Michael Conlan edged closer to fulfilling his prophecy of claiming gold in Rio by easily dispatching Armenia’s Aram Avagyan by a unanimous decision to progress to the Olympic quarter-finals.
Four years on from winning bronze at the London Olympics, the Belfast bantamweight has been very vocal about collecting the highest honour at this summer’s Games.
Conlan opened his campaign against a tough Armenian who proved hard to hit and remained competitive throughout, however, the Belfast boxer worked his opponent out quickly enough as he got a good workout en route to victory.
The 24-year-old was content to have won ugly, but admitted that he had lots of room for improvement, saying: “It was a good win. But it was probably one of the worst performances I’ve had in recent times.
“But it’s the Olympic Games - there’s a lot of pressure here.
“Everybody back home saying about leaving it all to me and Katie. We do see it.
“It’s a bit of added pressure.
“Today I think there was a bit of nerves - with the lads losing - I didn’t want to lose. My legs had all the energy sucked out of them with all the nerves.
“It kind of took away from my performance.
“I got dragged into a war when I could easily outbox that guy, but you know what? It’s the Olympic Games and people are her to win and they’ll do anything they can to win, so I’m delighted with a victory.”
Barely ten seconds had elapsed after the opening bell before Conlan struck, landing a strong head-shot to let Avagyan know that he was facing the reigning world champion.
The Armenian responded by maintaining a very high guard throughout, allowing Conlan to keep his head high and hands low as he studiously watched his opponent before picking his punches, enjoying plenty of success without being troubled.
The judges were in agreement, with all three scorecards handing the opening round to Conlan 10:9.
Avagyan proved a bit trickier in the second round but Conlan was happy to stand and trade punches as the fight threatened to become a bit of a brawl.
Conlan boxed clever, however, and made sure to keep the brawling to a minimum, showing great movement to elude his advancing opponent who momentarily pinned the Belfast man back on the ropes.
Both boxers scored throughout the bruising three minutes but the cleaner work came from Conlan and he again impressed the judges, taking the round on all three cards to open a clear lead in the contest.
Avagyan needed to produce something special in the final round and went on the attack from the opening bell.
But Conlan again happily stood toe-to-toe and dominated his opponent in the middle of the ring with the world champion responding with real intent and his powerful blows took the wind out of the Armenian’s fading challenge.
Conlan also began to blow a bit in the final minute of that closing stanza as he expended a lot of energy to nullify Avagyan’s attempts to turn the fight in his favour.
But that intensity will stand to the Belfast man who eased down through the gears in the final minute to take the contest and Conlan will now look forward to the quarter-finals, where victory can secure another medal for the reigning world champion.
Speaking after the fight, Irish coach John Conlan - father of the victorious fighter - admitted that Michael was nervous going into the fight and that the gameplan changed quickly once the bout got going.
"Michael was very nervous going in, I could see it," said John Conlan. "But there was a little boost on his way in as his daughter came up on the big screen, which geed him up a little bit.
"Tactics were slightly different. We had planned a different fight and we changed very quickly because he had more success on the inside.
"We were worried about cuts with this guy so we wanted to stay middle-to-long distance but quickly it turned out that with a lot of the nerves, the heat, the excitement, Michael just decided that he was going to stand in.
"It’s natural to be nervous. If you’re not nervous, there is something wrong. You can let the nerves eat you up or you can embrace them and use them to your advantage, and Michael is very good at that, he is very experienced."
Irish bantamweight Michael Conlan gives his thoughts on his impressive win at #Rio2016 https://t.co/YqM62qyE6m
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) August 14, 2016
