Walsh has high hopes of more medals

With two medals secured in the camp, high performance coach Billy Walsh said light flyweight Paddy Barnes and flyweight Michael Conlan are champing at the bit for their quarter-final bouts.

Tonight (9pm) Michael Conlan fights for Ireland’s third bronze medal when he takes on Nordine Oubaali of France.

Ever since qualifying at the World Championships in Baku, the 20-year-old Belfast man has been singled out as a “dark horse” for a medal here. Coached by his older brother Jaimie, a former international, he had developed into a classy performer long before he was inducted into the high performance squad.

As a cheeky 16 year-old he had targeted Barnes after watching him win his bronze medal at the Beijing Olympics. However, he was quick to admit that the first time they met played a big part in his education.

Seeded sixth, he got a bye into the last 16 in the Olympic tournament and when he finally made his debut, after a long wait, he beat Duke Mikah of Ghana 18-14, coming on strong in the second and third rounds.

When he touches gloves with Oubaali tonight it will be their third time meeting. Conlan won the other two contests — in Baku last year when he won 20-17 to qualify for the Olympics and this year when he beat him 18-16 in the Four Nations Tournament.

But Walsh insisted that this could work two ways. “It’s a tough fight in that Oubaali is the world No 2 and he has beaten one of the world champions on the way here,” he said. “The other tough side to it is that we have beaten him twice recently and, to me, that gives him a slight bit of an advantage in that he may have learned more from it, he knows our tactics.

“Michael is a very confident kid but did not sleep that well for a couple of nights before his first contest. Now he has got used to it and he just saw the atmosphere of Katie Taylor’s fight and he said, ‘my atmosphere was nowhere near this’. What was I worrying about?”

“He’s in good form. He’s in great order. He’s up for it. He feels that he can do it.

“Previously we fought [Oubaali] two different ways. When we fought him in Baku we stood off him for the first round and he went two points up and then we decided that we had to close him down and push him back and that worked for us.

“Then when we fought him in France in June we applied the same tactics and it worked. We will be looking to do more of the same but the intensity is going to be higher. I think the atmosphere and the occasion will be higher. Obviously there is a lot at stake so I think it’s going to be a ding dong battle. It will be a great fight to watch.

“Oubaali was very aggressive in his last fight. He is good going forward. We discovered that pushing him backwards he’s not so good. So that will be our ploy.

“Michael can fight any way — going back, going forward. He can fight southpaw, he can fight orthodox but, in this case, he will return southpaw because this guy is southpaw and he will try and push him back.

“We have two medals in the camp already — it’s fantastic. John Joe [Nevin] set the tone yesterday. I watched it this morning and just realised he was exceptional last night.”