convincing 15-7 victory over Syrian bantamweight Wessam Slamana, and is, according to High Performance Coach, Billy Walsh, “the type of fighter we don’t particularly fancy.”

Nevin had the honour of being the first Irish boxer in action and he revelled in it, thrilling the capacity crowd of 10,000 with a third round exhibition of his skills.